Professor of Political Science • California Lutheran University
Investigating how algorithms and computational infrastructure restructure democracy, social contracts, and political power. Author of "You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem" (Bristol University Press, 2025) and forthcoming "Machine Liberalism" (Intellect / Univ. of Chicago Press, 2027).
Algorithmic Power and Democratic Expectations
Intellect Books / University of Chicago Press
Investigating how pervasive AI systems, predictive analytics, and platform monopolies are fundamentally redefining liberal democratic expectations of citizenship, the state, and procedural justice.
The Social Contract of Computational Systems
Bristol University Press
Interrogating the implicit covenants citizens make with algorithmic systems. Explores how optimization logic suppresses human contingency, and argues for civic agency through intentional friction.
The Architecture of Disclosure and the Threat to Public Life
Routledge (Politics and Technology Series)
A seminal critique examining how Web 2.0 social architectures privatize public discourse, encourage performative consensus, and enclose democratic deliberation in algorithmic filter channels.
Selected scholarly articles investigating algorithmic power, the social contract of predictive systems, computational text methods, and the restructuring of democratic public spheres.
Applying Jacques Ellul's critique of technical determinism to modern autonomous models, evaluating how predictive algorithmic certainty forecloses civic deliberation, moral humility, and democratic contingency.
Reconceptualizing digital rights through Henri Lefebvre's spatial theory, arguing that individual privacy frameworks fail against planetary compute and advocating for collective democratic rights to inhabit and govern computational infrastructure.
With Don Waisanen and Carrie Anne Platt. Examining consistency in political discourse across offline and online environments, measuring how platform affordances and perceived surveillance induce expressive polarization or defensive silence.
With Andy Pattison, Christopher Cherniakov, and William Cipoli. Deploying machine learning classifiers and natural language processing to extract advocacy coalition frameworks and causal policy narratives from large-scale social media text corpora.
With Richard Neve and Brian Collins. Theorizing how commercial engagement algorithms undermine agonistic pluralism by amplifying moral outrage, and formulating algorithmic obligations to protect democratic public spheres.
Public-facing essays, podcast discussions, and media commentary translating theoretical critiques of algorithmic governance, data extraction, and artificial intelligence into public debate.
Discussion on the Tech Policy Press podcast examining the unspoken algorithmic contract, surveillance predictability, and cultivating intentional friction to preserve democratic agency.
↗In-depth conversation with Dr. Mél Hogan on surveillance capitalism, automated classification, and why human unpredictability is a vital political virtue in computational societies.
↗Exploring how algorithmic feed design and cognitive optimization reconfigure democratic deliberation, voter epistemic horizons, and public space.
↗Book excerpt published in Stanford Social Innovation Review evaluating how predictive classification suppresses civic agency, and proposing pathways for collective renegotiation.
↗Analyzing why individualized consumer consent mechanisms fail against platform monopolies, calling for statutory rights to contest algorithmic decisions.
↗Published in (London) Times Higher Education: A pedagogical framework for disrupting algorithmic complacency in the classroom to develop critical human discernment.
↗Professor of Political Science
California Lutheran University (2004–Present)
Chair, Department of Political Science • Convener, Technology and Society Working Group • Thousand Oaks, California.
Ph.D. in Political Science
University of Colorado-Boulder
M.A. in Political Science, Florida Atlantic University • B.A. in English/Communication, Florida State University
Algorithms, AI & Political Behavior
Computational Politics • Platform Governance
Investigating the structural effects of algorithmic systems, automated recommendation, and AI on civic participation, voter behavior, and democratic discourse.