2010 - 2011 Scholars
Lucy Abbott
Lucy M. Abbott is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) at Durham University, U.K. and will be spending the Fall 2010 semester with CGCS. As part of her PhD training, she studied Arabic at the University of Edinburgh and Kalimat Language Centre in Cairo, Egypt. She holds a BA (Hons) in Modern European Languages and a Master’s in International Relations (Middle East), also from Durham.
Her research focuses on Arab countries’ contemporary experiences of mass media and politics from a theoretical perspective. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the role of transnational Arab satellite television as a non-state actor catalyzing or stifling public debate. Other research interests include critical media studies, cyberpolitics, media regulation and political theory.
Her most recent paper presentations include ‘The Structural Idealization of the Arab Public Sphere’ in March 2010 at the Eleventh Mediterranean Research Meeting at the European University Institute and ‘Jordanian Youth in Cyberspace: Modes of Expression in the ‘Arab Public Sphere’' in June 2010 at the ‘e-Arabic and Cyberspace: The Marginalized Voices’ symposium at Durham.
Etienne Candel
Etienne Candel is in charge of the Digital Media Communication Master’s Program and research development at CELSA (the Graduate School of Journalism and Communication – Sorbonne University, France). His research focuses on the links between digital innovations and cultural transformations. Specific questions that he analyzes include how digital media transforms traditional mediations and how the legacy of social mediations, in return, elaborates and “fills” these media. Candel is also working on the practices and social representations of marketers when developing communication strategies, especially using new media. He is an Alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm) and of the Political Science Institute of Paris (Sciences Po).
For the past seven years, Etienne Candel has specialized in the analysis of relations between digital innovation and cultural transformations. His doctoral thesis (2007) focused on a semiotics approach to online participatory literary criticism. The overarching goal of his research is to understand how cultural traditions and inherited mediations get affected and modified by the fact that they are now written by digital media, and how they inspire these global writing practices.
He has recently questioned the effective impact of technical innovation on reading practices, and the way people use cultural objects to identify themselves on social networking sites. As a major result of these studies, he argues that the generalized use of connotation is a means to gain social and symbolic value.
His research stresses digital culture phenomena including matching between social media users, creative editing structures such as tagclouds, and forms and genres like portals, blogs or micro-blogging platforms. He focuses on interpreting and understanding the different dimensions of media – social, semiotic and technical issues that compose websites or any kind of digital media form as a complex object that requires an in-depth analysis from historical and social perspectives.
Oulai Bertrand Goué
Oulai Bertrand Goué is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France. His research focuses on media ethics in a context of a civil war, and consists of a comparative study of the coverage that the Ivorian, French, British and U.S. press gave to the crisis in the Cote d'Ivoire from 2002 to 2007. A Cote d'Ivoire native, Goué plans to propose a blueprint that would help manage the impact that the media have in conflict zones. The ultimate objective of his work is to contribute to building and reinforcing post-conflict stability and democracy in Africa and other regions of the world.
Goué holds an M.A. in Companies and Institutions Communication from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle (France), a B.A. in Political Science and Communication from the University of Versailles (France), a B.Sc. in Business from the Paris Graduate School of Management (France) and a degree in Companies Communication from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce et de Gestion des Entreprises (Cote d'Ivoire). He has professional experience with global PR agencies (Winters Advertising & Public Relations in the United States, and Lowe Stratéus and Occurrence in France) and with the UNDP in Cote d'Ivoire.
Eleanor Marchant
Eleanor Marchant is a joint Visiting Scholar at the Center for Global Communication Studies and the Programme for Comparative Media Law & Policy (PCMLP) at Oxford University.
Eleanor most recently served as the Program Officer for Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF), a New York-based nonprofit that funds developing world journalism. There, she helped MDLF develop its approach to supporting new and online media and also directed an evaluation of the organization’s impact on independent media.
Eleanor has also previously worked as a Visiting Fellow at the Media Institute, an east African press freedom organization based in Kenya. Here she covered the media during the 2007 Kenyan presidential election for the Institute’s quarterly media review magazine, Expression Today, and served as the Assistant Editor for the magazine’s first edition covering the post-election violence.
Since 2007, Eleanor has also consulted for Freedom House as a West African analyst for the organization’s annual surveys – Freedom in the World and Freedom of the Press. Prior to that she worked for Freedom House as the Assistant Editor for the Freedom of the Press survey and as a Research Associate focused on media freedom and civic movements.
Manuel Puppis
Dr. Manuel Puppis is a senior research and teaching associate and the managing director of the division “Media & Politics” at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ), University of Zurich, Switzerland. He will be visiting CGCS as a Short Term Visiting Scholar in January and February 2011. Puppis holds a PhD in Communication Science and an M.A. in Communication Science (major subject), Political Science and Economic and Social History (minor subjects) from the University of Zurich.
His research interests include media policy, media regulation and media governance, media systems in a comparative perspective, political communication and organization theory. Puppis wrote his PhD thesis about self-regulatory organizations in the media sector, focusing on press councils in European countries. He is currently involved in a 4-year research project called “Internationalization, mediatization, and the accountability of regulatory agencies” which is funded by the National Center of Competence in Research “Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century”, a multi-disciplinary research program launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
His publications include: “Media Governance: A New Concept for the Analysis of Media Policy and Regulation” (Communication, Culture & Critique 2010); the special issue “Media Diversity in Small States – Limited Options for Media Regulation?” (International Communication Gazette 2009; with Leen d’Haenens); “National Media Regulation in the Era of Free Trade. The Role of Global Media Governance” (European Journal of Communication 2008); the student text book “Introduction to Media Policy” (in German, UVK 2010) as well as the forthcoming volume “Trends in Communication Policy Research. New Theories, Methods and Subjects” (ECREA Book Series, Intellect 2011; with Natascha Just).
