Joshua Smicker, Ph.D.

• CHAIR, Communication Department
• Assistant Professor of Communication 

Smicker’s academic research investigates the use of digital media technologies — including video games, virtual reality, and mobile applications — to justify and expand a move towards the self-management of trauma.  His work connects the ways digital technologies are presented as enabling “post-traumatic growth” to changing representations of trauma in film and television, and to shifts in more general discourses of trauma, crisis, and “resilience.”

He has particular interest and expertise in new media, cultural studies, digital cultures, video games/gamer culture, technology and politics, and the horror genre.  His research has been presented and published in numerous national and international conferences (National Communication Association, International Communication Association, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Association for Cultural Studies, etc.) and publications (Social Identities, International Journal of Communication, Joystick Soldiers, etc.).