Research
As a journalism studies/political communication scholar, my research broadly explores contemporary issues related to the public’s uncertainty about public institutions—especially journalism’s societal role as a knowledge producer and custodian. That is, much of my work is focused on deepening a scholarly understanding of citizens’ doubts, skepticisms, and valuations of political actors and news media as a social institution in a range of cultural contexts.
Notably, the concept of uncertainty lies at the center of scholars’ theorizing on news media trust. Broadly speaking, trust is necessary in everyday life because certain tasks are always being delegated to other social actors (e.g., the task of reporting/surveilling claims of reality beyond one’s own surrounding environment). Because the reliability of those to whom we entrust resources to meet our desired expectations can never be fully guaranteed, degrees of risk, vulnerability, and uncertainty are at the core of trust-based relations. This includes trust in media entities—whether the object of media trust resides at an individual, organizational, or institutional level. Furthermore, uncertainty is relevant to other aspects of media-related theorizing and inquiry, including public uncertainty about the credibility of political actors and political institutions, uncertainty about the fundamental value of newswork and social media, and uncertainty about how news sources make decisions and select/produce knowledge.
With an increased emphasis over the last decade or so on the need for journalistic transparency, many journalism industry observers offer a rationale that by disclosing more information about journalism practices and inviting citizens into the journalistic process, journalists and journalism advocates might be able to reduce the public’s uncertainty about the credibility of news media, thereby improving media trust. In short, uncertainty reduction is often cast as a key to addressing journalism’s credibility and trust problems. I’m intrigued by such expectations of transparency’s efficacy (and the extent to which these assumptions are valid), along with questions about the causes and effects of people’s uncertainty about public institutions. Accordingly, my research agenda is broadly focused on probing what fosters these types of doubts and skepticisms, as well as the consequences of and potential means of reducing uncertainty about sources of news media. Recognizing the interconnected nature of the world’s information systems and noting how different dynamics animate media ecosystems around the globe, I am increasingly interested in probing these questions within an international framework—one that’s not bound by western conceptions of media values.