Dr. Khadijah Costley White is an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Previously she worked as a journalist on an Emmy-nominated team at NOW on PBS (formerly NOW with Bill Moyers) and a New York City Teaching Fellow. In 2020-2021 , she was a Whiting Public Engagement Fellow.

White researches politics, social change, and identity in media. Her book, The Branding of Right-Wing Activism: The News Media and the Tea Party (Oxford, 2018) examines the rise of the Tea Party in online, print, broadcast, and cable news. She has contributed to books and published in journals such as Communication, Culture, and Critique, Urban Geography, and more.

In addition to her scholarly work, she consults on documentary films and has served the MacArthur Foundation as an external advisor in journalism and media. In 2007 the National Association of Black Journalists and United Nations awarded her a reporting fellowship to Senegal. She has also received the University of Pennsylvania Women of Color at Penn Award and served as a White House intern on the Obama administration’s Broadcast Media team.

White's writing and commentary on topics such as race, social movements, news, and politics has appeared in Vice, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Root, Huffington Post, BBC, Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Quartz, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed and in numerous radio and TV interviews, including NPR, Vice, and The Katie Couric Show. As a Fontaine Fellow, she received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and is a proud Swarthmore College alum.

Networks

In her local community, Costley White is also an activist and organizer, deeply invested in the transformative power of grassroots politics. Through this work, she founded a community non-profit, SOMA Justice, which organizes for racial, social, and economic justice in South Orange and Maplewood, NJ.