Research Statement

"Media do not explain everything, but understanding media is indispensable to grasping the way power works in contemporary societies." -Robert W. McChesney, The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas

Research Interests

My central research area is media literacy education. My interest stems from working as an elementary and middle school teacher with many students who read well below grade level. Because they struggled to read sight words, they had difficulty developing the comprehension skills necessary for more complex texts. To supplement, I used movies and television shows to practice these traditional literacy skills. I also spoke with my students about the media they consumed at home. I realized there is a massive gap between the skills we teach for reading texts and those needed for consuming media. These experiences precipitated my interest in media literacy.

The first school I taught at was an urban Title 1 school with a Black student population, and the second was an urban Title 1 school with mostly refugee, immigrant, and first-generation students, most of whom were English language learners. Systemic inequity and educational justice were central to my time at these schools and became the catalysts for my desire to deconstruct and understand social problems at cultural levels. This is foundational in my critical orientation. Through critical theories, my work critiques structures of power and works toward social change. 

My second research interest is popular culture. Pop culture’s influence on our lives, experiences, and worldviews cannot be understated: to use Henry Giroux’s term, popular culture is public pedagogy. Thus, I am also interested in how certain popular culture can inform social justice work through critical media literacy education.

Past Research

Media literacy drives my work. Most recently, my co-authored study on media use and news literacy habits to support pandemic-informed media literacy education was accepted by The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy. My work with the Journalistic Learning Initiative, a media education nonprofit, has resulted in coauthorship for a journal article in the Journal of Media Literacy Education and two book chapters. 

Popular culture is also a part of my research record. In an effort toward theory building, I studied the role of markets in cultural hybridity using case studies of two Latin American musicians; this research was published in the International Journal of Cultural Studies. I wrote an article about the representation of fat boys which was published in The Journal of Popular Culture. I have also coauthored two book chapters about popular culture: the first used content analysis to examine social aggression in Disney Channel shows, and the second used ethnography to identify barriers and access points to community among Magic: The Gathering players at Friday Night Magic events. 

I have presented my research at major conferences, like International Association for Media and Communication Research, International Communication Association, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and National Communication Association, among others.

Current Research

My dissertation examines the role neoliberal capitalism and racism play in media literacy education using critical political economic analysis and curriculum analyses of a national news literacy education non-profit by asking, “What does it mean if the tool we think is necessary for democracy inadvertently replicates systems of oppression?” Thus far, my research demonstrates that corporately supported news literacy results in the maintenance of hegemonies that benefit capitalist and racist social structures.

Two other team projects I am working on are for MY STEM Story, a National Science Foundation grant-funded study. The first project explores how perceptions of time during COVID-19 affected adolescents’ understanding of identity and interpersonal connections. The second project, still in development, explores implicit theories of identity surrounding science, technology, engineering, and math among adolescents. 

Based on work with the Journalistic Learning Initiative, Dr. Ed Madison, Melissa Wantz, and I are proposing a book on using journalistic learning in secondary schools. The book will be written for a teacher practitioner audience and will draw on our research of JLI’s Effective Communicators Course, a secondary school curriculum we developed that is being piloted in Oregon classrooms during the 2021-22 academic year.

Future Research

My future research includes studies with the My STEM Story team, including two longitudinal, qualitative studies that track the impacts participation in mentored science activities had on mentors and mentees. 

I plan to extend my media literacy research to ecomedia literacy. Ecomedia literacy highlights the relations between media and the planet. In the face of climate change, this ecological framework helps to illuminate the impact media have on the planet in visible and invisible ways. Ideally, my future work in ecomedia literacy will address how this critical approach to media literacy education can aid in solving the climate crisis. 

I am also interested in exploring how digital and new media techniques and tools can democratize and decolonize education. As education increasingly asks students to focus less on memorizing content and more on applying problem solving and communication skills, I want to explore how digital and new media can support students who are interested in addressing real-world problems. 

I plan to continue my pop culture research, as well. For example, I am planning to critique the NBC show Superstore and its approach to addressing social issues. Because of its content, this study would lend well to collaborating with undergraduate scholars who are interested in media criticism and provide them an opportunity for publication.