A faculty-student-staff research/project team from the Center for Media & Social Impact (Caty Borum, Paula Weissman, David Conrad-Perez, L Miller, Aras Coskuntuncel, and Varsha Ramani) won a 2023 Anthem Award (Silver) for Purpose & Mission-Driven Work, in partnership with MTV Entertainment Studios and When We All Vote (Michelle Obama's civic engagement organization) for their collaborative study conducted by CMSI: Watching Out for Democracy: How Entertainment TV Portrays Civic Leadership and Civic Engagement in the United States. The Anthem Awards are a new prosocial award division of the Webby Awards, juried by a high-profile group that includes Tarana Burke (founder, #MeToo Movement), comedian Wyatt Cynac, Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, and humanitarian and actor Ashley Judd. Read more about the CMSI’s team award here: https://www.anthemawards.com/winners/list/entry/#!education-art-culture/research-projects-or-publications/watching-out-for-democracy-how-entertainment-tv-portrays-civic-leadership-and-civic-engagement-in-the-united-states/1980/30601/390216.
Benjamin Stokes gave a poster presentation to the AU Board of Trustees on the research of the Playful City Lab/Game Center in recent years. One representative came from each school on campus. You can view the poster PDF here.
The investigations and data editor at The Eagle, Abigail Turner, was chosen as the 2023 AU SOC White House Correspondents’ Investigative Journalism scholarship winner. The award includes $5000, an invitation to the annual gala in April, and a mentorship with someone inside the WHCA press corps. Associate Professor of Media, Democracy and Society Natalie Hopkinson, Director of the Journalism Division Amy Eisman, and Investigative Broadcaster in Residence Chris Halsne helped analyze the submissions. Read more here: https://www.american.edu/soc/news/standout-sophomore-selected-for-2023-soc-white-house-correspondents-scholarship.cfm
Earlier this week, the website Sci Fi Now published the official cover reveal and the first chapter of Aram Sinnreich’s forthcoming novel A Second Chance for Yesterday. (written with his sister Rachel Hope Cleves and to be released later this year): https://www.scifinow.co.uk/books/a-second-chance-for-yesterday-cover-reveal-and-sneak-peek-of-upcoming-time-travel-tale/
Aram also released a new song, entitled “Blurry Vision,” with his group Dunia & Aram. The song was written with David Ritz (coauthor of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”), and proceeds will benefit the American Stroke Association. You can stream the song for free here: https://duniaandaram.bandcamp.com/track/blurry-vision
Margot Susca gave an invited keynote Feb. 28 to a group of Pakistani journalists visiting the East Coast through a U.S. State Department-funded diplomacy program run by World Learning's International Visitor Leadership Program. Margot's talk, “Local news in crisis: On challenges and opportunities,” focused on the economic, political, and social fallout of U.S. hedge fund newspaper ownership with a look at nonprofit and independent news sites working in the void.
Margot also was quoted in a Feb. 23 article in The Christian Science Monitor about the rise of nonprofit news sites in the United States.
Jane Hall was honored for her research and writing about politics and media by students in the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. She gave a public lecture on her book, Politics and the Media: Intersections and New Directions, from CQ Press, and contemporary pressing issues in media and politics. She also interacted in several venues with students from the institute and from across the university.
Jane Hall was also interviewed on CNN about the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News.
Introducing Media in the Mix's second video episode on Spotify and starting the month of March off strong, Grace Ibrahim was joined by SOC's very own Kylos Brannon and director and founder of Rorschach Theater, Jenny McConnell Frederick to discuss the past three seasons of their theatre work and their new upcoming season of adventures!
Kylos is a company member with Rorschach Theatre and designs video projections for plays and is also on the creative team for "Psychogeographies", a 7-month long storytelling site specific experience that explores DC history, while following an ever-evolving story, which culminates in a live performance. Jenny is a Washington, DC-based director, producer and strong believer in impossible theatre. She is the founder and co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre as well as a member of Rorschach’s groundbreaking Distance Frequencies project.
Listen to their episode to learn more about the world of immersive theatre, their 20-year long friendship and what's next for Rorschach Theatre!
Wendy Melillo won a micro grant sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association and the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication to increase research at the intersection of diversity and media history. Melillo’s project will trace antisemitic language used by automaker Henry Ford and “Radio Priest” Father Charles Coughlin in the 1920s and 1930s. This historical study will be compared to more coded antisemitic terms used today in the increasingly visible world of extremist social media sites. The history study is part of a larger antisemitism project Melillo is working on with AU colleagues in the Department of Computer Science and Department of Government. The antisemitism project team won an incubator grant from AU’s Office of Research in the summer of 2022.
Gemma Puglisi was interviewed by WalletHub on the upcoming Oscars including the lack of diversity and who may take the trophy home this year.