Allissa V. Richardson

Allissa V. Richardson is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School. She researches how African Americans use mobile and social media to produce innovative forms of journalism—especially in times of crisis. Richardson is the author of Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism (Oxford University Press, 2020), which explores the lives of 15 mobile journalist-activists who documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only their smartphones and Twitter, from 2014 to 2018. Her research has been published in Journal of Communication, Digital Journalism, Journalism Studies, The Black Scholar and many other venues. She has lectured to diverse and wide-ranging audiences around the world—from SXSW to SnapChat, Microsoft, and the NFL. Her expertise in mobile media activism has made her a frequent commentator for news outlets such as ABC, BBC, CBC, Columbia Journalism Review, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, NPR, Teen Vogue, and Vox. Richardson is also a sought-after educational technology consultant who has designed courses for Google, YouTube, and PBS.