Headshot of Dr.Ben Pettis

Dr. Ben Pettis

Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Communication Studies
Curriculum Vitae

  • Profile

    Ben Pettis is a scholar of platform and software studies, focusing on contemporary internet culture and the socio-technical factors that shape its circulation. His work seeks to establish histories of the internet that center non-dominant communities and focus on individuals’ everyday online experiences. He develops methods for studying and preserving various forms of online content and use digital tools to understand and critique how the internet becomes situated within day-to-day life.

    Ben’s coding experience provides opportunities for attending to the issues of his research in the context of real-world projects and he has developed and contributed to numerous online projects, including the Media History Digital Library, PodcastRE, and an archive of Twitter’s Birdwatch fact-checking program. Through digital projects like these, Ben examines alternative technological imaginaries and ways of building online systems for sharing and organizing information in more equitable ways.

    Ben received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A. from Colorado State University, and B.A. from the University of Oregon. His work has appeared in journals such as Internet Histories, the International Journal of Communication, and Convergence.

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    • Grants and Fellowships

      Loves, Links, Archives: Saving and Sharing the Wendy Clarke Tape Collection. $298,292 NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Implementation Grant (Co-Author). 

    • Presentations

      Pettis, Ben T. “Platforms, Websites, and Apps: User Expectations of Types of Online Spaces.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference. Chicago, IL. April 2025.

      Pettis, Ben T. “'fuck /u/spez' - The Reddit Blackout as User Protest Under Digital Feudalism.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference. Boston, MA. March 2024.

      Pettis, Ben T. “Who Watches the Birdwatchers? Creating a Rogue Archive of Twitter's Ongoing Collapse.” Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference. Philadelphia, PA. October 2023.

      Pettis, Ben T. “HTTP 451 - Unavailable for Legal Reasons: A Full Stack Analysis of Online Geoblocking.” International Communication Association Conference. Toronto, ON. May 2023. 

      Pettis, Ben T. “[‘dateStart’], [‘dateString’], and dateKludge(): A Critical Code Studies Analysis of the Media History Digital Library.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference. Denver, CO. April 2023. 

      Pettis, Ben T. “Know Your Meme and the Homogenization of Web History.” Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference. Online. October 2021. 

      Pettis, Ben T. “Finstas, Young Adults, and Stardom: The Construction and Presentation of Identities on Instagram.” National Communication Association Annual Convention. Baltimore, MA. November 2019.

    • Memberships

      Association of Internet Researchers Society for Cinema and Media Studies International Communication Association

  • Publications
    Journal Articles

    Pettis, Ben T. “The Inherent Vice of Internet Memes: The Double Bind of Recognition and the Aesthetic of Haste.” International Journal of Communication 18 (July 14, 2024). https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/21356.

    Pettis, Ben T. “reCAPTCHA Challenges and the Production of the Ideal Web User.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 29, no. 24 (December 13, 2022): 886–900. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221145449.

    Pettis, Ben T. “Know Your Meme and the Homogenization of Web History.” Internet Histories 6, no. 3 (August 19, 2021): 263–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2021.1968657.
    Book Chapters

    Hoyt, Eric, Ben Pettis, Lesley Stevenson, and Sam Hansen. “Searching for Similarity: Computational Analysis and the US Film Industry Trade Press of the Early 1920s.” In Global Movie Magazine Networks, edited by Eric Hoyt and Kelley Conway, 330. Univ of California Press, 2025. https://luminosoa.org/site/chapters/10.1525/luminos.212.t/download/8177/.

    Reviews

    Pettis, Ben T. “WhatsApp: From a One-to-One Messaging App to a Global Communication Platform: By Amelia Johns, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, and Emma Baulch. Polity Press, 2024. ISBN 9781509550524.” Internet Histories 8, no. 4 (October 1, 2024): 340–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2024.2380637.

    Pettis, Ben T. “The New Laws of Love: Online Dating and the Privatization of Intimacy: By Marie Bergström, Medford: Polity Press, 2022. ISBN 9781509543526.” Internet Histories 6 no. 4 (May 11, 2022): 473-476. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2022.2075156.

    Pettis, Ben T. “The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism: By Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias, Stanford University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781503603660.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 37 no. 2 (February 2, 2020): 204-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2020.1718835.
  • Links
    Personal Website