Center for Ethical Leadership in Media
The Center for Ethical Leadership in the Media’s mission is to advance culture in the news industry through training, research and education. The Center works with newsroom leaders, journalists and students on issues surrounding harassment and workplace rights, the leadership pipeline and the future of work.
Faculty Contact: Kathleen McElroy & Mary Bock
Center for Global Change and Media
The Center for Global Change and Media was founded by Dr. Celeste González de Bustamante in 2024. This innovative center is dedicated to exploring the dynamic interplay between global media and societal change. Its goal is to investigate how media shapes and influences global transformations and to develop strategies that enhance impactful communication in our interconnected world.
Faculty Contact: Celeste González de Bustamante
Center for Media Engagement
The Center for Media Engagement is focused on envisioning a more vibrant future for our media landscape. The center works to understand and improve the information ecosystem for the benefit of democracy by partnering with newsrooms, social media platforms, and public and private organizations to develop research, tools, and strategies that improve media practice.
Faculty Contact: Jo Lukito, Gina Masullo & Anita Varma
Computational Media Lab (CML)
Big data and computational methods help us to answer big social questions. At the Computational Media Lab, we’re dedicated to tapping the powerful potential of diverse digital data to understand the current implications and future impact of media messages. The Computational Media Lab is a collaborative incubator for cutting-edge research on social media through the use of big data, machine learning and other emergent methods.
Faculty contact: Dhiraj Murthy
Institute for Media Innovation
The Institute for Media Innovation's mission is to translate research into action. The pace at which media is changing is unprecedented, creating both perils and possibilities. Whether it is through ethnographic, survey, or data analytics our research activities are designed to generate a clearer understanding of the social and behavioral implications of a rapidly evolving media and technology landscape. The Institute is also committed to design, practice, and innovation. More specifically, we do not just study the future of media and technology, we also invest in ways to prototype that future. Working with designers, storytellers, researchers, and engineers we believe our mission is to turn insight into action that models ways to build a more ethical, inclusive, and equitable society.
Faculty contact: Craig Watkins & Dhiraj Murthy
Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas
Since 2002, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin has led professional training and outreach for journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Knight Center Research Group is focused on issues related to journalism and press freedom in Latin America and the Caribbean. The research fellows are faculty, graduate students and alumni of the Moody College of Communication's School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. Current and past Knight Center fellows have been conducting research on Latin American media issues for several years, resulting in the publication of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers, as illustrated below in the scholarship list.
Faculty contact: Rosental Alves
Moody Writing Support Program
Everyone working for the Moody Writing Support Program embraces the mission of giving students a boost in skills and the encouragement to succeed. The Program offers in-person and online appointments.
Faculty contact: Diana Dawson
Technology and Information Policy Institute (TIPI)
TIPI undertakes several research projects, most of them funded, on a routine basis. We often have research assistantships available, and sometimes can offer fellowships to students participating on projects. Our core areas of interest investigate the influence of communication technologies on social systems and social behaviors. Recent projects have examined Internet access and adoption and how that might figure into equity issues; the relationships between broadband in rural regions and local economic development and entrepreneurship; disinformation efforts in the US and elsewhere; the role of libraries as social institutions for remediating the Digital Divide; how municipal cameras and the data they produce in public places interact with government policies around information access, use and circulation; and more. Students work in teams and we have weekly meetings to coordinate and check in with each other. Numerous conference papers and publications have grown out of our work.
We also have sponsored summer internships in Washington DC through the multi-university COMPASS program and assisted students with conference attendance for papers produced on our projects. TIPI also sponsors Brown Bags and speakers throughout the academic year. We would love to have students sit in and see if there is a fit with their interests.
Faculty contact: Sharon Strover (JaM) or Keri Stephens (CMS)
Voces Oral History Center
Voces Oral History Center is the leading Latino oral history archive in the United States. It began in 1999, with a mission of capturing untold stories of Latinos and Latinas who served, in the military or on the home front, during World War II.
Their archive has expanded to include the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and Political and Civic Engagement, focusing on the continuing fight for Latino civil rights. Their goal is to continue to add collections to fill the gaps in the history of Latinos in America.
Faculty contact: Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez