Riffe honored by AEJMC for commitment to mass comm research

UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media Richard Cole Eminent Professor Dan Riffe received the Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award — one of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s (AEJMC) highest honors — during the 2014 AEJMC conference in Montréal.

The Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award was created by the AEJMC Elected Standing Committee on Research to recognize a person who has devoted a substantial part of his or her career to promoting research in mass communication. Riffe was selected because of his service to the field and his work with graduate students, and to AEJMC and its flagship publication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

The award honors its first recipient, Eleanor Blum, a long-time communication librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It has not been awarded since 2008. The school’s Peggy Blanchard is a past recipient.

Riffe joined the school in 2008 as the first Richard Cole Eminent Professor. His teaching and research areas include mass communication theory and research methodology, mass communication and environmental risk, international news, government-press relations, citizen journalism, and the treatment of women and minorities in the media.