Before becoming a professor, I spent about a decade as a reporter covering immigration and city government at newspapers in the U.S., and I also worked as a freelancer reporter in Guatemala and El Salvador. From 2008-2009 I was an Inter-American Press Association Fellow based in Guatemala.  

While in Guatemala in 2009, I saw first-hand the power of social media for mobilizing protest, and thus was born my research trajectory exploring the intersections of social movements, social media, and journalism. I've written a book about social media and social change, called Liberation Technology in El Salvador: Re-appropriating Social Media Among Alternative Media Projects (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), which won the AEJMC-Knudson Latin America Book Prize in 2018. I've also published numerous scholarly articles examining news coverage of protests globally. Follow me on Twitter for the latest updates on my research: @SummerDHarlow.

When I'm not working,  you can find me traveling (usually in Latin America so I can put my Spanish and Portuguese skills to use); hanging out in Houston's bayous with my dog, Piñata; or eating breakfast tacos, drinking Diet Dr Pepper, and listening to Dave Matthews Band on repeat.