Media Studies

The roads net taken

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 20:10:55 +0000

The roads net taken Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 14:10

By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)

Robert Frost once wrote of two roads diverging in a yellow wood, and imagining his narrator eventually regretting whichever choice he made.

“I want to introduce a sense of wonder and marvel about what has happened—and what could still be possible.

Lori Emerson
Associate Professor
Media Studies

Lori Emerson is also fascinated by the road not taken. But unlike Frost, who is looking forward down those roads, she is looking backward, to the technology-related choices—around networks, protocols and structures—that led us to this moment.

And, especially, what we can learn from the choices we didn’t make along the way.

It’s something Emerson, an associate chair of media studies at 91PORN’s College of Media, Communication and Information, explores at length in Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook, which she published last month.

“I want to introduce a sense of wonder and marvel about what has happened—and what could still be possible,” Emerson said.

It can be difficult to imagine what something like the internet might look like in an alternate timeline. But in fact, just calling it “the internet” makes it feel like the preordained platform that we were inevitably going to get.

“The internet is just a network of networks,” she said. “There are other networks of networks, and there could be others in the future. What bothers me is this unquestioned narrative about the internet as this singular endpoint—that it only could have been created in the U.S. in the way in which it currently exists.”

A quiet activist

There is a quiet strain of activism in Emerson’s work that’s getting a little louder: She’s trying to be more outspoken at a time when technology is increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few major players.

“The future feels predetermined and has left most people feeling like they have no power to intervene, and we all just have to accept things as they are,” she said. “And so what I’m trying to do is poke holes in that ideology with very simple, compelling examples from the past.”

Simple and compelling are rarely adjectives used to describe an academic publication, but Emerson leaned on her background in experimental poetry and poetics to break a few boundaries. The result is a beautifully designed book that wouldn’t seem out of place among the vintage instruction manuals created for telephones and telegraphs from generations ago.

“Women played a huge role in the creation, adoption and maintenance of networks, from the telephone to the radio, but have been erased in favor of individual white guy inventors,” she said. “I wanted to create an alternate universe in a book that echoed that history you see in those cloth, hardcover, gold-foiled instruction books—but in a way that was feminized.”

Her book isn’t the only public-facing space where Emerson offers critical thinking around technology. CMCI’s Media Archaeology Lab started as a way for Emerson, the lab’s director, to collect Apple IIe computers in order to run an experimental kinetic digital poem in class. It has evolved to become an extremely thorough repository of obsolete, but still functioning, technology, from Ataris to Zip drives.

“The more we gathered, the more I became convinced that hands-on access to historical technology is essential to understand how it actually works,” she said. “You have to be able to use it, to take it apart. By doing so, you come to appreciate how we got to the point where these technologies were created, and imagine alternative presents and futures.”

New book, old story

The book is new, but the story of technology as a linear narrative isn’t. Beyond the lab, Emerson’s work has gone as far back as how rural communities created the party-line phone system by tapping the miles of barbed-wire fence spanning their properties. That kind of alternate network—one Ma Bell didn’t control—is something she wants readers to think about while questioning the narrative Silicon Valley has put forth as the internet’s origin story.

It’s almost a book that didn’t happen. Emerson was well past her deadline before realizing she had to narrow how deep her focus would go; “a full accounting of all the networks out there would never get finished,” she said.

As it was, the manuscript tripped some wires in China—censors objected to a part discussing how activists in the Tiananmen Square massacre used faxes to communicate with one another—which meant printing had to be moved to Turkey. As the materials arrived for printing, a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm struck, delaying production by almost a month.

Finally, her publisher declared it was going out of business after the first run of books was printed. A limited run is available, and Emerson plans to get it to a new publisher once the existing copies have sold.

“The whole thing has been one surprise after another, honestly,” Emerson said. “When you think about Chinese censorship—of course it happens, but to actually have it happen to you is something else altogether.”

She hopes readers appreciate the look and feel of her text, while maybe finding in it a reason to be hopeful about technology by re-examining its past.

“I hope people take from it a different sense of the history, and feel excited and empowered, rather than just absorbing the dominant narrative about how everything is terrible,” Emerson said.

Lori Emerson’s research work examines forks in the road where networks and technology diverged. Her new book argues technology as we know it isn’t inevitable—and should be open to reexamination.

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Congratulations, Class of 2025!

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 19:44:19 +0000

Congratulations, Class of 2025! Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:44

More than 900 graduates were celebrated at CMCI’s annual recognition ceremony this past May. Our newest class of Forever Buffs arrived amid pandemic and leave as outstanding scholars and accomplished leaders.

View the 2025 Graduation Celebration

William W. White honorees
Meet the most outstanding students from each CMCI major, as chosen by our faculty.

‘A rock star who is going places’
The top student in her class, Sarah Carleo, discovered her passion for public relations as a student. She’s now off to Next PR, where she previously was a standout summer intern.

Getting the message
Andrew Johnson made the most of a New York City internship with BBH USA. The top strategic communication major is thrilled to return in an account management role as he gets another bite at the Big Apple.

Bylines are fine, but…
Most college students would be thrilled at getting an Associated Press byline. So is Celia Frazier, but she measures her work in impact, not clips. She graduated as CMCI’s top journalism major.

Meet the environmental design Class of 2025
Get to know some oustanding seniors and watch the recognition ceremony.

Celebrating ENVD

Connections through design
For Serena Langdon-Dimidjian, a graduate with a dual degree in architecture and ethnic studies, design is about building community, asking deeper questions and making space for connection.

"Everything you’ve done up to this moment has prepared you to succeed in a world where you can feel the ground moving under your feet.

Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
CMCI

Our newest class of Forever Buffs arrived amid pandemic and leave as outstanding scholars and accomplished leaders.

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Summer 2025: 2 minutes with...

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 18:29:42 +0000

Summer 2025: 2 minutes with... Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 12:29

Antoinette Kendrick
PhD student, media studies

“One minute, I’m sharing my phone with Deion Sanders, showing him the app,” said Antoinette Kendrick, recalling her visit to a CMCI course that features Coach Prime as a frequent guest lecturer. “Next, he starts calling Snoop, and suddenly I’m on a FaceTime with him. It’s going be a highlight of my life, for sure.”