Ermitte St. Jacques
Ermitte St. Jacques is a National Science Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communication.
She recently received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Florida. Her dissertation research concerns the relationship between the economic integration of Senegalese and Gambian immigrants in Catalonia, Spain and their participation in transnational activities that enable them to maintain multiple social ties with their countries of origin. At CGCS/ASC Ermitte will examine the influence of new media and mobile communication technologies in the maintenance of transnational ties.
Guoming Yu
Professor Guoming Yu is vice dean of Journalism and Communication School of Renmin University of China. He is also the director of the Public Opinion Studies Center of Renmin University of China. Under his direction, the center initiated opinion research and polling as well as hundreds of leading projects for main-stream media and governments.
Professor Yu’s research interests include communication methodology, media economics, public opinions and new media. He has published 15 books and more than 300 papers.
He is the president of China Media Economics and Management Association, vice president of Chinese Association of Communication, standing director of China Youth Research Association. He is also the adjunct professor of Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, Communication University of China, Fudan University and so on.
Yonghua Zhang completed her undergraduate studies at Yunnan Normal University in 1977 (when Mainland China had not yet started the degree-conferring system in its universities). She obtained an M.A. in English language and literature (Shanghai International Studies University, 1983) and a Ph.D. in communication studies (Fudan University, Shanghai, 2003), was a Fulbright senior-level research visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California from March 1995 to January 1996, and a Rockefeller visiting scholar in residence at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Coma (near Milan), Italy from August to September 1999. She is currently a professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Communication, School of Film and TV Art & Technology, and Director of the Center for International Communication Studies and Vice Director of the Film, TV and Media Research Institute, Shanghai University. She is also Vice President of the Chinese Association of Global Communication (CAGC) affiliated with the Chinese Society of Journalism History.
She has taught in Yunnan Normal University (1977-1980), Shanghai International Studies University (1983-2003) and Shanghai University (2004 to present). During her academic career, Professor Zhang has published over 90 academic papers, several books and a number of book chapters. Her research areas are: mass communication theories, international and intercultural communication, and Internet communication.
Paolo Cavaliere
Paolo Cavaliere is a joint visiting scholar at Penn Law School and CGCS.
Paolo Cavaliere earned a PhD in International Law and Economics at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. As a Teaching Fellow, he has taught Public Law, Italian and European Constitutional Law, Media Law, Regional Law and Constitutional Justice. He also holds a law degree from the University of Pavia and an LLM in Public Law from University College, London.
As his main background is in constitutional law, his main research interests are e-democracy and regulation of media pluralism. He is currently developing research on the different regulative toolkits in the news market within the European Countries and their effectiveness in enhancing pluralism and fostering a supranational European identity.
He is also member of the scientific advisory board of the newly launched Medialaws.eu, a website which aims to provide a forum for discussion within the international community of media lawyers.
Nurhan Kavakli
Nurhan Kavakli is a PhD student in Journalism at the Faculty of Communication at Ankara University, Turkey. Her dissertation research focuses on the Internet as a public sphere and consists of a comparison of old media and the Internet. Her research interests include the media and globalization, the history of Turkish journalism and new media and journalism.
She is the author of The History of a Newspaper: Aksam and she has published several papers in Turkish academic journals, including Culture and Communication and Social History.
She holds two MA’s, one in journalism from Northeastern University (Boston), and another in Broadcasting and Communication from Marmara University (Istanbul). She received her BA from the Faculty of Communication at Istanbul University. Before starting her doctorate study, she worked as a journalist at Cumhuriyet, a national daily newspaper in Turkey.
Xu Linjia (Mabel)
Xu linjia is a PhD candidate specializing in Media and Social Development at the School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China in Beijing. Her research interests include: health communications, brand communications and public opinions. She is concentrating on designing effective public service announcements and communications about public health emergencies. She has also worked on measuring audience’s reactions to different mediums with ERP experiments.
She has published several papers in leading Chinese academic journals, including the Journal of International Communication, Editor’s Friend, Press Outpost, and Modern Advertising. She is also an editorial board member of the book Marketing Revolution - Review of the New Media Era of Marketing Case, Renmin University Press (2009.10). She has conducted a number of research projects on brand communications and public opinions for medium, governments and companies.
She holds a MA in media economics and a BA in broadcasting and communications, both from the School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China.
Yang Chen
Dr. Yang Chen is an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China (RUC) in Beijing. She is also a research fellow at the Research Center of Journalism and Social Development at RUC, and the editor of the Journal of International Communication. In 2008, she and her colleagues initiated the First National Youth Communication Scholars Conference in Beijing. The second conference was held in Shanghai in 2009, and the third conference will be held in Nanjing in October 2010.
According to the search result of CNKI (1978-2006), a leading academic database in Chinese, she is the most-cited researcher in journalism and communication studies born in the 1970s. When she entered into the academic field a decade ago, her research interest was gender and communication. Now her research interests have turned to political communication, media and social transformation, the index of media performance in China and quantitative research methods. Her most recent publications include papers on the transformation of professionalism in Chinese journalism, new media and citizenship in China, and the neo-liberalist telecommunication policy turn in China during the past decade. During her visit to Annenberg, she will focuses on the media effect on Chinese youth in a globalized society.
She holds a BA and MA in journalism from the School of Journalism and Communication at RUC and a PhD degree from the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Zhang Haihua
Zhang Haihua is a PhD candidate specializing in Media Study at the School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University in China. Haihua is doing a comparative study of TV news formats of China mainland, Taiwan and the US. Her research interests include TV journalism, intellectuals in the public space, new media and social change. At CGCS, she plans to continue her research project and also focus on TV media participation of intellectuals. Haihua received her BA and MA from the School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China. After receiving her degrees she worked for an investigative column called News Probe at China Central Television (CCTV) for more than three years.
