Communication Department Faculty

Michael Serazio is a professor in the Department of Communication at Boston College. His research and teaching focuses on media production, advertising, popular culture, political communication, and new media. 

His latest book is The Authenticity Industries: Keeping it 'Real' in Media, Culture, and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2023). It tells the story of America's obsession with authenticity and reveals the backstage strategies and practices to fake that on behalf of products, platforms, and politicians. His previous book is The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture (New York University Press, 2019). A behind-the-scenes investigation of leading professionals across media and business, The Power of Sports provocatively analyzes how sports culture explains and reflects contemporary America – from journalism and advertising to politics and gender. His first book, Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing (New York University Press, 2013), charted the integration of brands into entertainment content, social patterns, and digital platforms. It received the Susanne K. Langer Award from the Media Ecology Association and the National Communication Association’s Visual Communication Book of the Year.

He has scholarly work appearing in the Journal of Communication; Media, Culture & Society; the Journal of Consumer Culture; Critical Studies in Media Communication; Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism; and Television & New Media, among other journals. His studies of campaign consultants have been honored with the Bruce Gronbeck Political Communication Research Award and the National Communication Association’s Top Article in Political Communication. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he won the National Communication Association’s Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. He also holds a B.A. in Communication from the University of San Francisco and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.

A former staff writer for the Houston Press, an alternative newsweekly, his reporting was recognized as a finalist for the Livingston Awards and he has continued to write essays on media and culture for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Vox, Time, Bloomberg, The New Republic, The Nation, and Salon. He serves on Boston College’s Journalism program steering committee and the Church in the 21st Century’s advisory committee and hosts Formative: Conversations on Who We Became, an official podcast of the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education, which interviews inspiring alums of Jesuit universities. A recipient of Boston College’s “Teacher of the Year” award from its Alpha Sigma Nu chapter, he regularly offers courses on “Media Theory,” “News Media & Democracy,” “Sports, Media, and Culture,” and “Anti-Social Media” and has co-led student immersion experiences abroad in Boston College’s Arrupe Program.

A native San Diegan, Mike enjoys running, travel, global foods, electronic music, opinion writing, rooting (usually frustratingly) for the Padres and Chargers, and, above all, spending time with his wife and daughter. His webpage, with links to writing, can be found at http://sites.google.com/site/linkedatserazio and he can be contacted at serazio@bc.edu.