John Wihbey
Associate Professor of Media Innovation & Technology
College of Social Sciences and Humanities, College of Arts, Media and Design
John Wihbey is the author of The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World (MIT Press, 2019). An affiliate of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Ethics Institute, he is also faculty co-director of Northeastern’s Co-Laboratory for Data Impact.
His research and teaching interests include the intersection of news and social media; misinformation and media literacy; the use of data and data visualization in journalism and communications; and issues of policy relating to news and social media platforms. His writing and research has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, as well as Journalism Practice, New Media & Society, Newspaper Research Journal, Journal of the International Symposium on Online Journalism, The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, and Oxford Research Encyclopedias.
John is a faculty affiliate with the Global Resilience Institute and the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks. He is co-chair of the Computation + Journalism Symposium, to be hosted at Northeastern on March 20 &21, 2020.
Having worked in newspapers, radio, and digital media, he helped found and oversee the Journalist’s Resource project at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, where he continues to serve as a research associate. His recent research has included projects on state government financial disclosure; foundation funding of news nonprofits; and news literacy and engagement among college students. He has served on the advisory board of Project Information Literacy and has been an advisor to media and technology companies. His research has received awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ), and Kantar Information Is Beautiful.
- “High School Student Views on the First Amendment: Trends in the 21st Century” (co-author), Knight Foundation Report, November 2019
- “Net Neutrality,” Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd Edition, November 2019
- “Breaking News and Younger Twitter Users: Comparing Self-Reported Motivations to Online Behavior” (co-author), SMSociety ’19 Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Social Media and Society, July 2019
- “The Local-Mobile Paradox: Missed Innovation Opportunities at Local Newspapers” (co-author), Newspaper Research Journal, May 2019
- The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World, MIT Press, April 2019
- “Reinventing Local TV News: Innovative Storytelling Practices to Engage New Audiences” (co-author) Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, February 2019
- “Newsroom Textual Analysis and Visualization Tools Built With R Shiny,” (co-author) Computation + Journalism Symposium, February 2019
- “Credentialing Issues,” The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, May 2019
- “The Social Silos of Journalism: Twitter, News Media, and Partisan Segregation,” (co-author) New Media & Society, October 2018
- “Process of Simulating Tree Rings for Immigration in the U.S.,” (co-author) Berlin: IEEE VIS Arts Program Annotated Projects, 2018
- “How Students Engage with News,” (co-author) Project Information Literacy Research Institute, October 2018
- “Funding the News: Foundations and Nonprofit Media,” (co-author) Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, June 2018
- “Predicting News Coverage of Scientific Articles,” (co-author) Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2018
- “State-level Policies for Personal Financial Disclosure: Exploring the Potential for Public Knowledge on Conflict-of-Interest Issues,” (co-author) Law & Policy Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference, August 2017
- “Collaborative, Open, Mobile: A Thematic Exploration of Best Practices at the Forefront of Digital Journalism,” (co-author) Storybench.org Project, Northeastern University School of Journalism, May 2017
- “Knowing the Numbers: Assessing Attitudes among Journalists and Educators about Using and Interpreting Data, Statistics, and Research,” (co-author) #ISOJ — The Official Journal of the International Symposium on Online Journalism, April 2017
- “Journalists’ Use of Knowledge in an Online World: Examining Reporting Habits, Sourcing Practices and Institutional Norms,” Journalism Practice, November 2016
- “Communicating about Climate Change with Journalists and Media Producers,” (co-author) Oxford Research Encyclopedias – Climate Science, January 2016
- “The Challenges of Democratizing News and Information: Examining Data on Social Media, Viral Patterns and Digital Influence,” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, June 2014
- “Who Gets a Press Pass? Media Credentialing Practices in the United States,” (co-author) Berkman Center Research Publication, Harvard University, June 2014
- “Mobile Matters — and Publishers Must Remember That, Even When Resources Are Limited,” Poynter, June 21, 2019
- “How to Save the News Media,” The Atlantic, April 1, 2019
- “Prescription for Journalists from Journalists: Less Time Studying Twitter, More Time Studying Math,” The Conversation, May 1, 2019
- “It Is Really Hard to Know What is Real,” Nieman Reports, Oct. 16, 2018
- “200 Years of U.S. Immigration Looks Like the Rings of a Tree,” National Geographic, June 28, 2018
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Education
MS, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
MA, Middlebury College
BA, Bowdoin College -
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