Christiana Dillard

Christiana Dillard is a doctoral student studying how Christian mobile app companies express their ideologies through discourse and features.

Christiana Dillard is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines the discursive strategies and technical affordances utilized by mobile apps that position themselves along the spectrum of Christian belief. She focuses on apps that offer digital translations of the Bible, devotionals, social media features, or any combination of those categories. These apps range from those sponsored by evangelical churches and organizations to those that promote progressive Christianity. Her earlier research interests included examining educational entertainment produced by Black content creators on YouTube.

Christiana was a National Association of Black Journalists – Facebook Fact-Checking Program fellow from 2021 to 2022. She previously worked as a news writer for the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. She earned an M.A. in Media Studies and Production from Temple and a B.A. in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh.