Tanner Mirrlees

Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies, Ontario Tech University

Tanner Mirrlees is an Associate Professor in the Communication and Digital Media Studies program in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University. One of his research areas centers on the intersections of media, war, and conflict. Mirrlees is the author of Hearts and Mines: The US Empire’s Culture Industry, which provides a comprehensive study of the relationship between the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. media and entertainment industries within the broader history of U.S. Empire.

He has also co-edited special journal issues on military communications and pop culture at war, including “Media, Technology and the Culture of Militarism” for Democratic Communiqué (2014). Currently, Mirrlees serves on the editorial board of Media, War & Conflict, the leading international journal on media and war studies, and was a co-organizer of the 2023 ICA pre-conference “Reimagining the Field of Media, War, and Conflict in the Age of Information Disorder.”

Mirrlees is currently researching the U.S.-China superpower competition and how it manifests in the domains of media, digital technologies, and popular culture, and recently authored “The US and China Tech War.” 

SEE PAPER > The Militarization of Movies and Television (2025)