Shawn Powers specializes in international political communication, with particular attention to the geopolitics of information and information technologies. His current book project focuses on how nation-states adjust to an international system increasingly governed by information-driven financial, political and media networks rather than the geographic and temporal networks of old.

Powers’ research essays have appeared in Media War & Conflict, Global Media & Communication, Ethnopolitics, Argumentation & Advocacy, Orbis and the Journal of Middle East Media and in edited volumes published by Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Peter Lang Publishing, the New Press and Routledge.

Dr. Powers co-directs the annual Annenberg-Oxford Summer Institute on Media, Policy and Law at Oxford University (UK) and the GSU study abroad program to Istanbul, Turkey titled, “Media, Journalism and Business in a Global Context.” (Click here for Course Blog)  Powers is also an occasional commentator for CNN International, the (UK) Guardian, Russia Today and National Public Radio.

Previously, Powers was appointed to a visiting assistant professorship overseeing USC Annenberg’s London Program in conjunction with a research fellowship at the London School of Economics and Political Science for the 2009-2010 academic year. He has traveled widely in the Middle East connecting to his own ethnographic and social scientific research as well as to the study of public diplomacy, and has received funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Department of State, Deutsche Welle and the USC Center for Public Diplomacy.

Powers, S. The Real CyberWar: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom (under contract at University of Illinois Press, est. publication 2014).

Powers, S. (2012) Media Diplomacy. In Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (eds. Cooper, Heine and Thakur). Oxford University Press.

Powers, S. & Youmans, W. (2012) A New Purpose for International Broadcasting: Subsidizing Deliberative Technologies in Non-transitioning States. Journal of Public Deliberation, 7:2.

Powers, S. (2012) From Broadcast to Networked Journalism: The Case of Al-Jazeera English. In Histories of Public Service Broadcasters Online (eds. Brugger, N. and Maureen Burns). Peter Lang Publishing, New York.

Powers, S. (2012). The Origins of Al Jazeera English. In Al Jazeera English (Ed. Seib). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Powers, S. (2011) U.S. International Broadcasting: An Untapped Resource for Domestic and Ethnic News Organizations. In Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done To Fix It (Eds., McChesney, R. and V. Pickard) New Press: New York.

Powers, S. (2010) Weaponised Media, Legitimacy and the Fourth Estate. Ethnopolitics, 9:2.

Powers, S. & el-Nawawy, M. (2009) Al-Jazeera English and Global News Networks: Clash of Civilizations or Cross-Cultural Dialogue? Media, War & Conflict, 2:3.

Powers, S. (2008) Examining the Danish Cartoon Affair: Mediatized Cross-cultural Tensions? Media, War & Conflict, 1, 339-359.