About

Amanda Reid is an award-winning teacher and scholar specializing in the intersection of law, technology, and society. She teaches media law at the UNC School of Journalism and Media, serves as an adjunct professor at the UNC School of Law, and holds a courtesy appointment at the UNC School of Information and Library Science. Her scholarly focus includes freedom of expression, intellectual property, privacy, and technological governance. Reid's research interests began with branding and trademark law, and she remains fascinated with symbols and semiotics. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, flagship law reviews, and specialty journals from top law schools, including Yale Law & Policy Review, University of Colorado Law Review, Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy, Communication Law & Policy, and Jurimetrics: The Journal of Law, Science, and Technology. She has received top faculty awards at both AEJMC and ICA national conferences. Reid is also a faculty co-director of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy and an affiliate researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP). Her contributions extend beyond academia through her service on the board of directors of The Daily Tar Heel and the University Committee on Copyright. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a commercial litigation associate at Holland & Knight, LLP, and served as a judicial law clerk for two federal judges, including a one-year clerkship for the Honorable Susan H. Black of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and a two-year clerkship for the Honorable Harvey E. Schlesinger of the Middle District of Florida. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florida, a J.D. and M.A. from the University of Florida, and a B.A. from The Florida State University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Internal medicine
• Medicine
• Public relations
• Marketing
• Pediatrics
• Cardiology
• Surgery
• Business

Selected publications

• Nerd Harder: A Typology of Techno-Legal Solutionist Logics in Child Online Safety Laws

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Digital intermediaries and transparency reports as strategic communications

  The Information Society · 2025-02-15 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Nerd Harder: A Typology of Techno‐Legal Solutionist Logics in Child Online Safety Laws

  Policy & Internet · 2025-08-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT As jurisdictions worldwide grapple with regulating social media's effects on youth, US state legislatures have emerged as important laboratories for “techno‐legal solutionism”—the belief that complex social problems can be solved through legally mandated technical fixes. Although similar approaches are evident in the EU's Digital Services Act and various national regulations, US states offer particularly revealing cases for understanding how technical mandates get operationalized into specific requirements. Our analysis of recently enacted state‐level child online safety laws (COSLs) demonstrates how techno‐solutionist logic manifests in three interdependent patterns: (1) the checklist fallacy (reducing safety to discrete technical features), (2) the false promise of age verification (assuming identity verification will prevent harm), and (3) the design determinism myth (overestimating design's power to shape social outcomes). The United States offers unique insights through its state‐level experimentation, while similar techno‐solutionist approaches are emerging worldwide (e.g., UK's Online Safety Bill, EU's Digital Services Act). The appeal of techno‐legal solutionism transcends borders: from California to Brussels, it offers policymakers seemingly clear solutions to complex problems. However, our analysis shows that this approach fundamentally misunderstands both the social shaping of technology and the complexity of youth well‐being. Technologies can influence outcomes by offering (or not) certain design features (i.e., affordances); yet these designs do not determine the outcomes. This overconfidence that technology can determine an outcome risks ignoring the more complex and nuanced forces shaping children's online experiences. Moving forward requires abandoning the fallacy that we can simply “nerd harder” our way to youth safety—and instead embracing the more challenging work of developing comprehensive, nuanced approaches that recognize both the limitations and possibilities of technical intervention.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Protective Styles

  Women & Performance a journal of feminist theory · 2025-11-17

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Intangible Harms, Tangible Consequences: Analyzing the Impact of TransUnion on Standing to Sue for Data Breach

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Intravenous iron for heart failure, iron deficiency definitions, and clinical response: the IRONMAN trial

