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UNC Hussman at AEJMC 2023 in Washington

August 7, 2023

Numerous students, faculty members and alumni are in Washington, D.C., this week, representing the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the 106th Annual Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference.

UNC Hussman scholars will participate in panel sessions and present authored or co-authored papers throughout the conference, which runs Aug. 7-10. They will also gather alongside nearly 40 graduate alumni for a breakfast Tuesday morning. Several faculty, students and alumni will be recognized for honors and awards during the conference, including Professor Rhonda Gibson, who won a teaching-ideas competition.

The conference marks the end of Associate Professor Deb Aikat’s term as AEJMC president. He was joined on the AEJMC Board of Directors in 2022-23 by Susan Keith ’03 (Ph.D.), past president; Melita Garza ’12 (Ph.D.), Research Committee chair; Meredith Clark ’14 (Ph.D.), Council of Divisions vice chair; Karla Gower ’99 (Ph.D.), Council of Affiliates chair; and Dean Raul Reis, ASJMC president.

UNC Hussman faculty and student awards and activities at AEJMC are listed below, along with some awards received by alumni. The full program of AEJMC sessions is available on the conference website.

Awards and honors

Students, faculty and alumni

  • Ryan Comfort ’14 (M.A.) placed second in the Minorities and Communication Division paper competition.
  • Monica Crawford ’23 (M.A.) will be recognized for the top student paper in the Sports and Communication Interest Group.
  • Rhonda Gibson placed first in the full-time faculty division of the Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century teaching-ideas competition.
  • Ph.D. student Evan Ringel ’21 (M.A.), Tori Ekstrand ’03 (Ph.D.) and Deborah Dwyer ’22 (Ph.D.) placed third in the Law & Policy Division faculty paper competition for “Public Education, Moral Panics, and First Amendment Values: A Case Study of Anti-Critical Race Theory Legislation.”
  • Teresa Tackett '22 (Ph.D.) will receive the Mass Communication and Society Dissertation Award.
  • Alexis Romero Walker ’22 (Ph.D.) will receive the Distinguished Educator Award from the Mass Communication and Society Division.
  • M.A. student Clay Williams received the Diversity and Inclusion Career Development Fellowship for Graduate Students from the Mass Communication and Society Division.

Presentations and panels

Students (returning and newly graduated) and faculty

Monday, Aug. 7

  • Monica Crawford will present “Anti-Gay Legislation and the First Amendment: A Statutory Analysis of 2021-2022 Anti-gay Curriculum Laws.”
  • Raul Reis will moderate the panel “The Long-term Sustainability and Relevance of JMC Education and Programs.”
  • Undergraduate student Eleazar Yisrael will present “India’s Culture and Immigrants’ Use of Social Media to Assimilate.”

Tuesday, Aug. 8

  • Deb Aikat will moderate the presidential panel “Fostering Freedom & Defending Democracy: AEJMC’s Impact Over 110 Years and Beyond” and the panel “Media, Trust and Democracy.”
  • Graduating Ph.D. student Erik Brooks and Deb Aikat will present “Why (Not) Be a Journalist? Investigating the (De)motivations of Modern Media and Journalism Students.”
  • Monica Crawford will present “Complicating the Sk8rgrl: Asymmetrical Visibility of Feminisms in Olympic Skateboarding.”
  • Ph.D. student Heesoo Jang will present “Understanding Americans’ TikTok Privacy Concerns, Resistance, and Rejection via their Country Reputation of China.”
  • Daniel Kreiss will serve on the panel “‘Now, I Am #viral’ - Examining Safety, Privacy, and Professionalization for Graduate Students on the Front Lines of Media.”
  • M.A. student Kexin Li will present “Uses and Gratifications for VR Games: An Analysis of the Online Comments of Beat Saber.”
  • M.A. student Clay Williams will present “How COVID-19 Affected LGBTQ+ Mediated and Interpersonal Relationships.”
  • Xinyan (Eva) Zhao and co-authors will present “How political ideology affects the communication of organizational relations: A social network approach.”

Wednesday, Aug. 9

  • Deb Aikat and co-author will present “Becoming a Training Ground for AI: How China, India, and the U.S. Compete in the Convergence of AI and Journalism.”
  • Deb Aikat will moderate the presidential address panel “In Media We Trust. Or, Do We?: Truth and Bias in the News Media”; Chris Gentilviso ’19 (M.A.) will be among the panelists.
  • Shelvia Dancy will present “Teaching Facilitation Skills to Journalism Students.”
  • Tori Ekstrand and Evan Ringel will serve on the panel "Academic Freedom and Democracy: Struggles in Higher Education.”
  • Rhonda Gibson will present “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ Framing of Support for the Respect for Marriage Act” and serve on the panel "Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century."
  • Marisa Porto will serve on the panel "Journalism Trauma Research."
  • Evan Ringel, Tori Ekstrand and Deborah Dwyer will present for “Public Education, Moral Panics, and First Amendment Values: A Case Study of Anti-Critical Race Theory Legislation.”
  • Ph.D. student Sarah Whitmarsh ’08 (M.A.) will present “Dynamics of Journalist Interventionism: Analysis of Democracy Attributes Using the 2019 Worlds of Journalism Study.”

Thursday, Aug. 10

  • Amanda Reid and Ph.D. student Jessica Shaw will present “A Systematic Scoping Review of Online Privacy Policies Studies: Domains, Methods & Money.”
  • Amanda Reid and M.A. student Noelle Wilson will present “Operationalizing Data Fiduciaries: Definitions & Burdens of Proof.”
  • Xinyan (Eva) Zhao and co-authors will present “Unveiling the impact of network structure on misinformation diffusion among bots and human users.”

Know of an additional UNC Hussman AEJMC award-winner? Email us at mjgrad@unc.edu.

Home page banner image of the Washington, D.C., Metro by Thomas Hawk (CC BY-NC 2.0)