Biography
Writing moves and circulates in our world. With the ubiquity of digital mediation, audiences are now inherently participatory. As a consequence, what writers do after they publish matters as much as what they do before they publish. This circulation, and how it shapes writing processes, is what I study.
For example, academic researchers often use social media to promote their publications. Knowing that their work will appear on social media has an observable effect on what they will write and how they frame their research.
My research consequently reframes social media users, engineers, and scientists as writers, thereby stressing the composing practices of these contexts. This perspective also allows me to apply writing theory to digital artifacts and computational processes. To study circulation in this way, I typically combine qualitative research (interviewing, observations) with quantitative audience metrics and statistics.
Research Interests
I study ways writers contend with participatory audiences in the context networked technologies (e.g., social media). I specialize in qualitative research methods; in particular, case study methodologies. I also draw on quantitative methods, such as web-scraping and computational analysis, to study online comments and participatory audiences. I have recently begun exploring machine learning, including using it as a method to study social media writing as well as studying how scientists and researchers communicate about machine learning.
Courses Taught
- BTW 250
- BTW 490
- ENGL 582
- ENGL 380
- ENGL 482
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, English
Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Gallagher, J. R. (2020). Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing. Utah State University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvvh85pr
Gallagher, J. R., & DeVoss, D. N. (Eds.) (2019). Explanation Points: Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. Utah State University Press.
Recent Publications
Gallagher, J. R., & Hernandez, A. P. (2025). Algorithmic Anthropomorphizing, Platform Gossip, and Backlashes: Aspirational Content Creators’ Narratives About YouTube’s Algorithm on Reddit. Social Media and Society, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251331761
Gallagher, J. R., Avgoustopoulos, R. E., Hamilton, A., & Seilkhanova, T. (2025). The challenges and writing practices of communicating artificial intelligence and machine learning in an era of hype. AI & Society, 40(4), 2895-2908. Article 100041. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-02049-0
Gallagher, J. R., Wagner, K., & Canzonetta, J. (2025). When collaborating turns into dishonesty: A data-driven heuristic comparing human and AI collaborators. Computers and Composition. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2025.102947
Zhou, D., Gallagher, J. R., & Sterman, S. (2025). Thoughtful, Confused, or Untrustworthy: How Text Presentation Influences Perceptions of AI Writing Tools. In Creativity and Cognition 2025 https://doi.org/10.1145/3698061.3726907
Gallagher, J. R. (2024). Case Study Research in the Digital Age. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003402169