  European Heart Journal · 2024 · 37 citations

  • Medicine
  • Internal medicine
  • Cardiology

  BACKGROUND AND AIMS: What is the relationship between blood tests for iron deficiency, including anaemia, and the response to intravenous iron in patients with heart failure? METHODS: In the IRONMAN trial, 1137 patients with heart failure, ejection fraction ≤ 45%, and either serum ferritin < 100 µg/L or transferrin saturation (TSAT) < 20% were randomized to intravenous ferric derisomaltose (FDI) or usual care. Relationships were investigated between baseline anaemia severity, ferritin and TSAT, to changes in haemoglobin from baseline to 4 months, Minnesota Living with Heart Failure (MLwHF) score and 6-minute walk distance achieved at 4 months, and clinical events, including heart failure hospitalization (recurrent) or cardiovascular death. RESULTS: The rise in haemoglobin after administering FDI, adjusted for usual care, was greater for lower baseline TSAT (Pinteraction < .0001) and ferritin (Pinteraction = .028) and more severe anaemia (Pinteraction = .014). MLwHF scores at 4 months were somewhat lower (better) with FDI for more anaemic patients (overall Pinteraction = .14; physical Pinteraction = .085; emotional Pinteraction = .043) but were not related to baseline TSAT or ferritin. Blood tests did not predict difference in achieved walking distance for those randomized to FDI compared to control. The absence of anaemia or a TSAT ≥ 20% was associated with lower event rates and little evidence of benefit from FDI. More severe anaemia or TSAT < 20%, especially when ferritin was ≥100 µg/L, was associated with higher event rates and greater absolute reductions in events with FDI, albeit not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: This hypothesis-generating analysis suggests that anaemia or TSAT < 20% with ferritin > 100 µg/L might identify patients with heart failure who obtain greater benefit from intravenous iron. This interpretation requires confirmation.

  DOI

• Developing a Better Understanding of Employee Resource Groups in the Workplace

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are great assets to organizations, but little is known about them, their direct impact on employees, and how they can further company goals. The current panel sought to bring ERG experts from various industries together to discuss the role ERGs play within their respective organizations, how to best support ERGs in the workplace, what organizational utility is afforded through ERG investment, provide direction on how to establish ERGs, and to address sensitive questions, such as perceptions of inclusivity in ERGs. The panel creators are also available to discuss their research pertaining to the creation of an ERG taxonomy based on Fortune 100 companies.

  PublisherDOI

• Platforms as Private Governors &amp;amp; Transparency Reports as Legitimacy-Seeking Communications (Presentation Slides)

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Social Media Transparency Reports: Longitudinal Content Analysis of News Coverage

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Regulating Facial Recognition Technology: A Taxonomy of Regulatory Schemata and First Amendment Challenges

  Communication Law and Policy · 2023-01-02 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  This article examines the patchwork of regulatory approaches policymakers have used to govern use of facial recognition technology (FRT). Without comprehensive federal legislation, state and local policymakers are left to fill the regulatory gap. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it creates a taxonomy of the existing regulatory schemata governing uses of FRT. The authors’ systematic analysis of FRT regulatory approaches identified five main categories of policymaking options: (1) agents of use; (2) limitations on use; (3) accountability of use; (4) evaluation of use; and (5) enforcement of permitted use. Second, the authors analyze whether First Amendment protection of information as speech may serve as a barrier to any regulatory aspect of FRT. Building on the novel empirical framework of regulatory options, the authors examine which types of FRT regulations would likely survive a First Amendment challenge. Thus, this taxonomy of regulatory approaches, coupled with a First Amendment analysis, offers valuable insights for policymakers and scholars.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Paul R. Kalra

  21 shared

• Philip A. Kalra

  Salford Royal Hospital

  15 shared

• Mark C. Petrie

  NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

  10 shared

• Fraser J Graham

  University of Glasgow

  10 shared

• Ian Ford

  University of Glasgow

  10 shared

• Abdallah Al‐Mohammad

  9 shared

• Evan Ringel

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  8 shared

• Robin Ray

  St George's, University of London

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• Edward Vick Prize for Innovation in Teaching (2025)
• UNC’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate In…
• David Brinkley Teaching Excellence Award (2023)
• Top faculty awards at AEJMC (Association of Education in Jou…
• Top faculty awards at ICA (International Communication Assoc…