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Pawel Popiel

  1. Assistant Professor
Email Addresspawel.popiel@wsu.edu
LocationMurrow Hall 215
Website

Biography

Biography

Pawel Popiel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Production at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication.

His work examines the political economy of the media industries, including the politics of competition, speech, and data regulation across media and digital technology sectors. He leads the US team in the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project, an international research endeavor to map market concentration and ownership in the media industries across 36 countries. His research has been published in journals like the Journal of Communication, Information, Communication & Society, Policy & Internet, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Journal of Digital Media & Policy, and in edited books. He also has contributed to several policy reports, including a Murrow College study of Washington State’s news ecosystem. His co-authored report assessing challenges facing data protection regulators in the Global South, won the Future of Privacy Forum’s 2023 Privacy Papers for Policymakers award.

Currently, Popiel is a critical AI policy fellow with the Digital Society (DISC) Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University, conducting research on the contested politics of AI governance. He is also an affiliated fellow at the Media, Inequality, and Change (MIC) Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and an Affiliate at The Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Previously, he was an Opportunity Fellow at the Benton Institute, investigating federal and municipal policy initiatives to help low-income urban households maintain internet access during and after the pandemic.

He obtained his Ph.D. at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and holds a B.A. in Political Science from McGill University and an M.A. in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Education

  • Ph.D., Communication, University of Pennsylvania
  • M.A., Communication, University of Pennsylvania
  • M.A., Media Studies, University of Texas at Austin
  • B.A., Political Science, McGill University

Classes Taught

  • COM 101 – Media & Society
  • COM 102 – Public Speaking
  • COMJOUR 350 – News and Society
  • COM 420 – New Communication Technologies

Research Interests

  • Political economy of the media
  • Media industries
  • Media and democracy
  • Media and communication policy
  • Local media
  • Digital platforms
  • Privacy & surveillance
  • Media ownership
  • Communication infrastructure

Awards

  • 2023, Benton Foundation Opportunity Fellow
  • 2023, Privacy Papers for Policymakers (PPPM) Award. Future Privacy Forum (FPF)
  • 2018–2020, Media Inequality Change (MIC) Center Research Fellow
  • 2017, Consortium on Media Policy Studies (COMPASS) Fellow
  • 2016, Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute Fellow
  • 2016, Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy Fellow
  • 2015, Top Student Paper Award. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Yoo, J. Popiel, P. & Min, B. “Can Net Neutrality Coverage Maintain Value Neutrality?: Content Analysis of Television News Coverage about Net Neutrality.”
  • 2015, Top Student Paper Award. Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC). “Cease and Desist: Copyright Takedown Requests on Google Search.”

Selected Publications

  • 2024 – Popiel, P. & Vasudevan, K. Platform Frictions, Platform Power, and the Politics of Platformization. Information, Communication & Society, 1-17. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2024.2361095
  • 2024 – Popiel, P. Emerging Platform Governance: Antitrust Reform and Non-Competitive Harms in Digital Platform Markets. Information, Communication & Society. 1-17. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2023.2174791
  • 2023 – Popiel, P. The Push to Regulate Digital Markets and Services. Current History, 122(840), 15-21. doi: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.840.15
  • 2022 – Popiel, P. Digital Platforms as Policy Actors. In T. Flew & F. R. Martin (Eds.), Digital Platform Regulation (pp. 131–150). Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-95220-4_7
  • 2022 – Popiel, P. & Pickard, V. Digital Redlining and the Endless Divide: Philadelphia’s COVID-19 Digital Inclusion Efforts. International Journal of Communication, 16, 3329–3353. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/18305
  • 2022 – Popiel, P. Regulating datafication and platformization: Policy silos and tradeoffs in international platform inquiries. Policy & Internet. 1-19. doi: 10.1002/poi3.283
  • 2021 – Popiel, P. & Sang, Y. Platforms’ Governance: Analyzing Digital Platforms’ Policy Preferences. Global Perspectives. 2(1), 1-13. doi: 10.1525/gp.2021.19094
  • 2020 – Popiel, P. Addressing platform power: The politics of competition policy. Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 11(3), 341-360. doi: 10.1386/jdmp_00029_1
  • 2020 – Popiel, P. Lost in Translation? Theorizing Public Influence on Policymaking via the 2018 Net Neutrality Repeal. Critical Studies in Media Communication. doi: 10.1080/15295036.2020.1774070
  • 2018 – Popiel, P. The Tech Lobby: Tracing the Contours of New Media Elite Lobbying Power. Communication, Culture and Critique, 11(4), 566-585. doi: 10.1093/ccc/tcy027