About

Brandon Golob is an associate professor of teaching in criminology, law and society at the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology, where he also serves as associate dean of the Campuswide Honors Collegium. He has been recognized as one of Orange County’s 125 Most Influential people of 2024 by The Orange County Register. Golob has been voted professor of the year at the UCI School of Social Ecology four years in a row by undergraduates and graduate students, reflecting his popularity and effectiveness as an educator. His teaching focuses on criminology, democracy, and the rule of law, challenging students—including mid-career law enforcement professionals—to think about these topics in practical terms. Golob leads courses with empathy, establishing ground rules for sensitive political conversations and incorporating lighthearted discussions about music and pop culture. He is praised for fostering an inclusive and open environment where students feel comfortable asking for help. Golob also contributes to pedagogical practices by offering tips for incorporating podcasts into criminology courses, encouraging active learning through projects such as student-created podcasts that explore media's impact on law and justice issues. His work emphasizes analyzing pressing social justice issues like hate crimes, immigration, gun control, policing, and incarceration, with a focus on empowering students to continue these conversations beyond the classroom.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• World Wide Web
• Psychology
• Public relations
• Internet privacy

Selected publications

• Finding me in social me-dia: Teaching students to use social networking platforms legally and mindfully

  Communication Teacher · 2022 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science

  Social media is a defining part of contemporary communication. College-aged students, as frequent users of these platforms, are often aware of their functionality but less knowledgeable about their additional impact beyond social networking. In sum, these platforms intersect with a vast legal landscape that can be difficult for even the most avid users to navigate. Thus, this course and its primary project are designed as a “Know Your Rights” primer, equipping students with the skills and knowledge necessary to use social media responsibly in both personal and professional contexts. Each student creates a primer that consist of three central chapters—(1) Social Media Self-Assessment, (2) In-Depth Platform Analysis, and (3) Legal Considerations—that train them to articulate, analyze, and apply their digital rights across the most commonly used social media platforms. Ultimately, students learn how to navigate an online world better that many believe they have already mastered and are empowered to think twice before they click once.Courses Media Studies, Digital Communication, Introduction to Mass Communication, Communication Ethics, Social Media.Objectives Through this course and its primary project, students will learn to: (1) explain their individual rights as they pertain specifically to social media and more broadly to the U.S. Constitution; (2) describe ways new and emerging communication technologies have reshaped, and continue to impact, issues related to law, justice, and social relations generally; (3) critique how social media, Internet television, and other communication technologies have affected their own understandings of privacy and law; (4) classify the differences among social media platforms’ evolutions, as well as their terms of use and data privacy policies; and (5) recognize the potential positive and negative ramifications of their personal online media presence.

  PublisherDOI

• Student in the Seats, Teacher in the Streets: Evaluating the Impacts of Law Students Becoming “Street Law” Teachers

  International Journal of Public Legal Education · 2021 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Law

  The need for public legal education is at an all-time high. From constitutional law issues raised by the recent presidential election to increased media coverage of police brutality, there are numerous examples of why it is crucial to teach practical law to non-lawyers. Street Law programs, administered by law students to teenagers, are a prominent type of public legal education. Despite the urgent importance of Street Law programs, there is limited research on their pedagogical effectiveness, or how they affect those who administer them. This project helps to close that gap through its multimethod research on the course instructors. In addition to completing this program evaluation, the project also (1) develops a theoretical framework that will enable law school administrators and scholars from a variety of disciplines to understand how law students are impacted by Street Law programs, and (2) lays the foundation for future assessments of Street Law and other public law education programs. The importance of understanding the impacts of these programs, which the results of this study show to be overwhelmingly positive, cannot be overstated because they have broad potential to affect law students’ transition to practice and society at large.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• UN-MAKING A MURDERER: NEW MEDIA’S IMPACT ON (POTENTIAL) WRONGFUL CONVICTION CASES

  California western law review · 2018-01-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• COMPASS| How Safe are Safe Harbors? The Difficulties of Self-Regulatory Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Programs

  DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2015-10-15

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As communication technology continues to evolve, legal landscapes shift in an attempt to regulate new and emerging media. One pervasive public concern in the digital age is the regulation of online collection of private data. This is by no means a novel concern; for decades academics and practitioners have debated the advantages and disadvantages (and all that falls between) of technological advancement, surveillance, privacy rights, and so forth (Campbell & Carlson, 2002; Dinev, Hart, & Mullen, 2008; Fuchs et al., 2013; Kearns, 1999; Southard IV, 1989). Communication scholarship has been particularly bountiful on these topics because data collection on the Internet is intimately intertwined with questions of communication patterns (Fuchs, 2013; Krontiris, Langheinrich, & Shilton, 2014; Park, 2011). Although concerns over online data collection are varied, the issue of children’s information privacy is of particular concern for legal practitioners, communication scholars, and the public at large.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Restricted Representation: The Role of Ethics and Esthetics in Framing Images of Suffering

  Journal of Human Rights · 2013-10-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Times of conflict produce a dizzying array of images of suffering. As conflict unfolds, photojournalists often scramble to capture the image that “perfectly” represents the human rights violations that are occurring on the ground. In turn, human rights advocates and organizations often utilize these images during the aftermath as a means of drawing global attention to a particular issue. From a surface perspective, it seems as though the advantages of representation through image are bountiful: Images generate publicity, images help people relate to a cause, images mobilize funds, etc. However, beneath the surface, there lie deep-seated and diverse ethical questions: Do photojournalists, as nonactive voyeurs, become a contributing factor to the suffering of the subject? Is the ethical course of action by the photographer sacrificed in the name of art? Moreover, at what point does the pursuit of the “perfect” image override one's ability to see the event as a human occurrence? There cannot be conclusive categorizations of these moments where photography straddles the border between art and morality, so this article does not aim to establish any. However, in the process of exploring questions such as these, it seeks to expose the ways that images of suffering can be used in both positive and negative ways in human rights advocacy work. Although such work has the best intentions, the circulation of these images through the public sphere complicates the status and meaning of the images, thereby leading us to the question: How can the witnessed suffering of one individual even begin to represent and redeem the unviewed suffering of countless others? Acknowledgments I would like to thank Professor Lara Stemple of UCLA Law, whose unwavering commitment to human rights inspires me to pursue meaningful work. I would also like to thank Professor Trinh T. Minh-ha and Professor Ramona Naddaff of UC Berkeley for their ongoing dialogues with me about the topics that form the foundation of this article. Lastly, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my relentless editor, Pamela Krayenbuhl, who continually pushes me to be a more thoughtful writer. Any errors that survived the editing of this article should be attributed to her.

  PublisherDOI

Awards & honors

• Selected as "Professor of the Year" by undergraduates in the…
• Selected as 2023-24 "M.A.S. Professor of the Year" by studen…
• The 2021-22 Learning Experience Design and Online Teaching A…
• The 2021-22 Tom Angell Fellowship
• The 2021-22 Excellence in Digital Learning Award