2009 - 2010 Scholars
Carla Ganito
Carla Ganito is currently a PhD candidate in Communication Sciences at Portuguese Catholic University. Her thesis addresses questions of gender and technology, focusing on the gendered use and representation of the mobile phone. Ganito has lectured at the Human Sciences Faculty of the Portuguese Catholic University since 2001, and teaches an undergraduate course on Digital Communication and Marketing.
Ganito holds an MBA on Information Management and Marketing and an MA on Information Management. Her Masters dissertation was on “The Impact of Mobility on the Content Industry: Mobile Entertainment Trends in Portugal”.
Her research interests are new media, gender and technology, technology and education and mobile communications. She is the author of Mobile Phone as Entertainment (Paulus, 2007).
Read our Q&A with Carla, who explains how she became interested in gender and mobile phones, and the title of her presentation on May 20, 2010, One is not made, but rather becomes, a feminine mobile telephone.
Long Yun
Long Yun is professor and Deputy Director of the National Center for Radio & Television Studies (NCTRS) at the Communication University of China (CUC).
She holds a PhD from Fudan University and was the 2003-2004 International Scholar Exchange Fellowship Laureate at the Korea University in Seoul. Long’s research focus on media ratings, combining audience psychology, communication effects and media policy. Based on a long term audience survey, her work Television & Violence: Study on the Cultivation Function of Chinese Mass Media (2005) explains the effects of TV violence in mainland China.
Her areas of interest include mass media effects, audience analysis, communication policy and institute transition, media ethics issues, and new media.
Lu Jiannan
Lu Jiannan is a PhD student specializing in Media and Social Development at the School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China in Beijing. She has conducted a number of research projects on media events and national image; public opinion and social development; media management during crisis communication; and media branding during the Beijing Olympics. Her research includes a strong focus on new media and crisis communication. At CGCS, Jiannan’s research will focus on the impact of new media on crisis communication and public opinion, through a comparative study of China and the United States.
Rob McMahon
Rob McMahon is a PhD candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. His research interests include journalism studies and normative media theory.
Rob’s proposed research project while at CGCS involves examining the potential of applying principles of conflict analysis and intercultural communication to journalism practice in order to improve news coverage of Aboriginal communities in Canada.
In 2009, Rob attended the CEU Summer School on Media, Democratization and International Development: Foundations for a More Robust Research Agenda, jointly organized by CGCS and the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University.
He holds a BA from the University of Victoria (History and Writing), and an MJ (Masters of Journalism) from the University of British Columbia. His professional experience includes working as a Communications and Consultation Officer with the Federal Treaty Negotiation Branch at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, and as a freelance journalist for a variety of publications.
Sébastian Mort
Sébastien Mort is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris).
His research centers on the interplay of politics and the media in the United States. Within this area of study, he is interested in the overall media strategy of conservatives, focusing on traditional media (television, newspapers, and radio) and on direct mediation (performance and happening.) Questions of political communication and media strategy, political bias in the media, infotainment and listener’s and viewer’s reception are some of his fields of interest. He published “La Contestation conservatrice sur les ondes aux Etats-Unis” in Les Conservateurs américains se mobilisent: l’autre culture conservatrice (2008), éditions Autrement, and wrote an article on the surveillance of the cyberspace, due for publication in January 2010 in the Revue Française d’Etudes Nord-Américaines.
His dissertation focuses on the influence of conservative talk radio on U.S. politics from the abrogation of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 to Operation Chaos, organized by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh during the 2008 primaries, in order to boost Hillary Clinton’s campaign and ultimately wreak havoc in the Democratic Party.
Carlo Nardella
Carlo Nardella is a Ph.D student in Sociology in the Department of Social and Political Studies at the University of Milan, Italy. He holds an M.A. in Social and Public Communication and a B.A. in Communication from the University of Padua, Italy. In 2009 he attended the Summer School in Research on Religion, Culture and Society in Europe at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
His research lies at the intersection of religion and the media. He specializes in mass communication, sociology of religion and the interplay between media, religion and culture. His interests cover how religious imagery is portrayed in the media and the distinctions between the sacred and the profane.
His Ph.D dissertation examines the relationship between advertising and religion by focusing on the presence of religious symbolism in magazine advertisements and the employment of modern advertising techniques by religious organizations. At CGCS Carlo will explore in a comparative perspective the relationship between advertising and religion in the United States and Italy.
Sahana Udupa
Sahana Udupa is a doctoral candidate at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. Her work explores the interface between the globalising city of Bangalore and the new news cultures that have emerged after 1990, with a broader goal of theorising the inter-relationship between contemporary journalistic practices and formation of publics.
She has previously worked as a research associate for a sociological study on the IT professionals in Bangalore and Europe. Her articles have been published in Economic and Political Weekly and e-social sciences and some are under review. She also has professional experience in print and television journalism. She continues to write for English and Kannada (regional language) newspapers and literary magazines.
In May 2010, Sahana wrote an article, "Mediatized India: Publics, Policy, and Politics of Media Visibility", for the India in Transition series hosted by the Center for the Advanced Study of India. The full article is available here.
Augusto Valeriani
Augusto Valeriani (Phd) is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the department of Politics, Institution and History at the University of Bologna (Italy) where he lectures in Mass Media and International Politics. Augusto has published many articles, in Italian and English, on journalistic culture, mass media systems and international politics, with a focus on the Middle East. He is author of the 2005 monograph Il giornalismo arabo (Arab Journalism) and co-editor of the 2009 volume Un Hussein alla Casa Bianca (A Hussein at the White House) on the Arab Media representations of Obama Presidential Campaign. Augusto translated, edited and wrote the foreword for Philip Hammond’s Italian edition of Media, War and Postmodernity (Routledge, 2008).
At CGCS Augusto explored the transformation of international politics and its journalistic representation in the new media environment. His research will focus on the Bush administration's public diplomacy and media relations efforts related to the “War on Terror.” A further concern is the Obama administration's use of old and new media to promote its vision. The relationship between the United States and the Arab world is a central research question.
Wang Qin
Wang Qin, a PhD candidate at the School of Journalism and Communication of Renmin University in Beijing, is spending the spring 2010 semester with CGCS.
Qin's research interests include media law and China's new media. At CGCS, she plans to undertake a comparative study of the media's role in a democracy and a pre-democracy regime. After returning to China, she'll continue to explore the relationship among new media, citizenship and social transition in China.
Qin has accumulated nine years working experience with several major media outlets in China, including Southern Metropolis Daily, Beijing News and Caijing Magazine. She received her MA in Chinese literature from Nanjing University and in law from Peking University.
2008 - 2009 Scholars
Altug Akin
Altug Akin is a PhD student at the Faculty of Communication & Advertising at Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, and a member of research group GRISS (Grupo de Investigación en Imagen, Sonido y Síntesis - Image, Sound and Synthesis Research Group) at the same university. His interests lie at the intersection of media, culture, and society, with a focus on the transformations being witnessed in the recent epoch, such as digitalization, migration, de-regulation, and the role of media in fostering national subjectivity in this intensively globalized era. In this context, Turkish media experience - particularly in relation with Europe and the Middle East - constitutes the core of his research activities. Mr. Akin completed his Masters studies in Engineering Management Information Systems at Royal Institute of Technology, and in Journalism Studies at Stockholm University, both in Sweden. Prior to his studies in Barcelona, he taught at the Izmir University of Economics, Turkey.
Anne Chen
Anne Chen graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and is a graduate of Yale Law School. At Yale Law, Anne was a Student Fellow with the Information Society Project and has edited both the Yale Journal on Regulation and the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. She has researched and written on the role of technology in public benefits programs and the legal ramifications of online collaboration.
Ana Keshelashvili
Ana Keshelashvili is an Assistant Professor at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, School of Journalism and Media Management, where she teaches basic and advanced reporting and writing. Before gaining her Master of Mass Communication from Louisiana State University she worked as a print and TV reporter and a PR officer for non-profit organizations. Keshelashvili was also a country leader of circuit riders providing ICT consulting to different non-governmental groups. Keshelashvili's research interests lie in policies related to new technologies, and the knowledge gap and socio-psychological aspects of technology use.
Deng Lifeng
Deng Lifeng is currently a Ph.D. student at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He has worked as an instructor at the Department of Journalism, China Youth College for Political Science in Beijing.
Lifeng's research interests include the history and theories of mass communication, and the political economy of communication, mass media and nationalism in China. At CGCS, he will be conducting dissertation research on the political economy of press commercialization in the United States, in particular, focusing on the corporation's influence in journalism and its social impact. Using North American countries as a benchmark, ultimately he hopes to explore China's media commercialization and an alternative modernization route for Chinese news media.
Liu Hailong
Liu Hailong, PhD, is a lecturer at the School of Journalism and Communication of the Renmin University of China in Beijing, where he teaches communication theory to undergraduate and graduate students.
His current research interests lie in two areas: the history of Chinese communication studies between 1978 and 2008, and the ideas of propaganda in the 20th century, from total war to public diplomacy. He is also interested in fan culture and the relationship between mass media and nationalism in China.
He is the author of Mass Communication Theory: Paradigm and School (2008) and co-author of Introducing the Media Today (2005). He has translated four books on communication and journalism into Chinese: Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effect; News That Matters: Television and American Opinion; Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application; and The Elements of Journalism.
As a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School, his research will focus on a comparison study between the ideas of propaganda in China and the United States.
Ole J. Mjøs
Ole J. Mjøs is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway. He obtained his PhD in Media and Communications from University of Westminster, UK (2007) and his MA in Transnational Communications and the Global Media from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2003). Ole's professional experience in the media and creative industries includes work in television documentary production, and contributions on many records within the wide genre of electronic music released on European record labels.
Mjøs's research interests center around the relationship between media and globalization. His post doctoral research project is titled News Corporation, the Internet, Myspace.com: New Theoretical Perspectives on Media Globalization. The research project has two main aims: 1) To explore as a case study key strategies of one of the world's largest global media conglomerates, and 2) To contribute to the theoretical understanding of the process of media globalization through the study of this Internet based case. Ole is also working on a monograph titled Media Globalization and Discovery Channel Networks, which is under contract with Routledge.
Ferruh Yilmaz
Ferruh Yilmaz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Tulane University (from July 2009). Before becoming an academic, Yilmaz had a long career as a journalist, producer, columnist and public relations officer. His professional experience includes working with the DR (Denmark), Cumhuriyet (Turkey), BBC World Service (UK), and The Board for Ethnic Equality (DK).
Yilmaz's research is concerned with the culturalization of the political discourse in Europe through the debate on immigration, pushing the entire political spectrum to the right. He is particularly interested in analyzing how discursive resources such as nationalism, ethnicity, racism, religion, and culture are politically mobilized to create and institutionalize new type of social divisions. He is also interested in more theoretical and analytical questions such as hegemony, the nature of meaning, reality-mind relationship, and how to analyze them through concrete data. Publications include "Religion as Rhetorical Resource: The Muslim immigrant in (Danish) Public Discourse" in Lynn Schofield Clark (ed.), Religion, Media, and the Marketplace (2007).
Zhao Fei
Zhao Fei is a PhD candidate at the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University in Beijing and a research assistant at the Tsinghua International Center for Communication Studies and at the Tsinghua Comprehensive AIDS research center. She also serves as a Training Assistant for the National Spokespersons Training Program. While at Annenberg, she plans to research communication strategies and effects research on cancer prevention and treatment.
Zhao's research interests include health communication, political communication, studies of effects of mass media coverage on diseases and health issues, and cancer prevention communication.
2007 - 2008 Scholars
Ibrahim Al-Marashi
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Marashi is the first jointly hosted visiting scholar between the Middle East Center and CGCS in Spring 2008. He is an assistant professor at Bahcesehir University, Faculty of Communication, where he teaches courses on media and the Middle East. He is also an adjunct instructor at Bogazici University's History Department, where he teaches courses on the modern history of Iraq, and Iran. He obtained his Dphil at University of Oxford, completing a thesis on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, part of which was plagiarized by the British government in Feb. 2003 prior to the Iraq War. He is an Iraqi-American who lived at various times in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Morocco, and has travelled extensively through the Middle East.
Al-Marashi's research interests are generally related to media and politics and media and conflict. His ongoing research also examines the role of media and politics in Turkey and Iran. In terms of greater interests in the region, his work deals with the role of media and terrorism, how domestic and international politics are reflected in local pop culture and film history of the Middle East. Furthermore, he also examines how mainstream Western media covers the region, particularly focusing on coverage of the 1991 and 2003 wars in Iraq. During the semester, he intends to complete a book examining the relationship between the Iraqi state and media following the 2003 Iraq War.
He will be teaching a course on Imagery, Media and Middle East Politics.
Kate Coyer
Kate Coyer is post-doctoral research fellow with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University (CEU). In fall 2007, Coyer will teach COMM490 - Transnational Communication and the Global Media to undergraduate students at Annenberg.
Coyer has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she received her PhD in Media and Communications in 2005. She has been producing radio and organizing media campaigns for the past twenty years and has helped build community radio stations in the US and Tanzania. Her recent publications include Handbook of Alternative Media (co-edited, forthcoming 2007), a media policy brief in Global Media and Communications, and chapters in Global Media, Global Activism, and News Inc: Corporate Media Ownership and its Threat to Democracy (co-authored with Pete Tridish).
Coyer’s research centers on a comparative study of community broadcasting policy among the European Union member states, with special attention afforded to the newest EU members in Central and Eastern Europe. Community broadcasting remains an emergent sector representing an important and often overlooked site of innovation in communication, community building and fostering of the democratic process. Her research seeks to provide a better framework for understanding the diversity and breadth of the sector and the basis for consideration of any potential role European Union initiatives could play in support of the movement for community broadcasting.
Claudia Giocondo
Claudia Giocondo is a PhD student in Cultures of Communication at Catholic University of Milan (Italy). She has been working as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Science of the same University, for the courses of Media Studies and Media and Politics. She also works for OSSCOM, a media research center specialized in processes and actual transformations of the media system and the Italian cultural industry. Her research is focalized on media language, models of fruition and media trends, through analysis of traditional and new media.
Giocondo’s research interests include media use, media effects on politics, power relations between media and policy, and qualitative and non standard methodological approaches. Her present research project investigates the construction of scandal or political media events in Italy and examines how and why the media system and the political system are interconnected in the creation of a case of corruption or scandal. The basic assumption is the central role of media, as instrument of influence for public opinion or decisional and contractual power about definition of a political case, through a process of construction of news, sometimes as events.
Simon Haselock
Simon Haselock is co-founder and Director of Albany Associates. He has a long track record of working with media in transitional and post-conflict countries. Haselock was the Deputy High Representative for Media Affairs in the Office of The High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he created the organization for broadcast frequency spectrum management and licensing and provided everyday guidance on the public presentation of policy. As Temporary Media Commissioner in Kosovo he was responsible for the regulation of both the print and broadcast media in accordance with best international practice. He also began the process of building the legal structure and ethical environment necessary to enable independent media in Kosovo to flourish. He then served as the Director of Public Information for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
From 2003 until April 2006, Haselock was the Head of the Media Development and Regulatory Advisory Team in Iraq. In this capacity, he was responsible for establishing an Iraqi National Communications and Media Commission and has been involved in the development of other media infrastructure programs including training and the creation of a new Iraqi public broadcasting service, encouraging a commercial broadcasting sector and the development of journalistic ethics and professional self regulation.
Haselock is currently managing an Albany Associates project in Darfur funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and the Governments of Canada and the Netherlands. The project was established to assist the African Union and the UN communicate the Darfur peace process to ordinary Darfurians and to help ensure local ownership of the issues, the negotiations themselves and any settlement that may emerge. Haselock served for 23 years with Royal Marines and was responsible for assisting in the development of media policy in the UK Ministry of Defence and was the NATO spokesman in Sarajevo immediately after the Dayton Agreement.
Haselock is interested in the apparent gap between domestic politicians' understanding of the need to explain and win popular support for their programs and policy and the failure to follow this same logic through to policy and programs overseas, particularly in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. He also wants to understand more about the gap between the political imperative for quick impact and the bureaucratic capacity to deliver.
Fei Jiang
Fei Jiang, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Institute of Journalism & Communication, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China. Dr. Jiang is Director for the Center of World Media Studies (CWMS), Deputy Secretary-in-General for the Communication Association of China (CAC). He was a visiting scholar in the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMK) of Stockholm University (2004) and a visiting scholar of Toronto University and University of British Columbia (UBC) where he was awarded of ®Special Award of Canadian Studies Program in 2005.
Dr. Jiang is engaged in communication theory, intercultural communication theory and post-colonial theory studies. He was the author of Post-colonial Context for Intercultural Communication (2005) and Editor-in-Chief for Foreign Media in China (2005). Now he is sponsoring two national projects: Framework for Intercultural Communication Theory and Media Discourse. As a 2007-2008 visiting scholar at the Annenberg School, funded by Ford Foundation, his proposal is "Covering China: How American Scholars and Mass Media Decides How Common Americans See China."
David Levy
David Levy is an Associate Fellow in Media & Communications at the Said Business School in the University of Oxford. Until September 2007 he was Controller, Public Policy at the BBC where he was responsible for a wide range of UK & EU policy issues and for developing Charter Review policy and representing the BBC in liaison with Government and regulators in what was the most testing Charter Review and Licence Fee debate to date. He started his BBC career as a talks writer and current affairs producer in the BBC World Service and then moved to BBC News where he worked as a TV and radio reporter, producer, and programme editor, reporting for File on 4, and for Newsnight and editing Analysis the weekly public policy programme on Radio 4.
He was educated at the Universities of York, London (LSE) and Nuffield College, Oxford, from where he holds a Doctorate in Twentieth Century French History. His personal account of national and EU approaches to broadcasting regulation and convergence, Europe's Digital Revolution, was published by Routledge. Other publications include ‘The European information Society' in Rhodes, Heywood et al, Developments in West European Politics.
Levy is interested in the changing role, rationale and regulation for Public Service Broadcasting, the interactions between national & transnational (EU) regulation, the policymaking process and the links between academic policy work & policymaking. While at Annenberg he will be researching and writing about the BBC Charter Review process.
Read his visit summary.
Access his BBC Charter Review presentation.
Issam Mousa
Issam Mousa has been a Professor of Mass Communication at the Middle East University for Graduate Studies, Jordan's only university with an MA course in mass communication and journalism, since September 2005. He previously worked for Yarmouk University, and holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Washington in Seattle. His research interests include Arab and Jordanian Media; the Arab image in the United States; the Arabs in the First Communication Revolution; and development communication.
Publications include The Arab Image in the U.S. Press (in English: PeterLang, 1984, translated in to Arabic in 2005), An Introduction to Mass Communication (in Arabic; 5th edition 2003), The Development of Jordan Press: 1920-1997 (in Arabic), The Arabs in the First Communication Revolution (In Arabic + The Canadian Journal Of Communication), The Development of Arab Mass Culture (in Arabic: UAE Strategic Center).
Hakan Seckinelgin
Hakan Seckinelgin is a Lecturer in International Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy, LSE. His postgraduate research focused on international ethics and methodological questions raised in the study of international relations. He is also involved in gender studies research. His book International Politics of HIV/AIDS: Global Disease-Local Pain was published by Routledge in July 2007. His publications include The Environment and International Politics: International Fisheries, Heidegger and Social Method (Routledge 2006). He has also co-edited several books and a number of chapters and articles in scholarly journals, including Ethics and International Relations (Palgrave 2001), with Hideaki Shinoda, Gendering the International (Palgrave 2002), with Louiza Odysseos, and Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts (Routledge 2004), with Marlies Glasius and David Lewis.
Seckinelgin is involved with various research projects exploring the implications of expanding discussions of civil society within the international policy circles, management of non-governmental organisations, and policy interventions developed by these actors on specific issues. More specifically he is working on the impact of international HIV/AIDS policies on the disease in sub-Saharan Africa (Botswana, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia and South Africa) by analyzing the agency of international actors and their knowledge claims. He is also looking at the development of civil society institutions in Siberia, Russia, projects that are funded by the EU. Moreover, he is interested in the relationship between Islam and the democratic processes and their gendered impact on women's welfare in Turkey.
Yahia Shukkeir
Yahia Shukkier is Local Affairs Editor at the Jordanian daily Al Arab Al Yawm and advisor to Jordan's Higher Media Council, a government entity tasked with overseeing the development of Jordan's media sector.
Shukkeir is a member of the Jordanian Press Association, the Jordanian Writers League, Arab Press Freedom Watch (APFW) - London and International Media Lawyers Association (IMLA).
He is trainer and lecturer in journalistic skills, media law, human rights, investigative reporting and environmental reporting, and has trained journalists and NGO members in many Arab states.
Publications include Press Freedoms in Jordan: a comparative legislative study (Jordan Press Association, 2002) and Journalists' Manual Guide for Investigative Reporting (ARIJ, 2006).
He reached the short list of Lorenzo Natali Prize on Press Freedom 2002 granted annually by International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in Brussels.
While at Penn and Annenberg, Shukeir will be working on a primer on media law in Jordan.
Read Yahia's interview.
Xin Xin
Dr. Xin Xin is RCUK Research Fellow at the China Media Centre, University of Westminster, London. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture (WPCC) and the editor of the issue Media in China. Her work has been published in journals, such as Media, Culture & Society (2006), Journalism Practice (forthcoming), and the book Communications Media, Globalization and Empire, edited by Oliver Boyd-Barrett (2006). Dr. Xin's research interests include Chinese media and society, journalism and news organizations, globalization and comparative media studies.
Dr. Xin is currently researching the effects of globalization on Chinese journalism and its relationship to the wider world. Extending her PhD research on the impact of marketization upon Xinhua News Agency's business structure and journalistic practices in the context of globalization, Xin's ongoing research looks at a broader range of Chinese news and cultural institutions, including CCTV, China Radio International, China Daily, Dragon TV and Confucius Institutes. The project aims to explore how the international expansion of these news and cultural initiatives during China's rise has impacted upon the structure of the world media and communications system. The first phase of the research focuses on the international expansion of China's national news organizations and examines how the business and editorial strategies adopted by these institutions have impacted upon their business and news structure as well as the role of journalists in mediating the inflow and outflow of news. The second phase of the research will investigate how these news organizations will project China to the outside world during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Research outcomes will include a monograph Enter the Dragon: China Presents itself to the World and several journal articles. This book project is funded by British Academy and UCCL.
