Jessica L. Beyer

Prof. Beyer is accepting new MA and PhD students for the 2025-2026 academic year

Jessica L. Beyer is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and a lead of the Jackson School’s Cybersecurity Initiative. Dr. Beyer teaches cybersecurity politics courses in the Jackson School and supervises student research through the Cybersecurity Initiative and Global Research Groups. In 2019 and 2023, she won the JSIS Student Service Award.

Dr. Beyer’s research focuses on international technology politics, online communities and politics, and dis/misinformation. She is involved in an ongoing project looking to understand COVID-19 information on Twitter in Louisiana and Washington states during the first year of the pandemic. Dr. Beyer works on Internet of Things (IoT) security as a member of the Cybersecurity in the Built Environment Lab. She is currently working on a project focused on the types of politically-significant information that spread in informal online spaces. Dr. Beyer’s work has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the UW’s Population Health Initiative, and others.

Dr. Beyer’s past research explored political mobilization emerging from highly populated online communities including posting boards and multiplayer online games and focused on actors such as Anonymous and other hacktivists, the Pirate Parties, and digital pirates. In 2012, she won the Association of Internet Researcher’s Dissertation Award. Her book, Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization, was published by Oxford University Press in 2014.