Ben Shields

Ben Shields is a Lecturer in Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
 
Shields teaches Communication for Leaders, Social Media Management: Persuasion in Networked Culture, and Advanced Leadership Communication in the MBA program.  He also teaches in a variety of MIT Sloan Executive Education courses, including Sports Analytics Management and Communication and Persuasion in the Digital Age. 
 
Shields’s research focuses on the intersection of social media technologies, analytics, and audience behavior in the sports, media, and entertainment industries. He has written three books. His most recent is Social Media Management: Persuasion in Networked Culture (Oxford University Press, 2017). His other books are The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry (Oxford University Press, 2015) and The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace (McGraw-Hill, 2006). He has also published numerous articles and book chapters on sports media and marketing communications.  

Shields served previously as the Director of Social Media and Marketing at ESPN. He oversaw social media strategy for the ESPN brand and collaborated across the enterprise to develop and implement company-wide social strategy. He also worked on marketing strategy for several ESPN brands and sub-brands, including the SportsCenter “DaDaDa” campaign and the Emmy Award-winning “It’s Not Crazy, It’s Sports” brand campaign.
 
Shields holds a BS and MA in communication studies and a PhD in media, technology, and society, all from Northwestern University.