myCSUSM
Dolber, Ph.D.
Email: bdolber@csusm.edu
Phone: (760) 750 - 8206
Office: SBSB 2205
Brian Dolber earned his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2011), with a focus in political economy, labor, media history, and media policy. He also holds a B.A. in journalism from The George Washington University (2003).
Dr. Dolber’s scholarship examines the relationships media, labor, technology, and the policymaking process in historical and contemporary contexts. His ongoing research examines the rise of the gig economy, and the ways in which platform workers are developing new models of organizing through digital technologies. His participant-action research with Rideshare Drivers United, an organization of 20,000 app-based drivers in California, has been supported by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. He has been quoted in a wide range of media outlets, including the Guardian, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation, and Jacobin. He has also written articles for publications such as Labor Notes, Project Censored, and Jewish Currents.
Dr. Dolber’s forthcoming book, Start Me Up: Rideshare Drivers United’s Struggle for Worker Democracy in the Shadow of Silicon Valley is under contract with University of Illinois Press. It examines how workers are self-organizing in the so-called gig economy. Drawing on his years as an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United (RDU), an emerging labor organization of Uber and Lyft drivers based in Los Angeles, Dolber demonstrates how gig workers are harnessing changes in technology and media to challenge the most exploitative labor practices under late neoliberalism, creating new possibilities for unions to revive themselves in the 21st century. Charting RDU’s rise, from a small group of drivers at the LAX rideshare lot to a statewide organization with allies all over the world, Start Me Up shows how workers can fight and what unions must do to win in the 21st century.
Dr. Dolber is the co-editor of The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence (Routledge, 2021) and author of Media and Culture in the U.S. Jewish Labor Movement: Sweating for Democracy in the Interwar Era (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His essays have appeared in numerous journals including South Atlantic Quarterly, International Journal of Communication, and tripleC: Communication, Capitalism and Critique. He has served as co-chair of Union for Democratic Communications.
Dr. Dolber teaches courses including Histories of Media Technology, Political Economy of Media, Media Policy in the U.S., and Digital Policymaking. He previously taught at SUNY College at Oneonta.
Books
Start Me Up: Rideshare Drivers United’s Struggle for Worker Democracy in the Shadow of Silicon Valley (University of Illinois Press, under contract)
The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence. (with Michelle Rodino-Colocino, Chenjerai Kumanyika, and Todd Wolfson) (Routledge, 2021).
Media and Culture in the U.S. Jewish Labor Movement: Sweating for Democracy in the Interwar Era. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Select Scholarly Articles
Organizing at the Digital Water Cooler: Social Media, Platform Organizing, and the Fight Against Surveillance Capitalism. South Atlantic Quarterly (2023), 122:4, 779-784.
Communications Policy and Cultural Political Economy: Charting the Collapse of the Neoliberal Consensus in the U.S. International Journal of Communication, (2021), 15, 3698-3718.
Precarity and Solidarity at Neoliberalism’s Twilight: The Potentials of Transnational Production Autoethnography. Cultural StudiesßàCritical Methodologies, (2020), 20:4, pp. 311-321.
Pressing Pause: Critical Reflections from the History of Media Studies. (with Andrew O’Baoill). Triple C. Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, (2018), 16:1, pp. 264-279.
Blindspots and Blurred Lines: Dallas Smythe, the Audience Commodity, and the Transformation of Labor in the Digital Age. Sociology Compass (2016), 10:9, pp. 747755.
Commodifying Alternative Media Audiences: A Historical Case Study of the Jewish Daily Forward. Communication, Culture & Critique (2016), 9:2, pp. 175-192.
Reports
Prop 22 Depresses Wages and Deepens Inequities for California Workers (with Eliza McCullough, et al). National Equity Atlas, 2022.
Most California Rideshare Drivers are not Receiving Health-Care Benefits under Proposition 22. (with Eliza McCullough). National Equity Atlas, 2021.
From Independent Contractors to an Independent Union: Building Solidarity Through Rideshare Drivers United’s Digital Organizing Strategy, Media Inequality and Change Center, Annenberg School for Communication and Rutgers University, 2019.
