Faculty News

Hubbard School faculty attend Commencement. Clockwise from left: Sara Quinn, Elisia Cohen, Amy O'Connor, Susan LaRusso, Sarah Lemanczyk, Rich McCracken, and Regina McCombs.

COLIN AGUR published “Newly minted: Non-fungible tokens and the commodification of fandom” in New Media & Society.

SID BEDINGFIELD’s latest book project—Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America, a research collection that he co-edited and contributed to—won two awards in May. Both the American Journalism Historians’ Association (AJHA) and the AEJMC History Division selected Journalism and Jim Crow as the best book on journalism or media history published in 2021. One judge in the AJHA contest called the book “an important intervention in our understanding of the role of journalists in negotiating systemic racism.” Bedingfield co-edited Journalism and Jim Crow with Kathy Roberts Forde, professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts. He also contributed two chapters to the collection.

VALÉRIE BÉLAIR-GAGNON was named a University of Minnesota McKnight Presidential Fellow, which recognizes recipients who are recommended by their college dean and chosen at the discretion of the executive vice president and provost based on excellence in research and scholarship, leadership, potential to build top-tier programs, and ability to advance University priorities. DANIELLE BROWN received the 2022 ICA Journalism Studies Public Engagement Award at the International Communication Association conference. She also received a Knight Foundation grant for her project “Trusted messengers can leverage connections to combat disinformation about Black communities in Black communities,” which will develop a scalable model for addressing dis/misinformation in Black communities.

ELISIA COHEN joined the Minnesota News Media Institute Board of Directors.

Colin Agur

Sid Bedingfield

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon

Ruth DeFoster

RUTH DEFOSTER published “Rationalizing Fear: How Media Coverage of Violence Shapes American Culture” in the January issue of the Minnesota Women’s Press.

GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO is now associate professor emerita; she left the School to return to work at the Associated Press.

GAYLE GOLDEN spoke on a three-member panel, “The role of editorial today,” during a webinar hosted by Goff Public, a local public relations and public affairs firm.

JISU HUH is the next editor-in-chief of the Journal of Advertising. As editorin-chief, Huh will work with a team of associate editors and editorial review board members to advance the Journal of Advertising’s mission and to further expand the advertising scholarship and theory. Huh also organized and chaired the Special Topic Panel Session on “Computational Research and Measurement Innovations—Affective Computing and Emotion AI in the Future Advertising Research” at the American Academy of Advertising (AAA) 2022 annual conference held in St. Petersburg, Fla., in March 2022.

MARK JENSON’s Jour 4263 Campaigns class client was Fox Sports U. Four teams presented their final presentations to the client on April 27. The challenge was to identify an appropriate CSR partner for Fox Sports Supports and develop a complete integrated marketing communication plan to help Fox Sports reach its young target audience. Jenson’s Jour 3241: Ad Strategy/ Creative Development class client was Lovejoy’s Bloody Mary Mix (a

Jisu Huh Mark Jenson

BIPOC family-owned business from St. Paul). Five teams made their final project advertising presentations to the four clients on April 26.

With the encouragement of VAN HORGEN, a Hubbard School diversity fellow, JENNIFER JOHNSON is prototyping “The Show at HSJMC.” This is an opportunity for students majoring in strategic communication to have their creative and strategic work entered into the student competition for the Minnesota AdFed professional show. The best of show winners in categories that include integrated campaigns, digital and video content, and print, will be selected by School alumni and ad professionals. The winners receive paid entry into “The Show.” Johnson’s course Jour 4242: Advertising Portfolio Development worked with 18 professionals during its final portfolio review. Ten of the professionals were Hubbard School alumni, including six former students.

SHERRI JEAN KATZ was awarded a seed grant from the College of Liberal Arts for her project “Opioid warning labels: A strategy to prevent addiction and overdose.” She was also named a Fellow in Health Communication.

In January, JANE KIRTLEY delivered the keynote address on media ethics and law for the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program “Countering Holocaust Distortion and Denial: The Role of New and Traditional Media.” The virtual program was coordinated through Meridian International Center and Global Minnesota, and was attended by 13 journalists and NGO representatives from eight different countries, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania. She was also a facilitator/panelist for the Hot Issues in Data Privacy workshop at the 27th Annual Conference of the American Bar Association Forum on Communications Law in February. Kirtley conducted many media interviews on topics like cameras in courts, Sarah Palin’s libel suit, the Supreme Court leak and more.