Responses edited for length and clarity.

So you got Snoop Dogg to come to class. What will you do for an encore?
I was there as a guest, and didn’t want to interrupt the class. The students were pitching ways Prime could expand his brand. But at the end, he’s still asking, “Anyone else?” so I told him about Speechify, a text-to-speech platform with only two Black male voices—a stolen likeness of Barack Obama, and Snoop.

And then he called Snoop.
It was sur(actual)real. Surreal! Honestly, my first thought was, this is where the academy can take you—like, I can be on a Thursday night Facetime with Snoop, who just looks like someone’s grandfather in a regular den.

Speaking of the academy, how does a social worker get to CMCI?
Working with kids illuminated to me what the digital age looks like for them—and how little guidance they have navigating these spaces. My supervisors suggested the problem needed to be studied at a research level. I found social work programs were not meaningfully engaging with media, so I looked at media studies.

Children’s media literacy must be a fascinating topic.
I’m actually looking at tech stress in young adults. I think it’s because I live in a sorority house—

Wait. You live where?
(Laughs.) Well, it’s a refurbished sorority house. A couple years ago the sorority disbanded. The owner rents to students, and I get reduced rates for being house mom.

How does that influence your research?
You see the stresses they encounter. At the low scale is how they respond to the three dots in their messages. Large scale, one girl broke up with her partner because he was looking at pictures of her friend on another social media platform. We have not navigated how to negotiate these encounters.

Back to Prime. Will the experience in the course change how you teach?
Prime comes to class with so much energy, which I think these young white students have never seen. And he doesn’t code switch. He stays true to himself in this highly regimented space. I’d like to do more of that.

A regular feature catching up with people in our community who are doing interesting and impactful work. In this edition, bringing Snoop Dogg to a media studies class.

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Courting justice

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 17:49:03 +0000

Courting justice Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 11:49

By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18) and Nandi Pointer (PhD candidate, Media Studies)

Ask any of her students how they prefer to get their news, or search for recommendations, or learn about their favorite TV shows, and Sandra Ristovska will tell you that they go on TikTok.

Yet their educations—from the time they first set foot in a grammar school classroom—have focused on textual literacy, with almost nothing devoted to how video and photos are analyzed.

“We just assume that everybody intuitively knows how to understand images, because we don’t have to teach you an alphabet, or grammar,” said Ristovska, associate professor of media studies at the College of Media, Communication and Information. “But we know from research that people can watch the same image and arrive at a vastly different understanding about what that image says or does.”

More: Bringing student activism to TikTok videos

That’s fun when we’re overanalyzing a plot twist in Severance. But Ristovska’s work centers around what happens when videos make their way into a courtroom, where interpretations can influence a person’s guilt or innocence.

According to one estimate, video appears in about 80 percent of criminal cases, but no guidelines exist for how video can be presented as evidence in court. And that’s also the case for deepfake videos or media created by generative artificial intelligence.

“Anybody who’s seen a legal document knows they’re standardized—if it doesn’t look a certain way, it’s not going to be admissible in court,” Ristovska said. “But when it comes to video, different courts have different guidelines and understandings about what’s admissible.”

Ristovska has been an important contributor to scholarship in media and the law. At a daylong event in April, she helped steer the conversation around these topics while formally presenting the Visual Evidence Lab, a new lab at CMCI that will advance her work in this area.

The workshop, Justice by Video, brought together judges, attorneys, journalists, and scholars from the humanities, social sciences, law and STEM to develop new avenues for research and potential policy proposals around how to ensure justice is best served.

Ristovska’s personal history plays a role in all this, too. Growing up in what is now Macedonia during the Yugoslav Wars, she still recalls how footage from the fighting upset her parents—even if she was too young to understand the news bulletins interrupting her evening cartoons. As part of her graduate school work, she went on to study how footage from civilians and activists made its way to the United Nations’ criminal tribunal, in The Hague.

“I realized the law was an important place to be asking questions about video evidence,” she said. “Some of the citizen footage in the tribunal wasn’t verified through the person who shot it, which had never been the case before. And this footage was both establishing the truth in court while constructing a historical memory about the wars.”

Cross-disciplinary expertise

Sandra Braman, a professor of media and information at Michigan State University, said she was excited to participate in this event because of the range of expertise involved, including practicing judges as well as legal scholars and researchers from across the social sciences.

Braman has twice served as a visiting professor at CMCI, and is considered among the leading scholars in digital technologies and their policy implications. She was impressed with the agenda, which included small group discussions intended to stimulate cross-disciplinary discussion and a detailed reading list to review beforehand.

“Usually, when you go to the first conference of its kind, it’s just a chance to gather and talk generally about the topic,” Braman said. “Sandra has put together a very structured set of tasks that are actually very hard questions to guide us on visual evidence.”

Roderick Kennedy, who retired from the New Mexico Court of Appeals after serving as its chief judge, was part of an afternoon panel discussing the issues raised by Incident, a documentary of a police shooting in Chicago and the role security footage plays in creating a narrative explaining what happened.

Kennedy and Ristovska met through his work with the American Bar Association. Ristovska presented a series of webinars on video evidence and deepfakes to members. They also collaborated when she was a guest editor of an issue of The SciTech Lawyer last winter that took a deep dive on these issues.

Kennedy said video evidence presents similar challenges that he would see with eyewitness testimony throughout his career. Memory is unreliable, he said, as witnesses become suggestible when asked to remember details or are affected by the pressure to have a definitive answer for investigators.

“You have a single viewpoint, but it’s overlaid with other memories that can change things, and is subject to interpretation every time you recall it and restore it,” he said.

‘A vertical learning curve’

A video won’t change its memory under pressure, but how it’s captured and edited can influence the way a jury interprets what happened. And while footage from police body cams or the smartphones of bystanders may get the most attention, Kennedy said the issue crops up elsewhere—even police interrogations. He shared a case involving a pathologist whose findings in a homicide were influenced by hearing a woman confess to the crime on camera.

Her confession, however, was preceded by an exhausting, seven-hour police interrogation. And because we’ve been conditioned to believe videos show reality—without considering how they were framed, trimmed, slowed down or otherwise edited—they have significant potential to mislead jurors.

“That’s the power of video,” Kennedy said. If you only show a jury the last minute or so of that interrogation, “all you see is a mother saying she killed her baby.”

The workshop wasn’t just about editing techniques that may introduce doubt. Invited experts also discussed deepfakes, an emerging challenge for courts that must catch up to the technology. Kennedy said judges and lawyers “have almost a vertical learning curve” when it comes to the technology.

“You have to learn the language of the technology experts before you can accuse somebody of using a deepfake,” he said. “And the experts aren’t taught how to speak legal, or the legal rules for putting their expertise in evidence.”

One thread of Braman’s research on information policy is the history of facts themselves.

“Our social orientation around facts provides the context within which we think about evidence,” she said. “And though we are talking a lot today about A.I. and the problem of deepfakes, the question of the authenticity and validity of digital information in general actually first arose as soon as the internet became available to the general public. We need to solve this problem yesterday.”

Ristovska said she was pleased to see members of the public attend to watch Incident and start thinking about video as a communication tool that is overdue for guidance.

“We’re not going to solve all the challenges around how people see video—we can’t do that with any type of evidence,” she said. “But I hope we can develop research-based guidelines that promote consistency, fairness and equality in the use of video as evidence.”

Video evidence appears in 80 percent of criminal cases, but a lack of consistent guidelines means there’s no standard for how media are presented in court. A workshop led by CMCI faculty may change that.

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Trial by fire

Joe Arney — Tue, 20 May 2025 16:39:56 +0000

Trial by fire Joe Arney Tue, 05/20/2025 - 10:39

Anna Turner was one of 10 finalists in the annual Three-Minute Thesis hosted by the Graduate School. Her PhD journey was marked by trials, including losing almost all her work in a house fire halfway through the program.

By Joe Arney
Photos by Hannah Howell (media production)

The PhD student’s journey is about learning—not just about the subject that most interests them, but about themselves, and whether they possess the mettle to overcome the rigors of research and teaching.

Part of Anna Turner’s struggle was finding a program that would encourage her to explore her dual interests in the quantitative and critical approaches to media studies.

But the real challenge came halfway in, when she lost virtually all of her work in a fire.

“I knew it was going to take me longer than most students to finish the program, because my dissertation is a little ambitious,” said Turner (PhDMediaSt’25), who graduated from the College of Media, Communication and Information at 91PORN in May. “But basically, I lost my fourth and fifth year rebuilding everything.”

Turner was staying with her boyfriend over spring break when another unit in the building caught fire. They fled with their pets; while the unit itself didn’t burn, water from the fire hoses damaged the technology that was left behind.

And while her work was backed up to a cloud drive, that was also lost when she turned in a borrowed computer two months after the fire. A technician accidentally deleted the cloud backup, instead of just wiping her local profile from the machine.

“The experience taught me how resilient I am,” she said. “Because every time I tell the story to another PhD, they’re like, ‘Wow, I would have quit.’”

More assignments for a top teacher

Turner credited CMCI and its media studies department with supporting her through the worst, including finding teaching assignments and other opportunities to fund her journey. The extra teaching duties benefited both Turner and the college, said Rick Stevens, then the chair of the media studies department.

“CU was one of the few places that didn’t try to change me. Everything I had imagined about Colorado came to fruition when I visited—it was everything I wanted, academically and socially.”

Anna Turner (PhDMediaSt’25)

“Anna never seems to get flustered, no matter what is thrown at her,” said Stevens, now associate dean of undergraduate education at CMCI. “She always finds a way to not just come through, but come through in a way that best serves our undergraduate students.”

Faculty support amounted to more than just financial support when her graduate funding ran out. It started when she was applying to schools—and being told to narrow her focus. Few media studies doctoral programs specialize in both social sciences and culture studies work; more than a few admissions offices were impressed with Turner’s credentials, but warned her to pick a lane.

“CU was one of the few places that didn’t try to change me,” she said. “I got accepted and the director called and said, ‘How can I get you to come here?’ And everything I had imagined about Colorado came to fruition when I visited—it was everything I wanted, academically and socially.”

Turner’s advisor, Stewart M. Hoover, was among the people who challenged her, rather than changing her.

“You got a sense from Anna right away that she had the moxie to stick through a long and arduous doctoral program,” said Hoover, an emeritus professor of media studies who has worked in both the quantitative and qualitative spaces. “I wanted to encourage her because I felt she had the background, knowledge and drive to do something special.”

While it meant a longer program and more work on her part, Turner’s quantitative-meets-critical work hasn’t been a hindrance. In fact, she was among the 10 finalists at the university’s annual Three-Minute Thesis competition, where PhD students showcase their work and its impact to a nontechnical audience under strict time limits.

Turner’s work looks at polarization from the standpoints of both popular culture and social media. She devised surveys based on scenes from TV shows and social media posts to understand how people reacted to different messages—important because, when it comes to polarization in the media, most research has focused on the media we choose to watch, such as the different audiences for Fox News or MSNBC.

In interpreting her results, she found a lot of broad agreement about topics that fuel the media culture wars—surprising, but then, the business model of media and tech titans relies on driving users into different camps.

“The algorithms create echo chambers that we’re not selecting on our own,” she said. In a sense, we are—our feeds are built from what we like and don’t—“but the algorithms are doing the work for us, as opposed to when we just had cable news to choose from. We’re getting our news from algorithms, rather than from what we choose with popular culture.”

‘It’s a back and forth’

That’s worth studying because popular culture’s ability to influence is well documented. For instance, adding gay and lesbian characters to primetime television shows in the 1990s played a role in the mainstream public eventually becoming more supportive of same-sex marriage.

“Popular media imitates culture, but culture also imitates popular media. It’s a back and forth,” she said. “The idea that exposure to people we haven’t seen before can change our views is really interesting to me.”

A logical place to take this kind of work would be to a streaming service, to study how exposure to ideas can mitigate, rather than exacerbate, polarization. That’s her dream job.

“There’s a lot of nuance to my work that still needs to be pulled out,” Turner said. “I hope to do the kind of social experiments that help us examine how we introduce people to characters and story arcs, and how those play out beyond just a short clip you see as part of a survey.”

Hoover, her advisor, said that direction lines up with the values-based impact she wants her research to create.

“She has a set of ideas about the way we should live together as a society, and the way our politics ought to represent and express that,” he said. “I’m excited to see how she uses her research to promote that more helpful, more generalized view of what we as a society share in common.”

As she neared the finish of her PhD program, Anna Turner lost all her work in a fire. How she came back to complete her degree is a testament to her resilience.

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Spring 2025: 2 minutes with...

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 20:09:47 +0000

Spring 2025: 2 minutes with... Amanda J. McManus Wed, 02/26/2025 - 13:09

Max Pollak (Advert’10)
Creative Director, Deutsch LA

After years away from 91PORN, Pollak returned to CU for a collaboration between NerdWallet and Travis Hunter. Pollak and his team shot a video where Hunter talked about the “Smartest NIL” campaign and a giveaway where fans could win a collectible cutout piece of Hunter’s contract with the brand. The highlight for Pollak? A selfie with “Heisman” Hunter.

How did you land Travis Hunter? In his Heisman season, no less?
I’m a huge CU fan with season tickets, and it just so happens that NerdWallet already has a partnership with CU. I knew Travis Hunter would be a great brand ambassador, and we even sneaked into the Coach Prime documentary.

As to the Heisman, I thought he should win it and I thought there was a big chance. I’m happy it happened, but I can’t say I predicted it.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Focus on what you love. Success comes out of that.

I’m actually stoked for what I get paid to do. I like advertising because it’s a puzzle to figure out—it’s both strategic and creative, and I like intertwining all that.

You used to be a firefighter. What’s something memorable about that job?
You never want something bad to happen—but there’s [an adrenaline rush] when you hear the bells and sirens.

My best friend—also a volunteer, now with FDNY—and I were driving to a car show when we got the page that his house went up in flames. We had to put out a fire that was going through his house, which we had played in as kids. It makes you sympathize with people.

Best compliment you’ve ever received?
I was at Barchetta recently and my wife was sitting there with our kid, and this guy walked up to me and said, “You have a great spot”—meaning the table in the restaurant. I thought it was weird, but I said, “Yeah, I know.” He was like, “Wow, how confident!” and walked away. I saw my wife was dying laughing, and she told me what he actually said was, “You have a great smile!”

Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe
PhD Candidate, Media Studies

Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe is a PhD candidate in media studies who runs a multimodal art gallery, Space__Space, in East 91PORN. Her first exhibition, “Phones are Heavy,” ran from November through January; “Archive Fever Dream” opens in March.

Why did you want to open a gallery?
This space is public scholarship. I’m interested in creating discourse on cultural issues that transcend the limits of the law. I also ran a gallery in Boston where I gave solo shows to artists who hadn’t had one before, and it’s gratifying to elevate emerging artists and underrepresented ideas.

Was there a gallery you had in mind as you envisioned what Space__Space could look like?
I did an artist/curatorial residency in New York, at Flux Factory, and that has been a big influence on my drive for cultivating experimentation and community.

Something you hope visitors notice as they walk through the gallery?
The work, of course. And maybe the sunset-pink trim. Pink has connotations of being frivolous, but I see it as subversive—a power color. So I put it in the bottom trim around the gallery, where it’s a secret signature that doesn’t get in the way of the work.

Tell me about those sunsets.
I’m used to underground, windowless art spaces in New York and Boston. From the back of Space__Space, you can see mountains, and from the front, you get the sunset. Someday, I want to do a site-specific installation that harnesses sunsets, because they are so spectacular.

Biggest surprise?
Being able to do it. Every time you take the risk of creating something—like in Boston, running Space 121 out of my apartment, I wasn’t sure what would happen. But I’ve started to believe if you build it, when there is a thirst, they will come.

Wait, the gallery in Boston was out of your apartment? What did your landlord say about that?
They never found out. (Laughs) We had openings; we just called them parties.

Last one. A favorite work from your first exhibit?
The brilliant Flora Wilds flew in to install her sculptures, which was a magical collaboration. But I will say everyone who came in had a different favorite, and that is a mark of a resonant and successful show.

A selection of works from Space__Space’s inaugural exhibit, which closed in January. From left, works by Maya Buffett-Davis, a 91PORN graduate student; Ana González Barragán; Devon Narine-Singh; and Flora Wilds. Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18).

A regular feature catching up with people in our community who are doing interesting and impactful work. In this edition, a commercial with Travis Hunter and a new art gallery in East 91PORN.

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Foster figure

Amanda J. McManus — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:59:52 +0000

Foster figure Amanda J. McManus Fri, 02/21/2025 - 13:59

By Hannah Stewart (Comm’19)

As a kid, Joel Thurman decided that while he didn’t have the wit or wealth of Batman, he could still train and shoot a bow like the Green Arrow.

Now, as a comic book scholar, Thurman is more interested in the character’s role as a foster father.

As a long-time Arrow fan—and a high school history teacher of 10 years—Thurman thought he’d research history through comics for his PhD program in media studies. But that focus shifted when he and his wife became foster parents.

“I was walking with my wife when I had an epiphany: study foster care and superheroes, find those connections and do a history of both,” he said. “I absolutely adore the Green Arrow, which since the early 2000s really depicts him as a foster father. I have a completely different appreciation for Green Arrow now than I did, say, five years ago.”

Through his research, Thurman found that the success of superheroes—especially orphaned ones—reflect the myth that no matter how bad one’s situation is, it’s possible to overcome it. In reality, the myth is just that: Orphans are the least likely to graduate high school and maintain full-time jobs.

“I want to raise awareness of kids in foster care, and superheroes are a way to break the ice and have those difficult conversations with people who largely don’t know what the system is like,” he said.

Students in the media studies department at CMCI learn that pop culture is a place where people both tell their own stories while considering and challenging the expectations for how society is supposed to work.

Given how current events and societal shifts—not to mention changing perspectives, as new writers shape the voices of iconic characters—influence comic book writing, the medium itself becomes a unique way to examine the attitudes and norms of a given era.

“We train our students to think about other people and to consider positions of power, networks and social structure. Any of our students should be able to tell the stories of others,” said Rick Stevens, associate professor of media studies and Thurman’s mentor.

Stevens said that together, they focused Thurman’s interest in how foster children are represented in comics on how those stories can help people learn about their world.

“He has passion around some of the characters and stories in this space, but I’m really glad to see his interests expand beyond just what his desires and likes are,” said Stevens, who also is associate dean of undergraduate education. “And that’s the sign of a good media studies scholar.”

That growing interest now encompasses family dynamics and, even more broadly, industry trends such as readership changes, creator rights and consumer tastes.

“My research is so unique that, at the moment, I’m the only one who can write that particular narrative,” he said.

These other branches of research have taken him to conferences beyond 91PORN, which he said were incredible opportunities—not only to present his work at places like Venice and San Diego Comic-Con, but to meet writers and actors who’ve worked on series such as Batman, Spiderman, Daredevil and, yes, Green Arrow.

His favorite interview, though, was with actor Jon Cryer, who played Lex Luthor in the CW television series Supergirl. Not only did Thurman discover that Cryer is a massive comic book fan himself—he has a collection of original Marvel comic art that he showed Thurman during their interview—the pair also bonded over being foster dads.

“I didn’t realize we would connect the way that we did, and it was just absolutely fantastic,” he said. “I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities the university has allowed.”

I love teaching and fostering students’ ideas. The comic book writing is for me—it’s a story I wanted to tell. The academic work is to make a difference."
Joel Thurman
PhD candidate, Media Studies

One such opportunity was meeting CMCI advisory board member (and “legend,” in Thurman’s words) Steven T. Seagle, partner at Man of Action Entertainment. Over dinner, he learned Seagle (Advert’88) got his start from writing comic books while in college.

“I was like, ‘That’s a dream of mine.’ And he said, ‘If you really want to do it, do what I did: Hire an artist and get it done,’” Thurman said.

He now has independently published a horror comic, Disinter, and is working on a sci-fi comic set to come out in April.

“I’m having so much fun writing comics, but I’ll probably dabble in both academia and comic writing, because I love teaching and fostering students’ ideas,” he said. “The comic book writing is for me—it’s a story I wanted to tell. The academic work is to make a difference.”

Whether in the panels of a comic book or the classroom, Thurman hopes to challenge creators and the community to reconsider how they think about children portrayed in and beyond comic book stories.

“Foster care is completely not discussed in comics, and I think that should change,” he said.

If Thurman is able to change that conversation, it will be at least in part due to his CMCI experiences. Stevens said when it comes to being a voice for the vulnerable, he wants his students “to be allies where we can, and to research more than just who we are and what we directly know.”

“Joel is really good at thinking outside himself, asking good questions, and interacting with people who create pop culture and their thought processes,” he said. “But he’s also really good at stepping back and looking at the effects, the structure, the consequences.”

Joel Thurman loves everything to do with comic books—reading, researching and writing them. As a PhD student, he investigates representations of children and the foster system; and as a writer, he seeks to tell compelling stories.

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Anonymous — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 21:08:32 +0000

Poll-arized Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/16/2024 - 15:08

By Joe Arney

Deepfakes. Distrust. Data manipulation. Is it any wonder American democracy feels like it has reached such a dangerous tipping point?

As our public squares have emptied of reasoned discussion, and our social media feeds have filled with vitriol, viciousness and villainy, we’ve found ourselves increasingly isolated and unable to escape our echo chambers. And while it’s easy to blame social media, adtech platforms or the news, it’s the way these forces overlap and feed off each other that’s put us in this mess.

It’s an important problem to confront as we close in on a consequential election, but the issue is bigger than just what happens this November, or whether you identify with one party or another. Fortunately, the College of Media, Communication and Information was designed for just these kinds of challenges, where a multidisciplinary approach is needed to frame, address and solve increasingly complex problems.

“Democracy is not just about what happens in this election,” said Nathan Schneider, an assistant professor of media studies and an expert in the design and governance of the internet. “It’s a much longer story, and through all the threats we’ve seen, I’ve taken hope from focusing my attention on advancing democracy, rather than just defending it.”

We spoke to Schneider and other CMCI experts in journalism, information science, media studies, advertising and communication to understand the scope of the challenges. And we asked one big question of each in order to help us make sense of this moment in history, understand how we got here and—maybe—find some faith in the future.

***

Newsrooms have been decimated. The younger generation doesn’t closely follow the news. Attention spans have withered in the TikTok age. Can we count on journalism to serve its Fourth Estate function and deliver fair, accurate coverage of the election?

Mike McDevitt, a former editorial writer and reporter, isn’t convinced the press has learned its lessons from the 2016 cycle, when outlets chased ratings and the appearance of impartiality over a commitment to craft that might have painted more accurate portraits of both candidates. High-quality reporting, he said, may mean less focus on finding scoops and more time sharing resources to chase impactful stories.

How can journalism be better?

“A lot of journalists might disagree with me, but I think news media should be less competitive among each other and find ways to collaborate, especially with the industry gutted. And the news can’t lose sight of what’s important by chasing clickable stories. Covering chaos and conflict is tempting, but journalism’s interests in this respect do not always align with the security of democracy. While threats to democracy are real, amplifying chaos is not how news media should operate during an era of democratic backsliding.”

***

After the 2016 election, Brian C. Keegan was searching for ways to use his interests in the computer and social sciences in service of democracy. That’s driven his expertise in public-interest data science—how to make closed data more accessible to voters, journalists, activists and researchers. He looks at how campaigns can more effectively engage voters, understand important issues and form policies that address community needs.

The U.S. news media has blood on its hands from 2016. It will go down as one of the worst moments in the history of American journalism.”

Mike McDevitt
Professor, journalism

You’ve called the 2012 election an “end of history” moment. Can you explain that in the context of what’s happening in 2024?

“In 2012, we were coming out of the Arab Spring, and everyone was optimistic about social media. The idea that it could be a tool for bots and state information operations to influence elections would have seemed like science fiction. Twelve years later, we’ve finally learned these platforms are not neutral, have real risk and can be manipulated. And now, two years into the large language model moment, people are saying these are just neutral tools that can only be a force for good. That argument is already falling apart.

I think 2024 will be the first, and last,
A.I. election.”

