Hello! I study the political implications of technology.

I am currently an assistant teaching professor in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. I teach cybersecurity politics courses and supervise student research through our Cybersecurity Initiative and Global Research Groups. In 2019 and 2023, I won the JSIS Student Service Award.

My research focuses on the ways in which technology structures and shapes interactions between ordinary people trying to make sense of their world. Presently, I focus on two major areas: (1) the political implications of interaction in online communities and (2) the politics of cybersecurity. My current projects include:

• A collaborative, interdisciplinary project that is NSF-sponsored and focused on the cybersecurity risks that disciplinary silos and organizational communication issues create.
• A collaborative NSF-sponsored project meant to understand sentiment in response to COVID-19 information on Twitter in Louisiana and Washington.
• A project to understand the types of policy-significant information that spreads in informal online spaces, particularly parenting groups.

My work has included research that explores political mobilization emerging from highly populated online communities and focuses on actors such as Anonymous and other hacktivists, the Pirate Parties, and digital pirates. I wrote a book called Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization. Expect Us is published by Oxford University Press in the Digital Politics series. The book is based on my dissertation, which won an award in 2012 from the Association of Internet Researchers. I have a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Washington.

Feel free to contact me at jlbeyer [at] gmail dot com. You can also find me on Twitter @jlbeyer.