SCOTT LIBIN was elected to the Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association Board of Directors, representing the state of Minnesota. He also led sessions on ethics and newswriting at the Midwest Journalism Conference in Minneapolis and at the New York Press Association Spring Conference in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

REGINA MCCOMBS received the David and Vicki Cox Innovation Award from the Hubbard School, which awards extraordinary innovation and accomplishment to someone who encourages the students and faculty in the School to think creatively about new and powerful learning opportunities. The award recognized McCombs’ work with photojournalism students in the past year, as well as her work developing the “Documenting a Reckoning” photo exhibit.

SCOTT MEMMEL became a teaching assistant professor at the Hubbard School in spring 2022.

REBEKAH NAGLER presented a paper titled “Vulnerability to the effects of conflicting health information: Testing the moderating roles of trust in news media and research literacy” at the International Communication Association annual conference.

Jane Kirtley

Scott Libin

Rebekah Nagler

Amy O’Connor

AMY O’CONNOR, along with Rong Wang (University of Kentucky), published “Can corporate-nonprofit partnerships buffer socially irresponsible corporations from stakeholder backlash?” in Corporate Communications: An International Journal. O’Connor also received a Grant-In-Aid for more than $36,000 from the University of Minnesota Office of VP for Research for her research on the Iron Range mining communities called “Mine Life: Communication, Work and Identity.” In March, she presented research at the International Association of Business Communicators Convergence Summit on how stakeholder expectations for corporate social responsibility are influenced by their proximity to the corporation. She was also named a Fellow in Strategic Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility.

YAN QU’s dissertation, advised by Adam Saffer, was awarded the 2022 ICA James Grunig and Larissa A. Grunig Outstanding Dissertation Award at the International Communication Association annual conference. The award recognizes an outstanding dissertation that focuses upon phenomena, issues and questions relevant to the study of public relations.

HYEJOON RIM, with co-authors at University of Tennessee (Moonhee Cho) and Bethel University (Betsy Anderson), and graduate student Katie Kim, presented the paper “Revisiting the state of CSR from the perspectives of corporate communication professionals,” at the International Public Relations Research (IPRR) annual convention in Orlando in March. She also Study of Journalism, published their fifth report, “Snap judgements: How audiences who lack trust in news navigate information on digital platforms,” which examines how people in Brazil, India, the United Kingdom and the United States evaluate information they encounter while using Facebook, WhatsApp, and Google.

EMILY VRAGA, along with her co-authors, published “The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction” in Nature Reviews Psychology. She also presented the keynote, “Observational Correction as a Response to Social Media Misinformation,” at the Language of Covid Symposium hosted by the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond in April.

MARCO YZER completed three presentations at the International Communication Association conference in May. He, along with co-authors, also had three papers accepted for publication or published: “Effects of exposure to conflicting information about mammography on cancer information overload, perceived scientists’ credibility, and perceived journalists’ credibility” in Health Communication; “Theories of reasoned action and planned behavior” in The International Encyclopedia of Health Communication; and “Advancing health communication research: Issues and controversies in research design and data analysis” in The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication. He was also named a Fellow in Health Communication.

Hyejoon Rim Adam Saffer Claire Segijn

co-authored, “The process of online keyword activism in political crisis: Moderating roles of like-minded public opinion and government controllability of crisis outcomes” with professors at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Sora Kim), and at Zhejiang University (Yingru Ji), and it recently published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. She was also named a Fellow in Comparative International Public Relations.

ADAM SAFFER received the 2021-22 Hubbard School Graduate Student Organization Dedication to Graduate Students Award. The annual award recognizes School faculty and staff for supporting graduate students and is intended as a way for graduate students to collectively express thanks.

CLAIRE M. SEGIJN published an article in Communication Research with Iris van Ooijen and Sanne Opree on privacy cynicism and its role in privacy decision-making.

ALLISON STEINKE is now a teaching assistant professor at the Hubbard School.

CHRISTOPHER TERRY published research on the Supreme Court's Mahanoy decision in Communication Law and Policy, and has forthcoming work on indecency enforcement in the Journal of Media Law and Ethics, on minority media access in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, and on FCC Minority Ownership Policy in the Michigan Technology Law Review.

BENJAMIN TOFF, along with the research team he is leading at Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the

Benjamin Toff

Marco Yzer