Frank Russell, Ph.D., is an associate professor of journalism in the Department of Communications. His research focuses on journalism’s institutional- and organizational-level relationships with Silicon Valley social media platform firms. He teaches classes including Digital News Reporting and Writing, Principles and History of American Mass Communications, Editing and Design, and News Literacy.

Previously, he was a Knight visiting editor and assistant professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He earned a Ph.D. in journalism and a Center for the Digital Globe graduate certificate from the University of Missouri. He earned a master’s degree in mass communication and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from San José State University.

He has worked as a manager, editor, writer and page designer for newspapers on the West Coast. From 2001 to 2011, he was an online editor and writer, chief of copy desks, deputy business copy chief, assistant business editor, and business copy editor for the San Jose Mercury News. He also was a business desk editor and freelance reporter for The Seattle Times; a copy editor and reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal; and an assistant news editor, assistant city editor, and news desk editor for the Los Angeles Daily News.

Select publications

Russell, F. M. , & Vos, T. P. (forthcoming). Journalism’s interactions with Silicon Valley platforms: Social Institutions, fields, and assemblages. In P. Ferrucci & S. A. Eldridge (eds.) The institutions changing journalism: Barbarians inside the gates. New York, NY: Routledge.

Russell, F. M. (2020). Environmental journalism. In R. D. Craig (ed.) Navigating the news: A guide to understanding journalism. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Russell, F. M. (2019). Third-party platforms. In T. P. Vos & F. Hanusch (eds.) The international encyclopedia of journalism studies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Vos, T. P., & Russell, F. M. (2019). Theorizing journalism’s institutional relationships: An elaboration of gatekeeping theory. Journalism Studies, 20(16), 2331-2448.

Jennings, F. J., & Russell, F. M. (2019). Civility, credibility, and health information: The impact of uncivil comments and source credibility on attitudes about vaccines. Public Understanding of Science, 28(4), 417-432.

Russell, F. M. (2019). The new gatekeepers: An institutional-level view of Silicon Valley and the disruption of journalism. Journalism Studies, 20(5), 631-648.

Russell, F. M. (2019). Twitter and news gatekeeping: Interactivity, reciprocity, and promotion in news organizations’ tweets. Digital Journalism, 7(1), 80-99.

Ferrucci, P., Russell, F. M. , Choi, H., Duffy, M., & Thorson, E. (2017). Times are a changin’: How a merger affects construction of news processes. Journalism Studies, 18(3), 247-264.

Russell, F. M. , Hendricks, M. A., Choi, H., & Stephens, E. C. (2015). Who sets the news agenda on Twitter?: Journalists’ posts during the 2013 U.S. government shutdown. Digital Journalism, 3(6), 925-943.

Russell, F. M. (2015). Journalists, gatekeeping, and social interaction on Twitter: Differences by beat and media type for newspapers and online news. #ISOJ Journal, 5(1), 188-207.