Tar Heel Talks is a video series produced by the UNC School of Media and Journalism to showcase faculty creative activity and research. The series has been produced since Spring 2013.
Eye tracking | Crowdsourcing | Interdisciplinary Health Communication | March on Washington | Data-Driven Journalism | Digital Media and Political Campaigning | Media, Entrepreneurship and Reese News Lab | Media Effects: Under the Radar | The Irina Project | Political expression through digital media
Oct. 15, 2018
Political expression through digital media
Associate Professor Deen Freelon is an associate professor in the UNC School of Media and Journalism whose research covers two major areas of scholarship: 1) political expression through digital media and 2) data science and computational methods for analyzing large digital datasets.
June 21, 2018
The Irina Project
Associate Professor Barbara Friedman and Professor Anne Johnston lead a project to improve the quality of media coverage of sex trafficking.
Jan. 14, 2016
Media Effects: Under the Radar
This edition features Francesa Dillman Carpentier and her media effects research. Carpentier is the school's James H. Shumaker Term Professor and director of the Ph.D. program. She teaches mass communication theory and statistics, and she conducts research on mass media effects, audience responses to depictions of sex in media, and audience motivations governing media content choices.
March 24, 2015
Media, Entrepreneurship and Reese News Lab
John Clark, executive director of Reese News Lab, leads students from across disciplines at UNC through the processes of pre-startups. In the lab, students work to create new media products using a three-principle framework — desirability, feasibility and viability. Not only do Reese News Lab students create new products, they develop business models for those products. Two of those products, featured here, are Capitol Hound and Kinethics. Capitol Hound is a searchable audio archive and email alert system for the North Carolina General Assembly that allows subscribers access to the hours of legislative proceedings. Kinethics — a compliance training service that is culturally specific and interactive — provides exclusive employee feedback regarding the ethical status of the company. For more information about Reese News Lab, visit reesenewslab.org.
Dec. 1, 2014
Digital Media and Political Campaigning
Assistant professor Daniel Kreiss studies the effects of digital media on election processes and campaigns. His book — "Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama" — covered new media and Democratic political campaigning. He is working on a second book focused on Republican use of new media technologies. "Networked Ward Politics: Parties, Databases, and Campaigning in the Information Age" explores the role of digital media, data and analytics in contemporary campaigning, and frames the differences in the two parties' technological capacities.
Sept. 2, 2014
Date-Driven Journalism
Associate Professor Ryan Thornburg is working to compile North Carolina's public records at http://open-nc.org to facilitate data-driven journalism. His work will hopefully give journalists working at community newspapers and other news organizations the information needed to report important public record stories.
Aug. 30, 2013
March on Washington
Assistant professor Trevy McDonald is collecting the oral histories of black journalists who covered the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She is also conducting content analysis of Black Press coverage of the march to compare with coverage from mainstream press, and producing a documentary to tell the untold stories of the march.
April 29, 2013
Interdisciplinary Health Communication
A fundraising initiative is currently underway to raise $300,000 to enhance the Interdisciplinary Health Communication (IHC) program at the UNC School of Media and Journalism. The initiative is being launched as part of the retirement celebration for professor Jane Brown, a founding member of the IHC program.
March 8, 2013
Crowdsourcing
Assistant professor Daren C. Brabham studies crowdsourcing — "an online, distributed problem-solving and production model" — which many business organization have adopted.
Jan. 24, 2013
Eye tracking
Hugh Morton Distinguished Professor Laura Ruel studies the eye movements of people consuming news and information. Her eye tracking research can help journalists and communicators do a better job reaching their audiences.