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Research in Journalism, Media and Culture

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Faculty in Journalism, Culture and Communication analyze emerging and enduring forms of public communication and the institutional and economic conditions that sustain them. They employ a range of research methods, including ethnography, textual and historical analysis, and political economic approaches to media industries. As digital technologies have transformed mediated practices, the faculty has opened a series of new areas of inquiry, including computational journalism, the study of algorithms in institutions, and the cultural history of Silicon Valley.

Angèle Christin is an associate professor. She is interested in fields and organizations where algorithms and ‘big data’ analytics transform professional values, expertise, and work practices. In her dissertation, she analyzed the growing importance of audience metrics in web journalism in the United States and France. Drawing on ethnographic methods, she examined how American and French journalists make sense of traffic numbers in different ways, which in turn has distinct effects on the production of news in the two countries. In a new project, she studies the construction, institutionalization, and reception of analytics and predictive algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Ted Glasser is an emeritus professor.  His teaching and research focus on media practices and performance, with emphasis on questions of press responsibility and accountability. His books include Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies, written with Clifford Christians, Denis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Robert White, which in 2010 won the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for best research-based book on journalism/mass communication and was one of three finalists for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Tankard Book Award; The Idea of Public Journalism, an edited collection of essays, recently translated into Chinese; Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue, written with James S. Ettema, which won the Society of Professional Journalists’ award for best research on journalism, the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, and the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for the best research-based book on journalism/mass communication; Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, edited with Charles T. Salmon; and Media Freedom and Accountability, edited with Everette E. Dennis and Donald M. Gillmor.  His research, commentaries and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications, including the Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Journalism Studies, Policy Sciences, Journal of American History, Quill, Nieman Reports and The New York Times Book Review.

James T. Hamilton is a professor and the director of the Journalism Program. His work on the economics of news focuses on the market failures involved in the production of public affairs coverage and the generation of investigative reporting. Through research in the emerging area of computational journalism, he is exploring how to lower the cost of discovering stories about the operation of political institutions.

Xiaochang Li is an assistant professor. She is broadly interested in the history of informatics, computation, and related data practices. Drawing upon media history, history of science, and STS, her work is concerned with how information technologies shape the production and circulation of knowledge and the relationship between technical practices and social worlds. Her current research examines the history of speech recognition and natural language processing and how the pursuit of language influenced the development of AI, Machine Learning, and contemporary algorithmic culture. Her work also touches on sound studies and the history of acoustics and she has previously worked on topics concerning transnational media audiences and digital content circulation.

Fred Turner is a professor and cultural historian of media and media technologies. Trained in both Communication and Science and Technology Studies, he has long been interested in how media and American culture have shaped one another over time. His most recent work has focused on the rise of American technocracy since World War II and on the aesthetic and ideological manifestations of that rise in the digital era. Before earning his Ph.D., Turner worked as a journalist for ten years. He continues to write for newspapers and magazines and strongly supports researchers who seek to have a public impact with their work.

Like all Communication faculty, the members of the Journalism, Communication and Culture group routinely collaborate with colleagues from around the campus. The group enjoys particularly strong collaborations with sociologists, historians, art historians, and computer scientists.

Faculty — Journalism, Media and Culture

Doctoral Students — Journalism, Media and Culture

Selected Graduates

  • Sanna Ali, Ph.D. 2023. AI Policy Analyst, Stanford Cyber Policy Center and RegLab
  • Jeff Nagy, Ph.D. 2023. Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies, York University
  • Anna Gibson, Ph.D. 2022. Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
  • Jihye Lee, Ph.D. 2022. Assistant Professor, School of Advertising and Public Relations, UT Austin
  • Andreas Katsanevas, Ph.D. 2020. Technology Policy Researcher, Meta
  • Sheng Zou, Ph.D. 2020. Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
  • Christine Larson, Ph.D. 2017. Assistant Professor, Journalism, University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Yeon Joo, Ph.D. 2014. Associate Professor, Department of Digital Media, Myongji University, Seoul
  • Morgan G. Ames, Ph.D. 2013. Assistant Adjunct Professor, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley
  • Seeta Pena Gangdaharan, Ph.D. 2012. Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics
  • Mike Ananny, Ph.D. 2011, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California
  • Daniel Kreiss, Ph.D. 2010, Associate Professor, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • John Kim, Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media and Cultural Studies, Macalaster College
  • Erica Robles-Anderson, Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
  • Isabel Awad, Ph.D. 2007, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University (Netherlands)
  • Cherian George, Ph.D. 2003, Professor, Associate Dean, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
  • Francis Lapfung Lee, Ph.D. 2003, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, City University of Hong Kong