Dr Rhys Crilley

Dr Rhys Crilley is a Research Associate in Global Media and Communication currently working on the AHRC funded 'Reframing Russia' project.

Prior to this, Rhys completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham and was appointed as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick. His expertise lie in the areas of political communication, global politics, and security studies.

Rhys is currently working on a monograph titled Legitimating War in the Digital Age. He has published in in the journals International Affairs, Journalism, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Critical Studies on Security and Critical Military Studies, as well as several chapters in edited books.

Read his publications here:

Crilley, R. & Gillespie, M. (2019) What to do about social media? Politics, populism and journalism. Journalism, 20(1), pp.173-176.

Manor, I. & Crilley, R. (2018) The aesthetics of violent extremist and counter violent extremist communication. in Bjola, C. & Pamment, J. Countering Online Propaganda and Extremism: The Dark Side of Digital Diplomacy (London: Routledge) pp.121-139

Manor, I. & Crilley, R. (2018) Visually framing the Gaza War of 2014: The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Twitter. Media, War and Conflict, 11(4) pp.369-391.

Crilley, R. (2018) International Relations in the age of 'post-truth' politics. International Affairs, 94(1), pp.417-425.

Crilley, R. & Chatterje-Doody, P. (2018) Security studies in the age of 'post-truth' politics: In defense of poststructuralism. Critical Studies on Security, Online First 

Crilley, R. (2017) Seeing Syria: The Visual Politics of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces on Facebook. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 10(2-3), pp.133-158.

da Silva, R. and Crilley, R. (2017) “Talk about terror in our back gardens”: an analysis of online comments about British foreign fighters in Syria. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 10(1), pp.162-186.

Crilley, R. (2016) Like and Share Forces: Making Sense of Military Social Media Sites. in Hamilton, C. & Shepherd, L. Understanding Popular Culture and World Politics in the Digital Age. (London: Routledge) pp.51-67

Crilley, R. (2016) Counter-recruitment and anti-military organizing: lessons from the field. Critical Military Studies, 2(3), pp.267-270.

Crilley, R. (2015) Seeing strategic narratives? Critical Studies on Security, 3(3), pp.331-333.

In 2016 Rhys was awarded the Best Paper Award by the International Communication Section of the International Studies Association (ISA) and his PhD was also nominated for the BISA Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize as well as the Association of Internet Researchers Dissertation Award. Alongside this, Rhys has given talks to the London Digital Diplomacy Network, advised the SNP Youth on defence policy, and has organised a workshop on how art can be used to challenge war and militarism.

As part of the ‘Reframing Russia’ team, Rhys is working to provide new insights into the post-Cold War global media ecology through an in-depth case study of one of its most controversial actors, RT. At the Open University, Rhys is conducting social media analysis and media ethnography research with an interdisciplinary team of sociologists and computer scientists. Follow the project on ResearchGate.net and on twitter @ReframingRussia.

Rhys tweets in a personal capacity at @RhysCrilley.