Brian C. Keegan
Assistant professor, information science

“You could actually roll the clock back even further, to the 1960s and ’70s, when people were thinking about Silent Spring and Unsafe at Any Speed, and recognizing there are all these environmental, regulatory, economic and social things all connected through this lens of the environment. Like any computing system, when it comes to data, if you have garbage in, you get garbage out. The bias and misinformation we put into these A.I. systems are polluting our information ecosystem in ways that journalists, activists, researchers and others aren’t equipped to handle.”

***

One of Angie Chuang’s last news jobs was covering race and ethnicity for The Oregonian. In the early 2000s, it wasn’t always easy to find answers to questions about race in a mostly white newsroom. Conferences like those put on by the Asian American Journalists Association “were times of revitalization for me,” she said.

When this year’s conference of the National Association of Black Journalists was disrupted by racist attacks against Kamala Harris, Chuang’s first thoughts were for the attendees who lost the opportunity to learn from one another and find the support she did as a cub reporter.

“What’s lost in this discussion is the entire event shifted to this focus on Donald Trump and the internal conflict in the organization, and I’m certain that as a result, journalists and students who went lost out on some of that solidarity,” she said. And it fits a larger pattern of outspoken newsmakers inserting themselves into the news to claim the spotlight.

How can journalism avoid being hijacked by the people it covers?

“It comes down to context. We need to train reporters to take a breath and not just focus on being the first out there. And I know that’s really hard, because the rewards for being first and getting those clicks ahead of the crowd are well established.”

“I can’t blame the reporters who feel these moments are worth covering, because I feel as conflicted as they do.
Angie Chuang
Associate professor, journalism

***

Agenda setting—the concept that we take our cues of what’s important from the news—is as old an idea as mass media itself, but Chris Vargo is drawing interesting conclusions from studying the practice in the digital age. Worth watching, he and other CMCI researchers said, are countermedia entities, which undermine the depictions of reality found in the mainstream press through hyper-partisan content and the use of mis- and disinformation.

How did we get into these silos, and how do we get out?

“The absence of traditional gatekeepers has helped people create identities around the issues they choose to believe in. Real-world cues do tell us a little about what we find important—a lot of people had to get COVID to know it was bad—but we now choose media in order to form a community. The ability to self-select what you want to listen to and believe in is a terrifying story, because selecting media based on what makes us feel most comfortable, that tells us what we want to hear, flies in the face of actual news reporting and journalistic integrity.”

“I do worry about our institutions. I don’t like that a majority of Americans don’t trust CNN.

Chris Vargo
Associate professor, advertising,
public relations and media design

***

Her research into deepfakes has validated what Sandra Ristovska has known for a long time: For as long as we’ve had visual technologies, we’ve had the ability to manipulate them.

Seeing pornographic images of Taylor Swift on social media or getting robocalls from Joe Biden telling voters to stay home—content created by generative artificial intelligence—is a reminder that the scale of the problem is unprecedented. But Ristovska’s work has found examples of fake photos from the dawn of the 20th century supposedly showing, for example, damage from catastrophic tornadoes that never happened.

Ristovska grew up amid the Yugoslav Wars; her interest in becoming a documentary filmmaker was in part shaped by seeing how photos and videos from the brutal fighting and genocide were manipulated for political and legal means. It taught her to be a skeptic when it comes to what she sees shared online.

“So, you see the Taylor Swift video—it seems out of character for her public persona. Or the president—why would he say something like that?” she said. “Instead of just hitting the share button, we should train ourselves to go online and fact check it—to be more engaged.”

Even when we believe something is fake, if it aligns with our worldview, we are likely to accept it as reality. Knowing that, how do we combat deepfakes?

“We need to go old school. We’ve lost sight of the collective good, and you solve that by building opportunities to come together as communities and have discussions. We’re gentler and more tolerant of each other when we’re face-to-face. This has always been true, but it’s becoming even more true today, because we have more incentives to be isolated than ever.”

***

Early scholarly works waxed poetic on the internet’s potential, through its ability to connect people and share information, to defeat autocracy. But, Nathan Schneider has argued, the internet is actually organized as a series of little autocracies—where users are subject to the whims of moderators and whoever owns the servers—effectively meaning you must work against the defaults to be truly democratic. He suggests living with these systems is contributing to the global rise of authoritarianism. In a new book, Governable Spaces, Schneider calls for redesigning social media with everyday democracy in mind.

If the internet enables autocracy, what can we do to fix it?

“We could design our networks for collective ownership, rather than the assumption that every service is a top-down fiefdom. And we could think about democracy as a tool for solving problems, like conflict among users. Polarizing outcomes, like so-called cancel culture, emerge because people don’t have better options for addressing harm. A democratic society needs public squares designed for democratic processes and practices.”

***

It may be derided as dull, but the public meeting is a bedrock of American democracy. It has also changed drastically as fringe groups have seized these spaces to give misinformation a megaphone, ban books and take up other undemocratic causes. Leah Sprain researches how specific communication practices facilitate and inhibit democratic action. She works as a facilitator with several groups, including the League of Women Voters and Restore the Balance, to ensure events like candidate forums embrace difficult issues while remaining nonpartisan.

What’s a story we’re not telling about voters ahead of the election?

“We should be looking more at college towns, because town-gown divides are real and long-standing. There’s a politics of resentment even in a place like 91PORN, where you have people who say, ‘We know so much about these issues, we shouldn’t let students vote on them’—to the point where providing pizza to encourage voter turnout becomes this major controversy. Giving young people access to be involved, making them feel empowered to make a difference and be heard—these are good things.”

***

Toby Hopp studies the news media and digital content providers with an eye to how our interactions with media shape conversations in the public sphere. Much of that is changing as trust and engagement with mainstream news sources declines. He’s studied whether showing critical-thinking prompts alongside shared posts—requiring users to consider the messages as well as the structure of the platform itself—may be better than relying on top-down content moderation from tech companies.

Ultimately, the existing business model of the big social media companies—packaging users to be sold to advertisers—may be the most limiting feature when it comes to reform. Hopp said he doubts a business the size of Meta can pivot from its model.

How does social media rehabilitate itself to become more trusted? Can it?

