Category Archives: Research

        
 
 
 
 

Knight Center’s Ph.D. researcher wins paper awards at 2020 AEJMC Conference

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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.

Knight Center’s Cepak, Van Witsen, earn doctorates

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Two doctoral students affiliated with the Knight Center earned their Ph.Ds. at the end of the spring semester.

Tony Cepak and Tony Van Witsen successfully defended their dissertations on topics related to environmental and science journalism.

Tony Cepak

Cepak’s dissertation used oral history, archival and ethnographic fieldwork to explore the long- term picture-making projects of Jack Corn and Milton Rogovin in Appalachian coal fields during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Corn, a photojournalist, and Rogovin, a social documentary photographer, both worked to disrupt popular discourse and advance mining photography past the stoic, soot-covered aesthetics of the early 20th century.

His dissertation, “Views of the Valley of Despair: The Photography of Jack Corn and Milton Rogovin in Appalachian Coal Communities (1956-1979),” examines the intimate and powerful imagery they created that repositions coal mining from being celebrated as a material vital to economic and social prosperity, to illuminating the exploitive and devastating effects mining had on miners, their families, their communities and the land.

Tony Van Witsen

Van Witsen’s dissertation, “How Daily Journalists Verify Numbers and Statistics in News Stories: Towards a Theory,” recognizes that statistics are widely acknowledged as an essential part of journalism but acknowledges that routine news coverage involving statistics leaves much to be desired.

He examined the verification process in detail by combining 1) qualitative interviews with 15 working journalists about their attitudes, decision-making and work practices regarding statistics; 2) a content analysis of statistical information in a sample of stories created by these journalists; and 3) an item-by-item examination of the decision-making processes behind each statistic in each sampled stories.

Appalachian miner and wife. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987

With a framed portrait of John F. Kennedy at his side, Ed Marlowe, paralyzed from a roof fall in a coal mine, gazes out his window to see who is approaching the house.
Jack Corn, 1969

New study of local coverage of the Flint water crisis

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Dr. Bruno Takahashi and Jack Nissen

Reporting crises, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, presents multiple challenges to journalists, such as the prevalence of misinformation, a faster pace of reporting and the potential threat to their own well-being and those they care about. The latter could result in physical and emotional harm, which could in turn affect their journalistic performance.

Knight Center Research Director Dr. Bruno Takahashi published a new study that examines local news reporting about the Flint water crisis. It applies a framework grounded in environmental justice research and community attachment to determine the ways journalists do their work when they perceive their communities are threatened and discriminated against. The article was co-authored with Ellis Adams, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University, and Jack Nissen, a digital content creator at WJBK Fox 2 Detroit and graduate of the journalism MA program at Michigan State University.

The article, “The Flint water crisis: local reporting, community attachment, and environmental justice,” appeared in the journal Local Environment and was based on in-depth interviews with reporters in and around Flint. The study found that some reporters struggled to separate their personal experiences from their professional practices, but in general maintained their journalistic integrity in the midst of the crisis. These reporters were empathic toward impacted residents, which made them skeptical of official sources, which motivated further in-depth reporting.

Knight Center senior associate director named to advisory board of national climate reporting effort

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Dave Poulson, Senior Associate Director Knight Center

Knight Center Senior Associate Director David Poulson was recently named to the advisory board of a new climate reporting initiative of the National Catholic Reporter.

The independent religious news service describes EarthBeat as a place to tell stories at the intersection of “where ecological concern and moral conviction meet.”

The initiative, which just launched, features a column by Poulson that weighs the relevance of personal decisions to limit individual contributions to climate change: On the train to Omaha: Why individual action on climate change matters.