Archive | Center for Media Law and Policy

Content related to the Center for Media Law and Policy’s activities and people.

Media Law Dual Degree Programs at UNC-Chapel Hill

By on October 22, 2018 in Center for Media Law and Policy

Hey students, have you thought about what you want to do after you graduate with your undergraduate or master’s degree? Thinking about law school and a career in media law and policy? A strong background in law and mass communication can be a launching pad for a career in law, media, business, entertainment, government, public policy or academia. For a sampling of the jobs available in these growing fields, check out our Media Law Jobs Board.

The nationally renowned UNC School of Media and Journalism and UNC School of Law have brought together these two dynamic fields to offer two exciting dual degree programs in media law and policy that allow students to earn simultaneous M.A./J.D. or Ph.D./J.D. degrees in less time than it would take to earn the individual degrees separately (an earned master’s degree is required to apply for the dual Ph.D./J.D. degree program). Students who apply to the dual degree program can use their LSAT score in lieu of the GRE for admission to the M.A. or Ph.D. program. Dual degree students often work with the Center for Media Law and Policy and receive extensive mentoring from the Center’s affiliated faculty.

We will be holding two information sessions for the Dual Degree Program over the next two weeks.  The first, which is geared primarily for current law students, will take place on October 22 at 5:00 PM in Room 5048 at the UNC School of Law.  The second session will be on October 29 at 5:00 PM in the Freedom Forum Conference Center in Carroll Hall at the UNC School of Media and Journalism. For more information on the October 29 session, please see our separate event listing.

Anyone interested in joining the active and vibrant media law community here at UNC is invited to attend either session. Members of the program’s faculty and current dual degree students will be there to answer questions. Pizza will be served!

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First Amendment Day 2018

By on September 20, 2018 in Center for Media Law and Policy, First Amendment

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will celebrate its tenth-annual First Amendment Day on Tuesday, Sept. 25. This campus-wide, daylong event is designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. Students and other members of the university community will read from banned books and discuss the public university’s special role as a marketplace of ideas and the need to be tolerant when others exercise their rights.

The 2018 First Amendment Day Keynote speaker will be Siva Vaidhyanathan, the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan will talk about his new book Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018). After five years as a professional journalist, he earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has also taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Columbia University, New York University, McMaster University, and the University of Amsterdam. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Vaidhyanathan will speak at 7:00 P.M. in 111 Carroll Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

There will also be other events all over campus, ranging from a panel discussion on Public Art, Public Memorials, and the First Amendment to readings from Banned Books conducted by faculty and students at the School of Information and Library Science.

You can check out all of the day’s events here: https://medialaw.unc.edu/first-amendment-day/

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UNC Media Law Ph.D. Students Win Top Awards at AEJMC 2018

By on September 2, 2018 in Center for Media Law and Policy

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.

Brooks Fuller headshotFuller’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!

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Announcing the Center’s New Faculty Co-Director: Tori Ekstrand

By on August 23, 2018 in Center for Media Law and Policy

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!

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UNC Media Law Students Receive Awards, Present Research, Accept Jobs, and more

By on March 26, 2018 in Center for Media Law and Policy

Our media law graduate students are the heart of what we do at the Center for Media Law and Policy. Daily, they impress us with their knowledge, curiosity and passion. Among their many accomplishments and successes, we are proud to highlight the following items:

Third-year PhD student and Park Fellow Kyla Garrett Wagner was awarded UNC’s 2018 Student Excellence in Mentoring Award. The award recognizes graduate and professional students who engage in outstanding peer mentorship across campus. Wagner is an interdisciplinary student who studies sexual expression as a free speech and public health issue. She recently served as first author on a study about citizen support for a California law requiring adult film actors to wear condoms. The article titled, “My sexual entertainment, my vote: How attitudes toward condom use in pornography related to support for California’s condom law.” The paper was written with Dr. Joe Cabosky, a faculty member in the School of Journalism and Media, and was published in the journal Sexuality & Culture.

Three Carolina students presented at the 2018 Association for Educators in Journalism in Mass Communication (AEJMC) Southeast Colloquium. Third-year PhD student and Park Fellow Kriste Patrow presented on the issue of government speech after a Supreme court ruling on the topic; Third-year PhD student and Park Fellow Kyla Garrett Wagner presented her research on sexual expression; and MA/JD student and Pruden Fellow Mariam Turner presented on artificial intelligence and copyright law. Wagner’s paper was selected as the top student paper for her division. The conference took place March 8-10 at the University of Alabama.

MA/JD student and Pruden Fellow Mariam Turner was recently offered a legal internship at National Public Radio (“NPR”). Mariam will spend the summer at NPR’s office in Washington, D.C. where she will work on audio licensing and copyright issues for NPR’s general counsel.

 

 

MA/JD student and Park Fellow Lindsie Trego, our resident expert on student expression, has accepted a legal fellowship with the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, and will begin work with them early next fall. In the meantime, Lindsie will present her thesis research on college media censorship at the AAUP’s Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education in Arlington, VA, June 14-15. This year’s conference has a special focus on free speech on campus. Lindsie is looking forward to presenting to an audience that deals with the practical aspects of student expression in higher education every day. Lindsie was also a recently featured speaker on the Student Press Law Center’s Facebook live webcast celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court decision on student speech.

Third-year Ph.D. student Shao Chengyuan has been invited to present at the International Association for Media and Communication Research conference in Eugene, Ore. in June. She will present two proposals: “Thirty-Seven Years of Comparative Legal Studies on Speech Laws between the United States and China: A Content Analysis,” and “Cybersecurity Law of China and the Chinese Cybersecurity Framework”

Congratulations to our wonderful graduate students!

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