Shawn McIntosh

Shawn McIntosh is co-author of Converging Media: A New Introduction to Mass Communication, a textbook for undergraduate media courses in its third edition from December 2011, and was an editor and freelance writer for 10 years for various newspapers and magazines in the UK, U.S., and Japan. He is co-editor of Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, which explores the role of the zombie in Western popular culture, and has had chapters and articles published in various academic books and journals including Reading Deadwood, It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era, and Mosh the Polls: Youth Voters, Popular Culture, and Democratic Engagement.

McIntosh was co-site manager and senior producer at the educational website Fathom. While at Fathom, he developed multimedia online courses and produced features in partnership with consortium members in the U.S. and England. He was an adjunct faculty member at Iona College, where he taught online journalism, website publishing, feature writing, and information visualization, and has taught media ethics at Rutgers University where he is currently pursuing his PhD in media studies.

McIntosh taught in Latvia in November 2007 under a Fulbright Senior Specialists Award, and will be teaching in Santiago, Chile in August 2012 under the same program. His research interests include citizen journalism’s challenges to mainstream journalism, digital media ethics, and the roles and functions of strategic communications in a digital media environment. He received a B.S. in microbiology from the University of Idaho and an M.S. in journalism, with a concentration in new media, from Columbia University.

Shawn McIntosh teaches Strategic Communications: Analysis, Theory, and Ethics; Communications 3.0: Best Practices in a Networked Society, and Advanced Communications Project.

Shawn McIntosh teaches Developing a Moral Compass and Navigating the Digital Frontier for the Communications Practice program.

Shawn McIntosh on the advantages of critical thinking:
"Critical thinking and strong logical reasoning are the foundations of strategic communications. These fundamental--yet undeveloped--skills allow us to properly analyze situations, understand research results, plan communications campaigns, and make informed decisions when faced with ethical quandaries. Critical thinking peels away the layers of our media-saturated society and shows how marketing works to persuade us in all areas of life, ranging from what soap we buy to what politician we vote for."