The topic of information integrity has been central to Michelle Amazeen’s research since her days as a student in the Media and Communication doctoral program at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication. Her dissertation was titled Blind spots: Examining political advertising misinformation and how U.S. news media hold political actors accountable. But, an additional seed for the project that would turn into her recently published book was sown in an exchange on a listserv focused on fake news.
“I had responded to a question (…) about the effectiveness of disclosure labels, something I had been researching for several years,” Amazeen said. “Another person responded to my post, asking if this was the last thing I had to say on the topic, or whether there might be more to the story. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that person happened to be the editor for the Information Policy Series at MIT Press.”
Mulling over that exchange, Amazeen wondered if she had enough material for a book. She had published various academic pieces on the topic of information integrity and an article targeted at a more general audience about how new forms of digital advertising were raising questions about journalism integrity in The Conversation. But she felt there was still more to say. She decided to use a sabbatical leave in the spring of 2023 to develop and submit a proposal to MIT Press.
To get a handle on the quality of her writing, she took an innovative approach to the writing process by convening a panel of peers to workshop the book.
“I sent them an initial draft of the manuscript, put them up in a hotel in Boston and we spent a weekend at my lab discussing each chapter,” she explained. “I appreciated hearing what others had to say about my work. Plus, we had some fun dinners that weekend.”
Even with the luxury of a sabbatical and the help of her workshop group, Amazeen described the process of producing an academic book as “excruciatingly slow.” She found it challenging to find time to write once her one-semester sabbatical was quickly over. Her advice to first-book authors is to be prepared to spend “many, many months seeing your book through” and to not hesitate to seek help and advice from peers, editors and online or published resources, such as Manuscript Works.
She is grateful to Sandra Braman, her editor at MIT Press, for “holding her feet to the fire” and helping her deliver the best manuscript she could, and for the help of the members of her book workshop group, Arunima Krishna, Mara Einstein and Emily Vraga.
“I was so excited to have the book published,” Amazeen said. “But now there’s the anxiety as to whether anyone will actually read it and find anything in it worthwhile!”
Amazeen is now Associate Dean of Research and Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Boston University’s College of Communication, where she also directs the Communication Research Center.
She will discuss the book in a Graduate Speaker Series event on March 12, 2026, from 1–2:30 p.m. in Annenberg Hall, Room 3.