Profile

In 2023, I published my fourth book, Share Better and Stress Less: A Guide to Thinking Ecologically about Social Media (Candlewick Press/MITeen), for young adult readers. It draws ​​from a series of ecological metaphors–redwood root systems, land cultivation, and hurricanes–to explain how and why information pollution spreads across social media and to help readers avoid causing harm accidentally. The book also explores the relationship between stress, overwhelm, and wellness (how we’re doing) and problematic communication (what we’re sharing).

My forthcoming book (Spring 2025), The Shadow Gospel: How Anti-Liberal Demonology Possessed US Religion, Media, and Politics, is co-authored with political science and religion scholar Mark Brockway of Syracuse University. It provides a novel account of religious influence in the US and shows how the culture wars as a political framework–essentially, a secularized version of the Apocalypse, described in the book as Revelation Lite–was conjured by intensely overlapping rightwing and Evangelical media messages stemming back to the Cold War. The historical account presented in The Shadow Gospel helps contextualize contemporary events and discourses including the January 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, satanic conspiracy theorizing, and moral panics over "wokeness."