He holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota and a M.A. in philosophy from the University of Ghent, Belgium. He is the former head of the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication. Since 2014, he has been the Program Director for the CDEP. His work has appeared in a variety of academic journals and has covered issues including regulation of hate speech, plagiarism detection software, and virtual communities.