Brian Pleasants Harper

574-276-2834

bpharper@iu.edu

Brian P. Harper is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indiana University Bloomington School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering within the Computing, Culture, and Society track. He works primarily under John Paolillo and is associated with the Observatory on Social Media through the Knight Foundation.

Brian's main research interests are in the study of social media genres, primarily within the YouTube platform, using a variety of frameworks from media studies, STS (science and technology studies), and political economy. He is most interested in the formation of new genres within the economic and social systems created within social media platforms. Methodologically, he is most proficient in the use of content analysis and the close reading of media objects.

Education ___________________________________________________

2021-Anticipated Indiana University Bloomington, Ph.D.

School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering - Department of Informatics

Computing, Culture, and Society Track

Advisor: John Paolillo

2013 Indiana University Bloomington, B.A.

Major: Political Science

Minor: Economics

Certificate: Liberal Arts and Management Program (LAMP)

Publications ___________________________________________________

Mirowski, A., & Harper, B. P. (2019). Elements of Infrastructure Demand in Multiplayer Video Games. Media and Communication, 7(4), 237-246.

Paolillo, J., Ghule, S., & Harper, B. (2019, January). A network view of social media platform history: Social structure, dynamics and content on youtube. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences .

Paolillo, J., Harper, B., Boothby, C., & Axelrod, D. (2020, January). YouTube Children’s Videos: Development of a Genre under Algorithm. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences . *Best Paper Nominee

Conference Presentations

Paolillo, J. & Harper, B. (2018). A network history of YouTube. Talk presented at the 4^th International Conference on Computational Social Science, Evanston, Illinois.

Harper, B. (2018). Brand deals and patrons: alternative funding structures in science content on YouTube. Talk presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science annual conference, Sydney, Australia.

Harper, B. (2019). Value Flows and Collapse: YouTube’s Ad-pocalypse. Talk presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science annual conference, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Harper, B. (2020). The Assimilation of Atheist YouTubers into the Alt-Right. Talk presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science annual conference, Prague, Czech Republic (virtually).

teaching experience __________________________________________

Associate Instructorships

Fall 2019	I453: Computer and Information Ethics Indiana University Bloomington
Spring 2019	I400: Social Media and Language Indiana University Bloomington
Spring 2018	I495: Designing and Developing an Information System Indiana University Bloomington
Fall 2016 – Fall 2017, Fall 2018	I202: Social Informatics Indiana University Bloomington
Spring 2015	J210: Visual Communication Indiana University Bloomington

research experience __________________________________________

Research Assistant

Spring 2020 – Spring 2021

John Paolillo – Knight Foundation Grant