A little about me
I am a communication scholar, educator, and public intellectual whose work examines the constitutive relationship between communication, institutions, and democratic public life. My research explores how communication systems and practices both emerge from and shape the cultural, institutional, and normative contexts in which they operate, with particular attention to how different traditions and logics encounter one another through public discourse. Across this work, I examine how communication mediates the tensions between continuity and change and how these processes shape media systems, the public sphere, and democratic life in an increasingly interconnected world.
The centerpiece of my research agenda is my theoretical contribution of New Dualism, published in Communication Theory. This theory advances communication theory by offering a framework for studying how social or cultural institutions such as Liberalism and Ubuntu with seemingly contradictory logics can coherently constitute a functional media system. This theory and the broader research agenda around it offers a new account of institutional change in pluralistic societies.and contributes to broader conversations in communication theory, comparative media systems, journalism studies, and democratic governance. While many of my current projects draw insights from African liberal democracies, my broader goal is to develop concepts and explanations that travel across societies and help illuminate communication phenomena in a global context.
Beyond research, I am deeply committed to teaching, mentorship, and public engagement. I view scholarship not only as a process of understanding the world but also as an opportunity to contribute to more informed, responsive, and democratic societies.
The interconnected questions that my research asks include but are not limited to:
1. How do media systems evolve?
I conduct research that examines how competing institutional traditions interact to shape media systems over time. My work challenges assumptions that media systems rest upon singular cultural foundations and instead examines how pluralism, conflict, accommodation , and institutional change influence communication structures.
2. How do societies define the role of journalism?
I investigate how different democratic societies understand the normative responsibilities of the press, including questions of accountability, public service, community, and democratic governance. This work examines how these understandings are communicated, negotiated, and institutionalized within particular cultural and political contexts.
3. How does communication shape institutional change?
My research explores how public discourse, media power, and emerging communication technologies influence broader processes of social and institutional transformation. At the core of this agenda is a constitutive relationship between communication and social systems: communication is shaped by the institutional, cultural, and normative contexts in which it occurs, while social systems are themselves constituted and transformed through communication. Drawing on Discursive Institutionalism, I examine how communicative practices and discourses reproduce, negotiate, contest, and transform institutional norms, meanings, and relations of power.