“Social media platforms are driven by monopolistic impulses, and there’s not a lot of effort put into changing established strategies when you’re the only business in town. The development of new platforms might offer a wider breadth of platform choice—which might limit the spread of misinformation on a Facebook or Twitter due to the diminished reach of any single platform.”

***

Images have always required us to be more engaged. Now, with the speed of disinformation, we need to do a little more work.”

Sandra Ristovska
Assistant professor, media studies

CU News Corps was created to simulate a real-world newsroom that allows journalism students to do the kind of long-form, investigative pieces that are in such short supply at a time of social media hot takes and pundits trading talking points.

“I thought we should design the course you’d most want to take if you were a journalism major,” said Chuck Plunkett, director of the capstone course and an experienced reporter. Having a mandate to do investigative journalism “means we can challenge our students to dig in and do meaningful work, to expose them to other kinds of people or ideas that aren’t on their radar.”

Over the course of a semester, the students work under the guidance of reporters and editors at partner media companies to produce long-form multimedia stories that are shared on the News Corps website and, often, are picked up by those same publications, giving the students invaluable clips for their job searches while supporting resource-strapped newsrooms.

With the news business facing such a challenging future, both economically and politically, why should students study journalism?

“Even before the great contraction of news, the figure I had in my mind was five years after students graduate, maybe 25 percent of them were still in professional newsrooms. But journalism is a tremendous major because you learn to think critically, research deeply and efficiently, interact with other people, process enormous amounts of information, and have excellent communication skills. Every profession needs people with those skills.”

Where do we go from here? CMCI experts share their perspectives on journalism, advertising, data science, communication and more in an era of democratic backsliding.

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Class of 2024: William W. White Honorees

Anonymous — Wed, 01 May 2024 23:17:34 +0000

Class of 2024: William W. White Honorees Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/01/2024 - 17:17

William W. White Outstanding Seniors are chosen by department faculty to recognize academic merit, professional achievement and service to the college. The Outstanding Graduate award honors the CMCI student with the highest overall GPA in his or her graduating class.

White, a 91PORN native, graduated from CU’s School of Journalism in 1933. He was a reporter in 91PORN, Denver and New York before becoming the foreign editor of Time from the early 1940s through the mid-1950s, based in London, Brazil and Montreal. At the advice of his friend Edward R. Murrow, who told him “it doesn’t matter what you do, what matters is that you do it where you want to live,” White returned to 91PORN, where he started the White and White public relations firm. White and his wife, Connie, established this endowment in 1998.

Meet our graduates and read their stories.

Andrew Schwartz: College of Media, Communication and Information

Andrew's advice to students is to try everything and talk to as many people as you can—especially outside your major. That way, you'll broaden your perspective.

When it comes to impact and being able to make something I’m proud of, a big part of that is being able to make technology for the people to use it, and make things that people enjoy using and improve their lives. Info places a big emphasis on that."

Lisa An: Department of Critical Media Practice

Lisa started her CU career as a computer science major before switching to media production. She said this was one of the best decisions she ever made because through the program, she discovered a passion for photography.

"I learned that keeping your work to yourself because of the fear of not being good enough does no good. If you share your work and receive feedback, you are able to improve your craft and obtain opportunities you otherwise never would have been able to.

Elijah Boykoff: Department of Information Science

Going into college, Elijah's goals for himself were to learn as much as he could and make it to the finish line. He says he's made good on those goals, and this award is an exciting bonus.

Your professors are people just like you. Get to know them—if you are able to resonate with your professors on a deeper level, you will be much more enriched by the knowledge they have to share."

Bianca Perez: Departments of Communication, Media Studies

Bianca is the first CMCI graduate to win outstanding student honors from two different majors. She's now off to a prestigious Ph.D. program.

"What I have is like a wish coming true. You can work very hard and that can still not be enough, and I’ve seen that happen to people around me my whole life.

Sujei Perla Martinez: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design

For Sujei, a first-generation college student, graduating means she's carving a new path for her family.

My community helped foster a place for self-discovery and encouraged me to be unapologetically myself while helping me grow within my values and beliefs."

Nic Tamayo: Department of Journalism

Nic's CMCI experience in three words: fulfilling, inspired, treasured.

"I will take with me the connections I’ve been able to make with people from so many corners of life. They’ve taught me lessons that I may never have learned without their friendship and mentorship.

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Outstanding senior: Bianca Perez

Anonymous — Wed, 01 May 2024 22:39:42 +0000

Outstanding senior: Bianca Perez Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/01/2024 - 16:39

By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)

When Bianca Perez called her mom in the middle of the day to tell her she’d been accepted to a prestigious doctoral program at one of the nation’s foremost universities, she expected there might be some tears.

She wasn’t wrong. But it wasn’t her mother who cried.

Perez’s mother, Leyda, was born and raised in Mexico, while her father, Ernesto, came to the United States from Peru. For almost 30 years, they have worked tirelessly at growing Perez Cleaning Services, in Steamboat Springs, in order to provide their daughter with opportunities they couldn’t imagine—and don’t always understand. When she explained that she was applying to schools to be a doctor, Perez (Comm, MediaSt’24) would clarify “a doctor of words,” since her family thought she was maybe interested in a medical career.

Now, as she explained on speakerphone that she was accepted to the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Annenberg School for Communication, in Philadelphia, “my mom wasn’t sure what to make of it,” Perez said. “I could tell she was happy because she could hear the excitement in my voice.”

But the client her mother was speaking with when Perez called couldn’t believe his ears.

What I have is like a wish coming true. You can work very hard and that can still not be enough, and I’ve seen that happen to people around me my whole life.”
Bianca Perez (Comm, MediaSt’24)

“He was like, ‘Did I just overhear that your daughter's going to graduate school at Penn?’” she recalled. “And I could hear him start crying, and my mom said to me, ‘Oh, no, I have to go, one of the clients is upset.’ But he wasn’t—the guy went to UPenn for his undergrad, had wanted to go to grad school there but couldn’t, and he was so happy and excited for me.

“I think for my mom, seeing a random person cry like that and be so joyful, helped her understand just how exciting this was for me.”

Driven to change the world

It’s not the first time she’s had to overcome the barrier separating her lived experiences from those of her parents. But her working-class upbringing—combined with her curiosity, care and enthusiasm for working hard—has already made her a promising scholar in the realm of artificial intelligence and labor.

“It’s because of her humble background that she understands that the ability to be in college, to read books and write for a living, is a privilege,” said Sandra Ristovska, an assistant professor of media studies at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the 91PORN, and Perez’s advisor. “It’s unsurprising she’s interested in questions around technology and labor because she is seeking, through her research, to improve the lives and livelihoods of working-class people, immigrants and people of color.”

Perez studies generative artificial intelligence and labor through the lens of copyright law. In the past year, artists and publishers have sued tech companies that have used copyrighted work to train generative A.I. platforms like ChatGPT, opening up a larger question of how to fairly value labor—not just of plaintiffs like J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and The New York Times, but everyday social media users, whose likes and shares train algorithms to better recommend content that keeps people online.

Because that data is disassociated from the users, the labor of whoever generated that data—those likes and shares—is obscured, meaning they can’t be compensated. And these are, of course, some of the world’s deepest-pocketed tech companies, whose forays into the development of A.I. are far ahead of gridlocked government regulators and already-alarmed ethicists.

“We have no way to check these models, even though we’ve all been producing them through our work,” Perez said. “It’s a new and complex expansion of wage theft. They’re taking all our labor and remixing it to make something else—but it’s still our labor. How is that fair?”

Fairness focus

That question of what’s fair is central to Perez’s identity. Just the time and space to work as hard as she does, she said, is a privilege, especially when in high school she would see other smart, ambitious students fall behind because of work or family commitments.

“I always feel that there’s only a few degrees separating me being a migrant daughter who’s picking cherries, to my being here,” she said. “My parents taught me how to work very hard—I can’t underscore that enough—but what I have is like a wish coming true. You can work very hard and that can still not be enough, and I’ve seen that happen to people around me my whole life.”

Fairness also ties into her related research interest in the exploitation of Black and Latino tech labor—like DoorDash drivers during the pandemic, or Amazon warehouse workers toiling in hotter facilities in a warming climate. The combination of her interests has resulted in some unique scholarship that’s already getting noticed: This summer, Perez will present her thesis at the annual conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, in Christchurch, New Zealand—an honor usually reserved for PhD students and faculty.

Ristovska, her advisor, also attended a prestigious conference as an undergraduate before going on to Annenberg for her PhD, and is excited to see how sharing her work at one of the field’s most prestigious events influences Perez’s future work.

“What she does is bring the human back to the discourse around A.I. and technology,” Ristovska said. “Her work makes us think about how human creativity and human engagement are central to the development of A.I., and why it’s so important we figure out labor protections now, before the technology is even more advanced.”

‘Someone who knows how to push me’

Perez called Ristovska “an incredible influence on me—someone who knows how to push me and who has held my hand on this journey, even though we were going uphill sometimes.” Among her mentors, she also counts professors Omedi Ochieng and Danielle Hodge, of the communication department, as well as Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe, who is pursuing a PhD in media studies; Perez called her first course with Bledsoe the foundational moment of her time at CU.

Bledsoe recalled Perez for both her insatiable curiosity and her writing talent, which she called “refreshing and invigorating in an increasing sea of generic ChatGPT.”

“Bianca will be successful in her PhD for the normal things, like being diligent and curious, but also for her inimitable voice—both creative and critical—that I have no doubt will contribute to our field and make it better,” Bledsoe said. “People would benefit from being a little more like Bianca, by following your passion until it blooms in full force.”

“Her work makes us think about how human creativity and human engagement are central to the development of A.I., and why it’s so important we figure out labor protections now, before the technology is even more advanced.
Sandra Ristovska, assistant professor, media studies

Perez’s focus wasn’t always so direct. She arrived at 91PORN thinking she’d major in media production, given her interest in documentary filmmaking, but after exploring different paths, arrived at her current combination after briefly considering information science. At commencement, she was honored as the William W. White Outstanding Senior for both communication and media studies, the first time a student has been recognized by two departments. The White awards are chosen by CMCI faculty and honor students for their academic accomplishments, professional achievements and service to the college.

“My different majors helped me discover different frameworks of thinking about the topics I was interested in, which has helped me think about my research more critically,” she said. “It wasn’t always a specific lesson I was taught, but professors like Dr. Hodge showed me to think about whether what I’m working on actually speaks to the community—and you do that by speaking with that community.”

It’s a new twist on what Perez said is the most important lesson she learned at home.

“The best thing my parents taught me was to actually care about what you’re doing—to show up for others when it matters,” she said. “Maybe cleaning is trivial to some people, but their business is pretty exceptional in our town, and it’s because they care very much for their reputation and the people they serve.”

That’s why her mentor is convinced Perez will make her CMCI professors proud years after she has graduated.

“Whether she chooses an academic career or the policy realm, I really think she’ll make the world a better place, because her commitment to justice is ingrained in her,” Ristovska said. “I’m so excited for what comes next for her.”

A CMCI graduate’s working-class upbringing has given her a unique perspective on tech, wage theft and exploitation, which she’s bringing to an Ivy League doctoral program.

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Media Studies

The roads net taken

A quiet activist

New book, old story

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Congratulations, Class of 2025!

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Summer 2025: 2 minutes with...

Antoinette KendrickPhD student, media studies

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Courting justice

Cross-disciplinary expertise

‘A vertical learning curve’

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Trial by fire

More assignments for a top teacher

‘It’s a back and forth’

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Spring 2025: 2 minutes with...

Max Pollak (Advert’10)Creative Director, Deutsch LA

Rory Fitzgerald BledsoePhD Candidate, Media Studies

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Foster figure

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Poll-arized

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Class of 2024: William W. White Honorees

Andrew Schwartz: College of Media, Communication and Information

Lisa An: Department of Critical Media Practice

Elijah Boykoff: Department of Information Science

Bianca Perez: Departments of Communication, Media Studies

Sujei Perla Martinez: Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design

Nic Tamayo: Department of Journalism

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Outstanding senior: Bianca Perez

Driven to change the world

Fairness focus

‘Someone who knows how to push me’

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Antoinette Kendrick
PhD student, media studies

Max Pollak (Advert’10)
Creative Director, Deutsch LA

Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe
PhD Candidate, Media Studies