Dr. Andrew deWaard is an Assistant Professor of Media and Popular Culture in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. He received his PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture (UC Press, 2024; available open-access) and the co-author of The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh: indie sex, corporate lies, and digital videotape (Columbia University Press/Wallflower, 2013). Dr. deWaard is also the co-founder of The Cultural Capital Project, a SSHRC-funded research project that studies independent music in the streaming age, as well as the Media And Consolidation Research Organization (MACRO) Lab, which analyzes the effects of monopoly ownership on media. You can follow his work at andrewdewaard.com and @dewaard.