About
Dr. William Merrin is an Associate Professor in Media Studies with specialisms in media theory, media studies, digital media and culture, digital warfare, media history and media law. He has been in the department since 2004, having previously taught media and popular culture at Leeds Beckett University.
William’s research interests are varied. His early work was on the media theory of the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, which resulted in numerous articles, conference papers, the 2005 book Baudrillard and the Media, a conference on Baudrillard’s work in Swansea in 2006 and the 2008 edited book Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories. William is on the editorial board of The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies and continues to write upon his work.
Following this work on Baudrillard’s media theory, William’s research turned to issues around digital media. As well as researching political and cultural issues around digital technologies, William began to reflect on their impact on education and on the discipline itself. From 2006 he began to argue for the need to transform the discipline for the digital age – for the need for a “Media Studies 2.0.’ He argued that a discipline rooted in and reflecting the broadcast-era and its concepts and categories was no longer adequate and that the discipline should embrace the study of digital technologies and rethink how and what they taught. Most famously, this resulted in several articles, conference papers and the 2014 book Media Studies 2.0.
William’s research also considers the relationship between digital technology and conflict. His first ever publication, in 1994, was on The 1991 Gulf War and William has continued to teach about media and warfare in his module ‘Digital War.’ This led to the 2018 book Digital War and the resulting Journal of Digital War which he co-founded with Prof. Andrew Hoskins at Glasgow University. Together, these have helped develop a new interdisciplinary field considering issues such as the role of social media and smartphones in war, citizen reporting and user-generated content from the battlefield, cyberwar, drone warfare, artificial intelligence, robotics, Open Source intelligence, augmented reality and technologies, information warfare and troll-war. William continues to explore contemporary developments in digital war through the journal and in invited papers and articles.