TJ Billard

@billard.bsky.social

Associate Professor of Communication & Sociology at Northwestern University. Executive Director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. Author of Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere (Oxford UP, 2024).

"If misinformation stabilizes disrupted worldviews, the solution lies not in better facts, but in better ways of making meaning." Fantastic work on the need for broader lenses to address the disordered discourse that emerges from epistemic collapse (to borrow from @eliothiggins.bsky.social).

TJ Billard@billard.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Excited my most recent article is out now! In it, we talk about our work to combat anti-trans misinfo at @transstudies.bsky.social and the research my students are I are doing advancing a new framework for understanding misinfo effects. Give it a read here: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/R6MNB...

I’ve published a bit in the last few years, but today I just submitted the first major, multi-study, all new data paper from the next phase of my research career. It’s some bold new ideas and I haven’t been this nervous going into peer review in a long time!

I activated my out of office for my research leave and I could not be more excited. 😭 Don’t expect an email response for the rest of the year, but do expect updates on some major research projects! 📚

Join us on March 20 for an insightful discussion on Transgender Equality! 📢 Event: Voices for Transgender Equality: Trans Rights Activism Under Trump 📍 Location: Edinburgh Futures Institute ⏰ Time: 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM 🎤 Speaker: @billard.bsky.social 🔗 Book your spot: edin.ac/3PPsewP

Voices for Transgender Equality: Trans Rights Activism Under Trump

TJ Billard offers an insider’s view into transgender activism during the first two years of the first Trump administration.

edin.ac

internally at Meta: -trans and nonbinary themes stripped from Messenger -enforcement policy now allows for the denial of trans people's existence -tampons removed from men's restrooms -DEI programs shuttered -Kaplan briefed top conservative influencers the night before policy changes were announced

there is a 24/7 right-wing propaganda apparatus that operates across multiple mediums and it designed to do exactly this: smother any kind of local, material concern with cultural war signifiers and cultivate a “political affiliation as team sport” ethos

Jake Grumbach@jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 2y ago

Montana is the clearest place to see the nationalization of US politics. Whole Dem ticket was multigenerational MT hunters & farmers in bolo ties. Dem gov candidate owned a gun manufacturer. GOP slate was outta state tech. Whole race was dominated by natl culture war & southern border, GOP sweep

I had so many thoughts that I could have written 10,000 words on this topic, but I tried my best to distill them down to as close to 2,000 as I could get! Please give it a read. 😃

APSA & ICA Political Communication Divisions@polcomm.bsky.social · 2y ago

@billard.bsky.social channels Sandra Ball-Rokeach, critiquing normative assumptions in PolComm. They argue the field normalizes hegemonic standards while delegitimizing political communication that challenges systemic oppression. politicalcommunication.org/article/bill...

The amount of fun people are having on Twitter with The Claims Adjuster versus the amount of buzzkill scolding people are doing on Bluesky is why I doubt I’ll ever spend that much time on here.

We're hiring in American Politics at the junior level. Position will be affiliated with GW’s Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics. Applications due January 2nd. I'm on sabbatical, but I am happy to answer questions about the dept., broadly. DM me. www.gwu.jobs/postings/116...

Assistant Professor of Political Science

The Department of Political Science invites applications for a tenure track professor (Assistant Professor) in American Politics. The position will start in Fall 2025 and is pending final budgetary ap...

gwu.jobs

It was a pleasure to reflect on the themes of the Anti-Racist Media Manifesto, alongside Maitrayee Basu! A thread running through our conversation: the "centre" has never been unproblematic or neutral, an idea I explore further in a recent essay for PolComm: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Overcoming Far-Right Respectability: The Case for Systemic Approaches to Studying White Supremacy

This contribution to the Forum collection traces the rhetorical strategies taken up by far-right actors to cast white supremacist ideas as “respectable” in the post-civil rights era, including the ...

tandfonline.com