Three faculty members, three doctoral students and one postdoctoral scholar are the recipients of funding through the Newhouse School’s internal grants program. The program is administered by the Office of Research and Creative Activity under the leadership of associate dean Regina Luttrell.
The recipients:
Milton Santiago, assistant professor
Title: Cine Explorer
Professor Santiago will be working to develop an educational game that leverages the preeminent game engine, Unreal Engine, to teach cinematography principles like composition, camera staging, lens selection and visual storytelling. Users will be able to explore a virtual recreation of a well-known scene from an existing major motion picture and then be able to reposition and recompose the camera positions, creating their own interpretation of the creative material. He intends to collaborate with students and industry game developers.
Keonte Coleman, assistant professor and Dona Hayes, associate professor
Title: In Light of the #MeToo Movement and Racial Reckoning: Will TV News Sources Represent Their DMAs’ Diversity When Journalists Can Select Their Sources?
This study aims to find out what happens when broadcast journalists have the option to select their sources. Will those sources mimic the demographics of their news market? This mixed methods study will allow student journalists to code newscasts for the quantitative portion and interview newsroom journalists to discuss sourcing practices for the qualitative portion. The project also inspired an idea to create an inclusive crowdsourced DMA (designated market area) contact list which could help break down sourcing barriers.
Martina Santia, postdoctoral scholar
Title: It’s My Beat and I’ll Cry if I Want to: How Women Journalists Use Emotions When Reporting
Gender remains a key stratification system in numerous professions, including journalism. The proposed study seeks to contribute to the existing scholarship by highlighting the positionality of women as an underrepresented, and often undervalued, minority in the journalism practice. Specifically, this study employs an online survey-experiment to investigate how audiences evaluate women journalists who display emotions when reporting on specific beats. Funds from the Newhouse Internal Program will be used to recruit research participants for the online survey-experiment.
Ryan Wen, doctoral student
Title: “I’m Asian and also not Asian”: Deconstructing the Interplay Between Asian Subgroups’ Health Inequities and the Model Minority Stereotype Created by American Media
Asians in the United States are frequently underrepresented and understudied in health communication research due to an assumption that they are socioeconomically resourceful, educationally successful and therefore unlikely to obtain undesired care. Through deconstructing the systemic oppression coming from within and outside of the Asian community, this project will enrich the existing Newhouse courses by bringing faculty and student attention to the hidden systemic injustice and health disparities veneered by the model minority myth.
Jocelyn McKinnon-Crowley and Yoon Lee, doctoral students
Title: Impact of Visual Distractions on News Media Viewers
This project looks at the impact of visual distractions, like pop-ups and banner ads, on readers’ understanding of news information, using psychophysiological methods and follow-up interviews. The research team hopes to discover how mind and body measures can indicate responses to these visual distractions, and what that means for the comprehension of news media. This project will be conducted simultaneously in the Newhouse Extended Reality lab and at a lab on the west coast, in a first of its kind replication study for psychophysiological research in media effects.