Meghan Grosse is a critical media scholar whose work focuses on media history, new media, and the continuities between them. Meghan’s research concentrates on the intersection of new media, media history, and critical media theory.
Meghan holds a B.A. from Lake Forest College in Communication and Politics, an M.A. in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her undergraduate thesis, "National Public Radio's Great Leap Forward: Space, Power, and Audience in NPR's Move Online" focused on concerns for localism and shifting perceptions of public interest in a new media landscape. Her Master’s thesis, "Maturing or Dying?: Historicizing Contemporary Radio and Online Audio Delivery" emphasized the degree to which new media are extensions of rather than replacements to old media, existing in an interconnected landscape of communication activity. Her Ph.D. dissertation, “Governing the Commercial Internet: Multistakeholder Influences on Clinton Era Governance of the Global Internet“ examined the history of the 1990s internet, the Clinton administration policies that defined internet governance of that era, and the ways in which this policy was exported and understood internationally.
She continues to expand on this research, focusing on the contemporary concerns that stem from this era of internet history. At the same time, she has expanded into new work on independent media, civic engagement, digital pedagogy, and critical media literacy. At the center of all of this work is a commitment to critically assessing communication systems, considering their relationships to democratic practices, and to imagining new ways to engage these systems to better serve a broad public.