Research and Teaching Interests:

Dr. Erin Meyers holds a master’s degree in women’s studies with a focus on gender representation in popular media from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She teaches a range of communication courses focusing on the relationship between media and culture. As a researcher, she explores how the rise of digital or “new” media technologies, most notably the Internet, has shifted everyday engagements with media and, in turn, ruptured traditional understandings of interplay between media texts, the cultural institutions that create and distribute these texts, and the audiences who engage with them. Her academic work foregrounds the interplay between social, political, economic and technological influences in order to explore and understand these contemporary shifts in media culture.

Dr. Meyers’ work appears in The Journal of Popular Culture, Celebrity Studies, InMediaRes, New Media & Society and in the Blackwell anthology, The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media. In April 2013, Dr. Meyers published her first book, Dishing Dirt in the Digital Age: Celebrity Gossip Blogs and Participatory Culture. The book explores the rise of celebrity gossip blogs in the mid-2000s and their impact on celebrity media and culture. Examining six popular American gossip blogs--including Perez Hilton, Pink is the New Blog and Jezebel--at a peak moment of influence, the book explores how technological affordances of new media enable the merging of the social practice of gossip with the practice of reading, creating an evolving participatory and community-based media culture that continues to transform celebrity culture in the digital age. Articles about Dr. Meyers' book and ongoing research have been featured on Oakland University's News at OU page and The Oakland Post.

Upcoming Courses: