L&S News  Tag: School of Journalism and Mass Communication

"Fueling Discovery" is a joint effort of the UW-Madison College of Letters & Science and the Wisconsin State Journal. This special section features essays from faculty members across the college about their groundbreaking research.

Young-adult author Angie Stanton (BS’98, Journalism) dove deeply into University of Wisconsin history while researching her latest novel. Waking in Time, published in spring 2017 by children’s publisher Capstone, follows college freshman Abbi Thorp as she accidently starts traveling backward in time on the UW–Madison campus.

In less contentious times, arguments over the word “lie” generally involve its grammatical partner “lay.” But the election of Donald Trump, criticized during his campaign and in the early days of his presidency for statements often at odds with verifiable fact, has recast the discussion. Director of the Center for Journalism Ethics Kathleen Bartzen Culver contributes her expertise in The Denver Post.

As a double-major in journalism and communication arts, Malik Anderson is discovering the power of creating and working to bring more diverse voices into media. From his three-year stint as an intern at Wisconsin Public Radio, to his work as co-founder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the Emma Bowen Scholar is inspired to produce work that effects social change.

Young Mie Kim has a theory about voters. Each one is basically a collection of data points that determine how that person will vote. “In the data age, voters are defined based on an algorithm, based on a construction and reconstruction of data,” she said.

Two months after an election where political campaigns were blamed or credited for relying on voter data to an unprecedented degree, Kim, a professor and researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is studying how campaigns used that data in Wisconsin and across the country.

Each year, 21 students in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison participate in a unique capstone project: writing, designing, publishing and circulating an award-winning publication, Curb Magazine.

In September, as Curb staff members debated the philosophy behind this year’s issue, they finally came to a last-minute consensus: at a time of such division, why not talk about love?

Hemant Shah has served as director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism school since 2014, and has been a member of the faculty since 1990. His research focuses on the role of mass media in social change, including the construction of cultural identities and racial anxieties. Shah spoke with the Cap Times about the roles and responsibilities of journalists in covering race relations, particularly in light of the 2016 election.