About Me

Dr. Reed Van Schenck is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media in the School of Business at IE University in Madrid. They received their PhD in Communication from the University of Pittsburgh.

About My Research

My research examines reactionary digital publics, cultures, and infrastructures. I am trained in the fields of rhetoric, media studies, and cultural studies. I am fascinated by how ultra-conservative, fascist, and ethno-nationalist ideas foment through Internet subcultures and the platforms that host them. Using humanistic methods like discourse analysis, online ethnography, and rhetorical criticism, I investigate the media practices that beget and encourage white supremacist, misogynistic, and antisemitic networks.

For a good sample of my research, check out “Remaking the World Memetically” in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. This paper was awarded the Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award by the National Communication Association in 2024.

I’m currently working on a book: The Reactionary Web: White Supremacist Digital Media after the Alt-Right (forthcoming December 2026, Bristol Unviersity Press). The book investigates how white supremacist networks persist on the Internet despite facing deplatforming, debanking, and deletion. I study user-generated content, platform policy, interfaces, and infrastructure to explain how the platform economy structurally favors reactionary media.

About My Pedagogy

I was born and raised in Virginia Beach, in the United States, by two public middle school teachers. Nobody else is more qualified to pass down the most important quality for effective teaching: patience. My students have praised my critical approach to pedagogy which prioritizes cultivating confidence for creative knowledge production. I believe in process-over-product which I practice through dialogic communication of course objecties and balance between activities, lecture, and discussion.

Besides classroom teaching, I possess years of pedagogical experience as a debate coach at the middle school, high school, and college levels in the United States. I was recognized as an excellent instructor in Applied Persuasion with the Teddy Albiniak Award at the University of Texas at Austin in 2022. Whether we meet in the classroom or the squad room, my students have gone on to speak at the National Eating Disorder Awareness walk and to compete at the highest levels of intercollegiate debate.

Contact Me

The best way to do so is via my work email: rvanschenck at faculty dot ie dot edu.

Another good way to do so is via my social media accounts, listed here in order of how frequently I check them: Bluesky -X - LinkedIn