2006 - 2007 Scholars
Helena Bilandzic (March 2007)
Helena Bilandzic is an Assistant Professor at the University of Erfurt in Germany, where she teaches media effects theory, media psychology, and empirical methods. She earned her PhD from the University of Munich in Germany in 2003 with a thesis on television program selection. Helena was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany, and at the University of Arts in Berlin, Germany. As a visiting scholar at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, USA, she investigated the effects of filmic narrative on genre-related beliefs and attitudes. Currently, Helena is chair of the Reception Studies Division of the German Communication Association. She is co-editing a book series on Reception Studies.
Helena’s research interests include cultivation and narrative persuasion, media use, and quantitative and qualitative methodology. Her present research projects investigate how audiences are affected in their world views by television, or, more generally, by filmic narrative. She seeks to expand cultivation research with theories of narrative experience and persuasion. The basic assumption is that television’s effects are not only determined by the amount that viewers spend watching it, but also by the way in which television narrative is processed and experienced. In a recent publication in Communication Theory, Helena has developed a model for investigating the role of intensive narrative experiences for the cultivation process. Central to the model is the phenomenon of transportation into narrative – the feeling of losing oneself in the fictional world and intensively reliving the actions and emotions of the characters. Repeated transportive experiences result in stronger cultivation effects than repeated low-involvement exposures. First data support this assumption for genre-consistent beliefs and attitudes. Helena’s next research projects in this field will address theoretical and methodological issues of the relationship between filmic narrative and social reality beliefs. She is currently developing a method to investigate the effects of moral messages in filmic narrative. Also, she is working on situation-dependent cultivation measures that frame social reality judgments with a spatiotemporal and social setting, with the goal to reduce ambiguity of cultivation measures and increase their validity.
Kate Coyer (2006-2007)
Kate Coyer is post-doctoral research fellow with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University (CEU). In addition to teaching at CEU during the spring term, during her fellowship, she will be conducting a comparative study of community broadcasting policies among European Union member countries, with specific focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Kate has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Goldsmiths College, University of London where she received her PhD in Media and Communications in 2005. She has been producing radio and organising media campaigns for the past twenty years and has helped build community radio stations in the US and Tanzania. Her recent publications include Handbook of Alternative Media (co-edited, forthcoming 2007), a media policy brief in Global Media and Communications, and chapters in Global Media, Global Activism, and News Inc: Corporate Media Ownership and its Threat to Democracy (co-authored with Pete Tridish). You can read her journal account of the station-building project in Tanzania .
Kate's research interest is to undertake a comparative study of community broadcasting policy among the European Union member states, with special attention afforded to the newest EU members in Central and Eastern Europe.
The expansion of the EU and the asymmetrical proliferation of community broadcasting necessitates a comparative study to examine different policies and practices across the European Union, focussing on the newest EU member states. Though the exact name for community broadcasting may vary in each country, the principle is largely the same: local, not-for-profit, participatory media run primarily by volunteers. The phenomenon of community broadcasting is not new to Europe. Many individual countries have licensed community radio stations, and in some countries, licensed community television stations, while many other countries have no policy for community-run broadcasting at all. However, little is known comparatively about the current state of community broadcasting among much of Central and Eastern Europe and in particular, the newest EU member states. Today, existing contestations over the proposed European constitution are challenging the direction of the union; the need for further research surrounding our knowledge-based societies increases; and social and political pressures grow stronger within individual countries for more local and community-based media at a time of increasing globalisation of information. Community broadcasting remains an emergent sector representing an important � and often overlooked - site of innovation in communication, community building and fostering of the democratic process. This research seeks to provide a better framework for understanding the diversity and breadth of the sector and the basis for consideration of any potential role European Union initiatives could play in support of the movement for community broadcasting.
Noa Elefant
Noa Elefant Loffler helped found the office of Research and Information Department at the Second Radio and Television Authority for Israel. She established regular sources of information for the authority, including electronic information databases, professional literature and contacts with parallel regulatory bodies abroad. She also conducts in depth research on commercial TV content and audiences. Her department provides research support to the Second Authority Council, its CEO and major officials there. In a previous position Noa worked in the Israeli Parliament and had a leading part in the building of the Knesset's Research and Information Center.
Noa says the following about her research interest: "During my visit in CGCS program I wrote a policy paper on the subject of media literacy and regulation. In a converged media environment, where the user has the technical ability to chose and create content, the rational for media regulation and its practice are being questioned. Media literacy is often perceived as a new central function of media regulators, ensuring the user is indeed able to implement the control, which technology is offering. The review I wrote is a preliminary paper for my agency's policy making in this field. The review draws the different definitions of media literacy, different outlooks on media literacy's promotion goals and aims, and focus on the role of the regulator in ensuring and promoting media literacy. The review also includes recommendations for the next steps of policy making. While writing the review I've consulted with researchers both from Annenberg public policy center and from other universities in the US and UK.
I've also started working on a second policy paper on the subject of regulation in a converged media environment, looking particularly at regimes that will govern different content on different media outlets across various technologies. This is a continuation of a project on media regulation in a converged media environment, which was published by my agency on June 2006. One aim of my visit was to generate the next step in the development of a model for content regulation. During this month I was able to start a literature review and discuss this issue with scholars from the Annenberg School of Communication and the law school.
