Jonathan Obar

Jonathan A. Obar, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies. He also serves as a Research Associate with the Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law at Michigan State University, where he previously worked for four years. His teaching and research focus on information and communication policy, and the relationship between digital technologies, civil liberties and the inclusiveness of public culture. Recent academic publications address Big Data and privacy, internet routing and NSA surveillance, network neutrality, and digital activism. He is co-editor of Strategies for Media Reform: International Perspectives.

Dr. Obar has served as a Research Fellow with the public policy think tank the New America Foundation and the media reform organization Free Press, as a researcher with the Open Society Foundations, and as a Senior Advisor to the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikipedia Education Program.

Dr. Obar has a Master of Arts degree in Media Studies from Syracuse University and a PhD in Mass Communications from Penn State University.