Our media law graduate students made an unprecedented showing at the nation’s premier journalism educators conference in Washington, D.C., in August.

Dr. Brooks Fuller, a 2018 Ph.D. graduate of the UNC School of Media and Journalism, and now an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, won the Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award at the 2018 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Annual Conference. Fourth-year Ph.D. students Shao Chengyuan and Kriste Patrow won First Place Student Paper awards in the AEJMC Mass Communication & Society and Law & Policy Divisions, respectively.

The Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award is the highest honor bestowed on student scholarship, recognizing the “best dissertation in the field of mass communication research” as judged by AEJMC’s Research Committee and top scholars. This is not the first time that our media law graduates have received this prestigious award. In 2012, our former Ph.D. graduate Dr. Dean Smith, now an assistant professor at High Point University, also won the award. Both dissertations were chaired by Dr. Cathy Packer, former co-director of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.

Fuller’s dissertation titled, “Words, Wounds, and Relationships: a Mixed-Method Study of Free Speech and Harm in High-Conflict Environments,” uses qualitative field methods to examine high-conflict political protests, such as abortion clinic protests, where free speech is truly tested. Fuller’s ethnographic field project highlights core First Amendment doctrines such as true threats and incitement and how they are applied by federal courts. Instead of purported threats, harassment, and violence, Fuller’s research revealed a complex web of social relationships at the clinics, largely influenced by how different stakeholders interpreted speech in these high-conflict environments. His work was designed to help inform courts as these harmful speech doctrines develop. UNC Media and Journalism School faculty Dr. Michael Hoefges and Dr. Tori Smith Ekstrand also served on Fuller’s committee, as well as Dr. George Noblit from the UNC Department of Sociology and Professor Bill Marshall from the UNC School of Law.

Fourth-year Ph.D .student and Park Fellow Kriste Patrow won the First Place Student Paper Award from the Media Law and Policy Division of AEJMC for her paper, “‘Walk’ This Way, Talk This Way: How Do We Know When the Government is Speaking After Walker v. Texas?” Patrow’s paper examines confusion surrounding the government speech doctrine. She analyzed six U.S. Supreme Court cases in which the Court was tasked with determining when a reasonable person would understand a message to be from the government. The analysis revealed ways to anchor the reasonable observer prong of the test, by requiring that there be a main cognizable message and that the government self-identify as speaker.

Fourth-year Ph.D. student Shao Chengyuan received the First Place Student Paper Award from the Mass Communication and Society Division of AEJMC. Her paper, “Asian International Students’ Mass Media Use and Acculturation Strategies,” highlights the important role of mass media use before students relocate. The paper also examines students’ cultural knowledge of American society. The paper is co-authored with doctoral student Lin Li from Michigan State University’s Department of Media and Information.

Congratulations to our Ph.D. students!

I’m pleased to announce that Dr. Victoria “Tori” Smith Ekstrand, associate professor at the School of Media and Journalism, has been appointed to serve as a faculty co-director of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy. Tori replaces Dr. Michael Hoefges, the Center’s dual-degree program advisor, who filled in as interim co-director following Cathy Packer’s retirement in December 2017 (Thank you, Michael!).

Tori has been deeply involved with the Center for many years, most recently serving as the Center’s communications director. Tori teaches media law courses at the School of Media and Journalism and is one of the nation’s leading experts on the “hot news” doctrine. Before coming to Carolina, she was an associate professor in the Bowling Green State University Department of Journalism and Public Relations and an affiliate faculty member of BGSU’s American Cultural Studies department. In 2008, she was awarded BGSU’s Outstanding Young Scholar Award.

Tori’s research explores conflicts between copyright law and the First Amendment, particularly as they arise in journalism and social media. Her work is often grounded in critical legal theory, in which she examines the impact of law and policy on culture and media production. In this vein, she has begun investigating online accessibility for the disabled as a First Amendment issue.  Tori has written two books on the hot news doctrine, a part of unfair competition law that protects the facts of news for a short period. Her revised book on the subject, Hot News in the Age of Big Data: A Legal History of the Hot News Doctrine and Implications for the Digital Age (LFB Scholarly, 2015), looks at the history of the doctrine and its impact on protections for discrete bits of information in the age of Big Data. She has also published articles in Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal and Communication Law & Policy. Before teaching, Tori worked for The Associated Press in their New York headquarters for nearly a decade. She served as AP’s director of Corporate Communications, responsible for marketing, public relations and events for the worldwide news agency.

Tori brings remarkable passion to everything she does. I’m thrilled that she is taking on an expanded role at the Center!