Assistant Professor of Cinema & Media Arts

My research focuses on digital communication in and around contemporary social movements. I am fascinated by the intersections between media, technology, and politics. I am especially interested in how people use new and emerging documentary practices in attempts to transform power relations and fight for equality.

In my teaching, I strive to keep an inquisitive spirit at the forefront of everything I do. I want to create opportunities for my students to experience wonder, to find lines of inquiry that feel genuinely meaningful to them, and to discover ways of actively engaging with society rather than passively accepting the world as they have inherited it. My students pose questions that matter, and they are empowered not only to find answers to those questions but to develop creative interventions based on what they are learning. If my students take nothing else away from my courses, I want them to develop the desire, confidence, and skills necessary to take charge of their learning and see themselves as lifelong learners.

Selected Publications

• Buel, Jason. “The Mediated Adventures of EggBoy: Direct Action, Street Art, and Memes as Anti-Fascist Praxis.” ImageTexT 13.3 (forthcoming).
• Buel, Jason. “Automated Visions, Algorithmic Imageflows: The Technopolitics of Black Lives Matter Videos on YouTube.” MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory 3.1 (April 2022).
• Buel, Jason and Kristi Kouchakji. “Analog No More?: Idle No More as Digital Nation.” InsUrgent Media from the Front: A Media Activism Reader. Ed. Chris Robé and Stephen Charbonneau. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020.
• Buel, Jason and Kristi Kouchakji. “He Did Nazi That Coming: Remix, Resistance, and Richard Spencer’s Face.” Resist and Persist: Essays on Social Revolution in 21st Century Narratives. Ed. Leisa Clark and Amanda Firestone. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2020.
• Buel, Jason. “Assembling the Living Archive: A Media-Archaeological Excavation of Occupy Wall Street.” Public Culture 30.2 (May 2018): 283–303.
• Buel, Jason. “Playing (With) The Western: Classical Hollywood Genres in Modern Video Games.” Game On, Hollywood! Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema. Ed. Joseph Michael Sommers and Gretchen Papazian. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013.

Selected Conference Presentations

• Buel, Jason. “Counter-Confederate Culture Jamming: Radical Recontextualization as Anti-Racist Work.” Annual Convention of the National Communication Association. Baltimore, MD, November 13–17, 2019.
• Buel, Jason. “Power to the Algorithms? The Black Lives Matter Movement on YouTube.” Annual Convention of the National Communication Association. Baltimore, MD, November 13–17, 2019.
• Buel, Jason. “How Dank Was My Meme Stash?: Sequential Art, Social Justice, and Internet Memes.” Graphic Justice Discussions. Brooklyn, NY, October 20, 2018.
• Buel, Jason. “This is What Documentary Looks Like: Digital Docmedia and the Archive.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference. Toronto, Ontario, March 14–18, 2018.
• Buel, Jason. “Opacity and Visibility in Contemporary Digital Activism.” Annual Convention of the National Communication Association. Philadelphia, PA, November 10–13, 2016.
• Buel, Jason and Kristi Kouchakji. “#citizenship: Idle No More and Digital Nationhood.” Visible Evidence XXIII. Bozeman, MT, August 11–14, 2016.
• Buel, Jason. “Mere Footage into Argument: #BlackLivesMatter and Algorithmic Montage.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, March 30–April 3, 2016.
• Buel, Jason. “Pictures at a Revolution: Babylon ‘13’s Witnessing and Co-Creation of a New Political Imaginary for Ukraine.” Visible Evidence XXII. Toronto, Ontario, August 19–22, 2015.
• Buel, Jason. “Imag(in)ing Black Lives Matter: Representations of Resistance in Web Videos.” International Association of Media and Communication Research Conference. Montréal, QC, July 12–16, 2015.
• Buel, Jason. “A Kinder, Gentler Patriarchy: (Re)mediated Spaces and the (Re)construction of Inequality in Contemporary Social Movements.” Console-ing Passions International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media and Feminism. Dublin, Ireland, June 18–20, 2015.
• Buel, Jason. “Dear Subscriber: You Are Registered as a Participant in a Mass Disturbance.” International Communication Association, Ethnicity and Race in Communication Pre-Conference. Seattle, WA, May 22, 2014.
• Buel, Jason. “Globalizing Protest: Scales of Resistance in Ukraine’s Maidan Movement.” Rethinking Globalization and the Question of Scale: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences. Raleigh, NC, April 24–26, 2014.

How long have you been at NCWU?
Since 2017

What's your favorite class that you teach?
Documentary and Social Change

What are your research & teaching interests?
Communication in social movements, film and new media

What is a fun fact or an interesting hobby of yours?
I play the drums. 🙂