Research Areas

Global media, media and the environment, ethnographic method, documentary media, and Latin American media and cultural theory

Biography

Patrick D. Murphy (Ph.D., Ohio University) is the Verizon Chair in Global Broadband and Telecommunication and Professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production in the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University.  His research interests include global communication, environmental communication, ethnographic method, and Latin American media and cultural theory. He is author of The Media Commons: Globalization and Environmental Discourses (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2017), and is co-editor of Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformation in Emerging Democracies (SUNY, 2007) and Global Media Studies (Routledge, 2003), and his work has appeared in numerous journals and chapters in edited books. He has also translated into English articles by some of Latin America’s most prominent communication scholars. Past positions include Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Temple Rome (2022-2024), Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the Klein College (2013-2022), Chair of the Department of Media Studies and Production in the Klein College (2009-2012), and Chair of the Department of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (2003-2009). He has also served as a visiting professor at ITESM-Querétaro (Mexico), was a Global Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University Qatar, a Fulbright-Garcia Robles fellow in Mexico, and a delegate for the American Documentary Showcase series in Latin America. He sits on the advisory boards of the Centre for Climate & Society, Dublin City University and the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC), Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and is a founding member of the Global Fusion Consortium. At Temple he is affiliated with the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT), the Center for Sustainable Communities, the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Arts & Ethnographic Research, Latin American Studies, and served on editorial board of Temple University Press.

Education

Publications

Books

Murphy, P. (2017). The Media Commons: Globalization and Environmental Discourses. Champaign: University of Illinois Press (Winner:  International Communication Association, Global Communication and Social Change Division’s Best Book Award, 2018)

Blankson, I. & Murphy, P. (Eds.) (2007). Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformation in Emerging Democracies. Albany: SUNY Press

Murphy, P. & Kraidy, M. (Eds.) (2003). Global Media Studies: Ethnographic Perspectives. London: Routledge

Guest Editor of Special Issue Journals

Murphy, P. (Guest Editor) (2015). Media, human rights and social justice, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 13(2)

Murphy, P. & Rodriguez, C. (Guest Editors) (2006). Communication and culture in Latin America, Global Media and Communication, 2(3)

Murphy, P. (Guest Editor) (2002, Fall). Global Media Journal, electronic publication, http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/index.htm

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Murphy, P. (2021). Speaking for the youth, speaking for the planet: Greta Thunberg and the representational politics of eco-celebrity, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2021.1913493

Tinga, T., Murphy, P. & Sessou, E. S. (2020). ICTs, environmental activism and community mobilization in sub-Saharan Africa. In J. Diaz-Pont, P. Maeseele, A. E. Sjolander, M. Mishra & K. Foxwell-Norton (eds.), The local and the digital in environmental communication. IAMCR/Palgrave

Murphy, P. & Tinga, T. M. (2019). Communication for development and social change and the challenge of climate change. International Journal of Communication 13, 1-18

Murphy, P. (2018). Lessons from the zombie apocalypse in global popular culture: An environmental discourse approach to the walking dead. Environmental Communication, 12(1), 44-57

Shaw, A., Sender, K. & Murphy, P. (2018). Critical audience studies. In Oxford research encyclopedia of communication and critical cultural studies. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.619

Murphy, P. & Rodríguez, C. (2018). Voices in the garden: Designing social change at the intersection of green radicalism and participatory media. In B. Takahashi & S. Rosenthal (Eds.), Environmental communication among minority populations (pp. 38-56). London & New York: Routledge

Murphy, P. (2015). Voice, visibility, and recognition: Vertical and horizontal trajectories of human rights and social justice media, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture. 13(2), 101-104

Murphy, P. (2013). The abbreviated field experience in audience ethnography. In A. N. Valdivia (Gen. Ed.) & R. Parameswaran (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of media studies. Vol. 3: Audience and interpretation in media studies (pp. 105-122). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Murphy, P. (2013). Resuscitating ‘resistance’ in the age of global climate change: Media, culture and environmental discourse in Latin America.  In M. Kraidy (Ed.), Orders and borders: Communication and power in the global era (pp. 150-165). London: Routledge

Murphy, P. (2011). Putting the Earth into global media studies, Communication Theory, 21, 217-238 

Murphy, P. (2011). Locating media ethnography. In V. Nightingale (Ed.). Handbook of media audiences (pp. 380-401). New York: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Limited

Murphy, P. (2008). Writing media culture: Representation and experience in media ethnography. Communication, Culture & Critique, 1, 267-285

Kraidy, M. & Murphy, P. (2008). Shifting Geertz: Towards a theory of translocalism in global communication studies. Communication Theory, 18, 335-355 

Murphy, P. & Rodriguez, C. (2006). Between Macondo and McWorld: Communication and culture studies in Latin America, Global Media and Communication, 2(3), 267-277 

Murphy, P. (2005). Fielding the study of reception: Notes on “negotiation” for global media studies,Popular Communication, 3(3), 167-180

Murphy, P. & Kraidy, M. (2003). International communication, ethnography, and the challenge of globalization, Communication Theory, 13(3): 304-323 

Murphy, P. (2002). The anthropologist's son (living and learning the field), Qualitative Inquiry, 8(3), 246-261

Murphy, P. (1999). Media cultural studies' uncomfortable embrace of ethnography, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 23(3), 205-221 

Murphy, P. (1999). Doing audience ethnography: A narrative account of establishing ethnographic identity and locating interpretive communities in field work, Qualitative Inquiry, 5(4), 479-502 

Murphy, P. (1997). Contrasting perspectives: Cultural studies in Latin America and the U.S., a conversation with Néstor García Canclini, Cultural Studies, 11(1), 78-88

Rodríguez, C. & Murphy, P. (1997). The study of communication and culture in Latin America: From laggards and the oppressed to resistance and hybrid cultures, The Journal of International Communication, 4(2), 24-45 

Murphy, P. (1995). Television and cultural politics in Mexico: Some notes on Televisa, the state and transnational culture, Howard Journal of Communications, VI (4), 250-261 

Translations

Martín-Barbero, J. (2006).  A Latin American perspective on communication/cultural mediation. Global Media and Communication, 2(3), 279-298 (Trans. by E. C. Montaña, P. D. Murphy & C. Rodríguez)

Alfaro, R. M. (2006). Citizens and media cultures: Hidden behind democratic formality, Global Media and Communication, 2(3), 299-313 (Trans. by E. C. Montaña, P. D. Murphy & C. Rodríguez)