Journal Articles
*indicates both authors contributed equally
Blake Hallinan, CJ Reynolds, Yehonatan Kuperberg, & Omer Rothenstein. “Aspirational platform governance: How creators legitimise content moderation through accusations of bias.” Forthcoming in Internet Policy Review.
Limor Shifman, Tommaso Trillò*, Blake Hallinan*, Saki Mizoroki, Avishai Green, Rebecca Scharlach, & Paul Frosh. “The expression of values on social media: An analytical framework.” Online first in New Media & Society (2025). [link]
Xinyue Shen and Blake Hallinan. “Parasocial media: The mass production of intimacy on a Chinese pop idol mobile application.” Online first in Platforms & Society (2024). [link] [bluesky thread]
CJ Reynolds and Blake Hallinan. “User-generated accountability: Public participation in algorithmic governance on YouTube,” New Media & Society 26, no. 9 (2024). [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Blake Hallinan, CJ Reynolds, and Omer Rothenstein. “Copyright callouts and the promise of creator-driven platform governance,” Internet Policy Review 13, no. 2 (2024). [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Rebecca Scharlach and Blake Hallinan. “The value affordances of social media engagement features,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 28, no. 6 (2023): 1-11. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download] [slides]
Blake Hallinan. “No judgement: Value optimization and the reinvention of reviewing on YouTube,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 28, no. 5 (2023): 1-11. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download] [slides]
Winner of 2023 Top Faculty Paper, Philosophy, Theory, Critique Division (ICA)
Tommaso Trillò, Blake Hallinan, Avishai Green, Bumsoo Kim, Saki Mizoroki, Rebecca Scharlach, Pyunghw Park, Paul Frosh, and Limor Shifman. “‘I love this photo, I can feel their hearts!’ How users across the world evaluate social media portraiture,” Journal of Communication 73, no. 3 (2023): 235-246. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Rebecca Scharlach*, Blake Hallinan*, and Limor Shifman. “Governing principles: Articulating values in social media platform policies,” New Media & Society, online first (2023): 1-20. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Blake Hallinan, Bumsoo Kim, Saki Mizoroki, Rebecca Scharlach, Tommaso Trillò, Mike Thelwall, Elad Segev, and Limor Shifman. “The value(s) of social media rituals: A cross-cultural analysis of New Year’s resolutions,” Information, Communication, & Society 26, no. 4 (2023): 764-785. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Featured in The Wall Street Journal article “The science behind New Year’s resolutions that actually stick” by Ben Cohen
Blake Hallinan, Bumsoo Kim, Rebecca Scharlach, Tommaso Trillò, Saki Mizoroki, and Limor Shifman, “Mapping the genre imaginary of social media content,” New Media & Society 25, no. 3 (2023): 559-583. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Tommaso Trillò*, Blake Hallinan*, and Limor Shifman. “A typology of social media rituals,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 27, no. 4 (2022): 1-11. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Featured in the Psychology Today article “Is social media a new religion?” by S. Rufus
Blake Hallinan, Rebecca Scharlach, and Limor Shifman, “Beyond neutrality: Conceptualizing platform values,” Communication Theory 32, no. 2 (2022): 201-222. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Tommaso Trillò, Rebecca Scharlach, Blake Hallinan, Bumsoo Kim, Saki Mizoroki, Paul Frosh, and Limor Shifman. “What does #freedom look like? Instagram and the visual imagination of values,” Journal of Communication 71, no. 6 (2021): 875–897. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Winner of 2021 Top Faculty Paper, Visual Communication Division (ICA)
Blake Hallinan and Jed R. Brubaker, “Living with everyday evaluations on social media platforms,” International Journal of Communication 15 (2021): 1551–1569. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Blake Hallinan* and James N. Gilmore*, “Infrastructural politics amidst the coils of control,” Introduction to a special issue on Infrastructural Politics in Cultural Studies 35, no. 4-5 (2021): 617-640. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Blake Hallinan, “Civilizing infrastructure,” Cultural Studies 35, no. 4-5 (2021): 707-727. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Blake Hallinan* and CJ Reynolds*, “New media goes to the movies: Digitizing the theatrical audience,” Television & New Media 22, no. 4 (2021): 379-399. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
CJ Reynolds and Blake Hallinan, “The haunting of GeoCities and the politics of access control on the early Web,” New Media & Society 23, no. 11 (2021): 3268-3289. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Winner of 2019 Top Student Paper, Philosophy, Theory, & Critique Division (ICA)
Featured in The Atlantic article “Yahoo, the destroyer” by Kaitlyn Tiffany
Blake Hallinan, Jed R. Brubaker, and Casey Fiesler, “Unexpected expectations: Public reaction to the Facebook emotional contagion study,” New Media & Society 22, no. 6 (2020): 1076-1094. [twitter thread summary] [link] [download]
Casey Fiesler and Blake Hallinan, “‘We are the product’: Public reactions to online data sharing and privacy controversies in the media,” in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Systems (CHI), Montreal, Canada (2018): 1-13. [link] [download]
Blake Hallinan and Ted Striphas. “Recommended for you: The Netflix Prize and the Production of Algorithmic Culture,” New Media & Society 18, no. 6 (2016): 117-137. [link] [download]
Book
Laurie Gries and Blake Hallinan (eds.). Doing Digital Visual Studies: One Image, Multiple Methodologies. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press (2022). [link]
Book Chapter
Blake Hallinan. “Digging up Obama Hope: Recovering digital infrastructure with media archeology,” in Laurie Gries and Blake Hallinan (eds.), Doing Digital Visual Studies: One Image, Multiple Methodologies. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press (2022). [link]
Public Scholarship
Blake Hallinan, “The perfect tweetstorm: Tay and the cultural politics of machine learning,” in The Ethical Machine, The Shorenstein Center, edited by Dipayan Ghosh (2019). [link]
Book Reviews
Blake Hallinan, “Book review: To know is to compare: Studying social media across nations, media, and platforms,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into Media Technologies, Online first, 1-3. [link] [download]
Blake Hallinan, “The Internet of feels,” Cultural Studies 31, no. 4 (2017): 607-609. [link] [download]
Work in Progress
Algorithmic conspiracies
Creator cartels (with CJ Reynolds)
From Community Guidelines to industry standards: Mapping the policy priorities of mainstream, alternative, and adult live content platforms (with CJ Reynolds, Rebecca Scharlach, Dana Theiler, Isabell Knief, Omer Rothenstein, Yehonatan Kuperberg, and Noa Niv)