A third focus of my work during my visit was writing a framework paper for cooperation between the Hungarian Telecom regulator (NHH) and CMCS (at CEU). Such cooperation will create a network of leading scholars (experts of media and telecom policy research), aiming to formulate knowledgeable and well based policy. Such cooperation is highly needed during the next two years, in the context of expected changes at the regulatory framework both in the Hungarian and European level. The paper sets key issues of international telecom and broadcasting regulatory concerns, which are expected to be part of the agenda of regulators around the world, in the next few years. It also suggests an optional list of experts for the continuation of this project."
Iginio Gagliardone (March 2007)
Iginio Gagliardone is currently a PhD student at the London School of Economics. His research, supervised by Professor Robin Mansell, focuses on the selective adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in semi-authoritarian regimes. The scope of his work is to understand how ICTs are sometimes reshaped to fit the political purposes of authoritarian governments, inhibiting ICTs' democratizing power while attempting to maintain their role as enhancers of economic performances.
While pursuing his PhD, Gagliardone has been working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA), focusing on the use of new technologies for education and training, and has advised UNDP Ethiopia in the planning of training and capacity building activities for journalists and editors at the University of Addis Ababa’s School of Journalism. He has also worked with international NGOs involved in communication and advocacy, such as the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) and the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC).
Gagliardone graduated in Mass Communication from the University of Bologna.
Yanmei Lu (Feb. 2006- Feb. 2007)
Yanmei Lu is a PhD. candidate in the School of Television, Communications University of China. Lu is participating in large-scale academic research on the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the media, initiated by Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Media Law and Policy at Communications University of China. She previously worked as the vice-director of TV News Center at a city TV station in China. She earned her Bachelor and Master's degrees in History from Shandong University, China.
Lu is writing a chapter, "Media Ethics, Policy and Law" for Western Communication Scholarship Fronts (Beijing University Press), developing a paper, "Defending and Offending -- Investigating the Media Policies Gearing in Post-WTO China," and working on the doctoral dissertation: Peasant Issue and Public Discourses -- A Content Analysis of CCTV's Program "Focus."
Bingchun Meng (2006-2007)
Bingchun Meng received her Ph.D in Mass Communciation from the Pennsylvania State University in 2006. Her dissertation examines the development of Chinese copyright policies against the background of China's integration into the global communication order. She analyzes how the legitimacy of copyright is established/problematized in the Chinese context and how post-WTO copyright governance is influencing information access in China.
Her dissertation is the first part of a larger program to reconceptualize the dynamic relationship between copyright law and global information flow. Her research interests also include political economy of communications, media law and policy, and the development of Chinese media in the context of globalization.
Sevanti Ninan
Sevanti Ninan is a columnist based in New Delhi writing on media for The Hindu and the Hindustan and is the founder-editor of The Hoot.org, a South Asian media watch website. She began her career at the Hindustan Times and has been development correspondent, special correspondent and magazine editor at the Indian Express. Besides being a working journalist she is a media researcher. Her books include Through the Magic Window, Television and Change in India, Penguin India, 1995, Plain Speaking, with Chandrababu Naidu, Viking, 2000, and Rajasthan, Roli Books 1980. Her book on the Hindi press, Headlines from the Heartland—Reinventing the Hindi Public Sphere will be published by Sage Publications, in April-May 2007.
Her current research interests are on documenting and analysing how India and Pakistan cover each other, and on evolving trends in media ethics in the developed as well developing world.
Bekisisa Nkala (Jan 2007)
Bekisisa Nkala is a Knowledge & Research Manager at the LINK Centre where he Co-ordinates the network of researchers throughout Africa, manages the Centre’s publications and dissemination, and participates in academic development issues and teaching. His duties include managing the ResearchICTAfrica! Network, as well as teaching in the area of e-Governance. Nkala previously worked for the South African Vice Chancellors Association (SAUVCA) as Project manager where he conducted research and writing on Higher Education policy developments relating to the changes at FET-HE interface. From 1996 to 2002 he was a Lecturer in Drama & Performance Studies at the University of Natal. He earned his M.Ed. in Educational Materials Development from the University of Natal in 1999, as well as a Higher Diploma in Education there in 1992 and his Bachelors degree there in 1990.
At CGCS, Nkala plans to investigate how major sporting events are shaping the regulation of Internet broadcasting and how this would have a rippling effects on other areas of the Internet, raising questions about the plight of developing countries that are still struggling with broadband rollout and affordable internet access. Internet broadcasting, particularly IPTV seems to go against the ideal of having ‘open access’ and ‘open content’ ideals of the Internet. Conglomerates have already started carving up the Internet to serve their own commercial needs. Net neutrality would therefore cease to exist as more commercial firms insist on ‘intelligent networks’ and through their control of distribution channels and content, would squeeze out competition through reduced download speeds of rivals’ content etc., resulting in Internet monopoly, a highly undesirable situation. This research project is meant as a step in figuring out his PhD proposal and application.
Nicole Stremlau (March 2007)
Nicole Stremlau recently returned from 15 months of field research in East Africa for her PhD dissertation at the London School of Economics (Department of Development Studies, supervisor Tim Allen) on the press and national reconciliation in post-war Ethiopia and Uganda. During her time in Ethiopia she consulted for Human Rights Watch and UNESCO. Stremlau is also working on a book of Oral Histories of Eastern African editors. During her field research she travelled to Ethiopia, Somaliland, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda to interview 25 key contributors and over 200 informants for this research. She is also initiating a project for the Stanhope Centre in response to a request by the former Minister of Information from Somaliland and current Foreign Minister to assist with capacity building and transforming the Ministry of Information. Other Stanhope projects she is engaged with include working with City University in crafting a MA programme for Media and Development.
Stremlau is a regular contributor for Janes Intelligence for which she updates and authors the security (and related political economy) files for Ethiopia. She received her MA degree from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK) in politics and economics and her BA degree with honours from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) where she studied in the College of Social Studies (an interdisciplinary programme of economics, politics, history and philosophy).
