Sensationalized Surveillance: Campus Reform and the Targeted Harassment of Faculty [post-print]

Abstract

Campus Reform is a right-wing website that hires students to write articles accusing universities and faculty members of “liberal bias.” These pieces circulate widely within the right-wing media ecosystem, where they can inspire self-deputized online vigilantes to harass faculty members and college administrators to sanction their faculty members. We argue that Campus Reform is part of a well-funded and well-organized panoptic network that engages in the sensationalized surveillance of faculty. This paper first develops our concept of sensationalized surveillance. We then offer a comprehensive institutional history of Campus Reform – demonstrating that it originates with, and continues to operate as, a conservative political technology. We then explore the details of how this surveillance apparatus functions and conclude by examining the disciplining effects Campus Reform has on faculty

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