Leigh Anne Tiffany

Knight Center researcher, Leigh Anne Tiffany, received two paper awards at the 2020 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference this August.

Tiffany, a second-year Ph.D. student in Michigan State University’s Information and Media program, received the Top Theory Paper Award and second-place Top Student Paper Award from the Communication Theory and Methodology Division.

Her award-winning paper, titled “The Journalism-Public Relations Role Continuum,” proposes three new theoretical models for addressing the relationship between journalists and public relations practitioners, specifically how to delineate these closely connected professions. The desired outcome of this theoretical paper is to increase interdisciplinary research between journalism and public relations scholarship, as well as provide guidance for ways to better clarify these fields in future research.