Hello! I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Film Production and Media Studies at Penn State University’s Bellisario College of Communications. Before Penn State, I was a tenured faculty member in Bradley University’s Department of Communication. I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Communication & Culture at Indiana University.
My book, Social TV: Multi-Screen Content and Ephemeral Culture, was released via the University Press of Mississippi in 2022. The book reveals how the US television industry promised—and failed to deliver—a social revolution in the 2010s. Social TV won the SCMS Media Industries Studies Interest Group’s Outstanding Book Award in 2023.
My research focuses on media industry convergences, particularly legacy media institutions’ use of “new” technology in content strategies. I have published work in Television & New Media, Women’s Studies in Communication, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels, and Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies. I am also the co-editor of three collections, including The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery, and Instant Access, which received a Korean translation in 2019.
I teach courses on Hollywood, digital media, and journalism. I’m also an active community educator. During my time at Bradley, I taught media courses in Bradley’s Osher Lifelong Learning program and led media literacy sessions in partnership with the Peoria Public Library and Chillicothe Public Library.
I write the newsletter TV Plus, which you can subscribe to you via Substack.
I’ve worked as a freelance culture writer since 2010 with bylines in TV Guide, Complex, and Vox, among others. I also produced and co-hosted TV.com/CBS Interactive’s Totally Tubular podcast.
You can email me at barkerc65 [at] gmail [dot] com.
CB, PhD 