I currently teach a mix of courses in the School of Journalism & Media, within the Moody College of Communication. They have included research-oriented graduate seminars, a campus honors seminar ("Politics of Conspiracy Theories"), freshman campus-wide Signature Courses (“Understanding 9/11” and “News Literacy: A Citizen’s Guide”), and a summer course in Austria through the Salzburg Academy for Media and Global Change: “Global Media Literacy.”
They allow me to explore an eclectic range of interests in press performance--an umbrella category that for me includes ideological critique of news media, debates over news “bias,” framing of public issues (particularly war and terrorism), the place of faith in the public arena, and changes in journalistic norms--including in the emerging networked public sphere. My ongoing research interests examine a globalized journalism within a context of political communication.
My previous administrative experience included several years as Director of the School of Journalism and later as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the college, which gave me a deeper perspective on how best to integrate conceptual and professional training. As a survival mechanism of my own I have pursued various productivity strategies and shared them with my students, encouraging intellectual craftmanship (in a doctoral proseminar I developed) as we all strive to cope with the “digital firehose.”
I welcome your communication on any of these issues--and use of whatever materials you may find of value on this site. (Note that a relatively complete and up to date list of recent works is found on both the academia.edu and researchgate sites--see links to the right of this section).
Selected Recent Works (see Google Scholar for complete list):
- Emerging Hybrid Networks (Journal of Communication)
- The crisis of the institutional press (Polity Press)
- A media sociology for the networked public sphere (major invited essay)
- The global public sphere (book review in Journal of Communication)
- The new geography of journalism research: levels and spaces (article)
- Globalization of Mediated Spaces: The Case of Transnational Environmentalism in China (**Moody College Wartella Best Research Article Award 2016**)
- New from Routledge: Networked China: Global Dynamics of Digital Media and Civic Engagement (edited volume) Read preface and introduction
- Mediating the Message in the 21st Century: A Media Sociology Perspective (book)