Peters, Benjamin, Prof., Ph.D.

A01 Mercator Fellow

The University of Tulsa

Faculty of Media Studies

131 Oliphant Hall

800 S Tucker Dr.

Tulsa OK 74104

Benjamin Peters, PhD is the Hazel Rogers Associate Professor and Chair of Media Studies at the University of Tulsa, affiliated fellow at the Information Society Project of Yale Law School, and Mercatur Fellow at the University of Siegen. He publishes research in new media history, the history and philosophy of information technology and sciences, and digital technology criticism, with a special focus on the Soviet century. His first book How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (MITP 2016) won three awards in three fields. He has also edited or coedited Your Computer is on Fire (MITP 2021) and Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society & Culture (Princeton UP 2016) as well as special issues on data ethics, farm media, and media theory. He is currently at work on book projects on the Soviet prehistory to artificial intelligence and, with Marijeta Bozovic (Yale Slavic), Russian hackers https://hackersinitiative.yale.edu. More can be found at https://benjaminpeters.org.

    • Media scholarship
    • Media theory and philosophy
    • New media history
    • Critical information studies
    • Comparative media studies
    • Technology criticism

Books (selection)

  • (Under contract.) Bozovic, Marijeta and Benjamin Peters. (Tentative title) Imagining Russian Hackers: Myths of Men and Machines. The University of Chicago Press.
    For more see, hackersinitiative.yale.edu.
  • Peters, Benjamin. How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. Cambridge: The MIT Press, May 2016.

Edited Volumes (selection)

  • Mullaney, Thomas, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip, eds. Your Computer is on Fire. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, March 2021.
  • Peters, Benjamin, ed. Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, July 2016.

Special Issues & Sections (selection)

  • Zenia Kish & Benjamin Peters, eds. “Farm Media,” special issue, New Media & Society. Volume 25/Issue 8, August 2023.
  • Shilina, Marina, Robert Couch, & Benjamin Peters, eds. 2017. “The Data Turn & Ethics,” special issue in Russian Journal of Communication. Volume 9, Issue 3, 2017.
  • Peters, Benjamin and John Durham Peters, eds. 2017. “Mormonism as Media,” Mormon Studies Review. Volume 5, 2017.

Articles (selection since 2020)

  • Peters, Benjamin. “Why Digital Media History.” Forum: Journal of Communication. 2024.
  • Hocquet, Alexandre, Frédéric Wieber, Gramelsberger Gabrielle, Benjamin Peters, et al. 2024. “Software in science is ubiquitous yet overlooked.” Nature Computational Sciences (2024).
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2023. “Afterword: Medium America and the Grounds for the Transnational History of Farm Media.” New Media & Society. July 2023.
  • Marijeta Bozovic and Benjamin Peters. 2022. “Belarus as Media, Part II: Enter the Cyber Partisans.” Slavic Review: 81, 1, 2022, p. 207-208.
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2022. “Russian Media Theory: Is There Any? Should There Be? How about These?” Media Theory: 5, 2, 2021, p. 223-246.
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “The Main Event: The Media Circus of Protasevich’s Televised Confessions.” Slavic Review.
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2020. “Where in the World is Russian Media Theory?” Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian, and Central European New Media. 20: 2020, pp. 17-30.
  • Bozovic, Marijeta and Benjamin Peters. 2020. “Russian hacker” in Gabriella Coleman, Christopher Kelty, and Paula Bialski’s online collective HackerCur.io.

Chapters (selection since 2020)

  • Peters, Benjamin. 2024. “Afterword: Meaning that Matters” in Collaborative Research in a Datafied Society, University of Amsterdam Press, 2024.
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2024. “Computing” in An Alphabetical History of Post-Colonial Planning, Fordham University Press, 2024.
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “McLuhan” in Medium McLuhan, edited by Peter Bexte and Martina Leeker. Meson Press, 2021.
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “A Network is Not a Network” in Your Computer is on Fire, Thomas Mullaney, Marie Hicks, Benjamin Peters, Kavita Philip, eds. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2021.
  • Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “Afterword: How Do We Live Now? In the Aftermath of Ourselves” in Mullaney, Thomas, Marie Hicks, Benjamin Peters, Kavita Philip, Your Computer is on Fire, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2021.