COLLEGE PARK — Six Ph.D. students and two faculty members from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism won awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and 11 students had research papers accepted for presentation at this August’s AEMJC national conference in Washington, D.C.
Leading the list was Carolina Velloso, who won three AEJMC awards, including First Place Student Paper in the Minorities and Communication Division for "Journalists' Recommendations to Newsrooms for the Production of More Equitable News Coverage."
Velloso and Shannon Scovel, both of whom completed their Ph.D.s at Merrill College in the spring, were awarded the Guido Stempel Top Paper Award by the Commission on Graduate Education for their paper, "'They Leave Out All the Side Effects': Gracie Gold and Coverage of Athlete Mental Health."
Velloso’s paper, "Journalistic Perspectives on the Impact of Embodied Identities and Experiences on Newswork," won Third Place Student Paper in the Cultural & Critical Studies Division.
Velloso also was named a Kopenhaver Fellow for the coming academic year, when she will be a postdoctoral fellow at the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.
The award "is designed to help junior women faculty members move forward in their careers through mentoring, networking and preparing for tenure and promotion and administration or other leadership positions." It is sponsored by the Commission on the Status of Women, the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication at Florida International University, and the AEJMC Council of Affiliates.
Ph.D. student Jodi McFarland Friedman's paper, "Saginaw During the Coronavirus: A Digital Ethnography of a Facebook Microsite," was awarded the Top Student Paper by the Community Journalism Interest Group.
Ph.D. student Sally Farhat won first place in the International Communication Division’s student research competition for her study, "Partisans’ Perception of News Credibility of ‘In-Group’ and ‘Out-Group’ News Organizations."
Ph.D. student Dinfin Mulupi was awarded the 2023 AEJMC-MCSD Diversity and Inclusion Career Development Fellowship from the Committee on Career Development and Mass Communication and Society Division. The award comes with a $1,200 travel grant and one-year career development mentorship.
Ph.D. student John McQuaid won the second-place student award in the History Division for his paper, “Covering the Start of the Anthropocene: The U.S. News Media and 1950s H-bomb Tests."
Assistant Professor Naeemul Hassan, along with co-author Mohammad Ali, won the Top Method Paper award in the Communication Theory & Methodology Division for “Semantic-based Unsupervised Framing Analysis (SUFA): A Novel Approach for Computational Framing Analysis.”
Christoph Mergerson, Merrill College’s assistant professor in race and media, won first place in the Law & Policy Division’s Teaching Ideas Competition for his submission, "Journalism Law and Ethics ChatGPT Assignment: Using Artificial Intelligence as a Teaching Tool." The assignment had students ask an AI chatbot a question about journalistic ethics and critique the answer based on what they learned in class.
Associate Professor Ira Chinoy earlier this year won a Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in Teaching of Media History from the History Division and will present his work at the conference awards gala.
Here is the full list of Merrill papers and presentations that were accepted:
- Sally Farhat's paper, "Partisans’ Perception of News Credibility of 'In-Group' and 'Out-Group' News Organizations," International Communication Division.
- Mahfuz Haque's paper, "Emily Wilder, the Associated Press, and Paradigm Repair," Commission on Graduate Education.
- Frankie Ho Chun Wong and Dinfin Mulupi’s paper, "Up in the air: Contesting strategic narratives in the international news coverage of the U.S.-China balloon incident 2023," Newspaper and Online News Division International Communication Division.
- Jodi McFarland Friedman's paper, "The Gray Book: Digital Ethnography of Counter-Narratives About Women’s Hair and Aging on a Facebook Microsite," Commission on the Status of Women.
- Mulupi’s extended abstract, "Journalists on Strike! Metajournalistic Discourse on Mass Strikes by US News Workers," Newspaper and Online News Division.
- Mulupi will speak on a panel, “Methodological Rigor in Qualitative and Mixed Method Research: Balancing Trustworthiness and Subjectivity,” hosted by the Communication Theory & Methodology Division and the Commission on the Status of Graduate Education.
- Mohamed Salama's paper, "Can a Climate Change News Game enhance users' interest, knowledge, and motivation to take action?", Commission on Graduate Education.
- Shannon Scovel’s paper, "Influencer culture and nuanced feminist expressions: A content analysis of collegiate women athlete branding in the age of ‘name, image and likeness’," Commission on the Status of Women.
- Scovel’s paper, "Twitter as a storytelling tool for collegiate women athletes’ complex self-representations," Sports Communication Interest Group.
- Robin Sundaramoorthy's extended abstract, "Caught in the Middle: Public Policy, Black Radio Ownership and Broadcast Regulation," History Division.
- Ronald Yaros' paper, “Distracting Students From Their Phones: A Model for Sustaining Engagement in Online Lessons on Diversity,” GIFT Best Practices Award Session, Standing Committee on Teaching.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land
joshland@umd.edu
301-405-1321