The Center for Media Engagement and Media Ethics Initiative Present:
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#MeToo and Journalism Leadership
Ethical Leadership in Newsrooms in the #MeToo Era:
A Panel Discussion
October 29, 2019 (Tuesday) ¦ 2:00PM-3:00PM ¦ BMC 5.208
How did sexual harassment persist for so long in journalism, and what difference has the #MeToo movement made for those that run the media? What does ethical and effective leadership look like in newsrooms during the #MeToo era? This panel discussion features scholars from various fields in communication and media reflecting on the extent of the #MeToo movement in journalism, as well as its intersections with leadership in the modern media environment. Confirmed participants include:
Kathleen McElroy (Journalism, UT Austin)
Meme Drumwright (Advertising, UT Austin)
Kate West (Journalism, UT Austin)
Scott R. Stroud (Communication Studies, UT Austin)
The Media Ethics Initiative is part of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow Media Ethics Initiative and Center for Media Engagement on Facebook for more information. Media Ethics Initiative events are open and free to the public.
Co-Sponsored by the School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, and the UT Ethics Project
Designing Ethical AI Technologies
The Center for Media Engagement and Media Ethics Initiative Present:
Good Systems: Designing Values-Driven AI Technologies Is Our Grand Challenge
Dr. Kenneth R. Fleischmann
Professor in the School of Information
University of Texas at Austin
September 24, 2019 (Tuesday) ¦ 3:30PM-4:30PM ¦ CMA 5.136 (LBJ Room)
Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash
Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” This is the first law of technology, outlined by historian Melvin Kranzberg in 1985. It means that technology is only good or bad if we perceive it to be that way based on our own value system. At the same time, because the people who design technology value some things more or less than others, their values influence their designs. Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” chaos theorist, Ian Malcolm, notes: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think about if they should.” That’s the question we have to ask now: Should we increasingly automate various aspects of society? How can we ensure that advances in AI are beneficial to humanity, not detrimental? How can we develop technology that makes life better for all of us, not just some? What unintended consequences are we overlooking or ignoring by developing technology that has the power to be manipulated and misused, from undermining elections to exacerbating racial inequality?
The Inaugural Chair of the Good Systems Grand Challenge, Ken Fleischmann, will present the eight-year research mission of Good Systems, as well as our educational and outreach activities. Specifically, he will discuss the upcoming Good Systems launch events and ways that faculty, researchers, staff, and students can become involved in the Good Systems Grand Challenge.
The Media Ethics Initiative is part of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow Media Ethics Initiative and Center for Media Engagement on Facebook for more information. Media Ethics Initiative events are open and free to the public.
Weather Media in the Public Sphere
The Center for Media Engagement and Media Ethics Initiative Present:
Weather Media in the Public Sphere
Dr. John Durham Peters
María Rosa Menocal Professor of English &
Professor of Film and Media Studies
Yale University
May 2, 2019
On its face, weather sounds like the most banal and mundane thing possible. Ordinary people look down on talking about it and journalists often regard it as the lowest kind of news. This talk aims to show that the accusation that talking about the weather is intellectually empty is hardly the case in the age of climate change, and even dangerous. The rise of weather as a topic of conversation coincides with the rise of the bourgeois public sphere. More broadly, weather is a key part of media history. The history of human interaction with weather is also a history of cultural techniques and media technologies. Dramatists and divines have sought meaning from atmospheric events. Reading the skies is one paradigm case of human-nature interaction, and studying weather can stand in as part for whole as an inquiry into the environments humans have made or unmade. The history of modern weather forecasting is also a history of the militarization of the sky and oceans, and is co-extensive with the history of modern telecommunications, computation, and reporting. Weather raises two questions of profound interest to recent media theory: how mundane infrastructures are full of meaning and how vaporous or evanescent entities can be tracked, recorded, and programmed. Talking about the weather is not dumb; it may be essential.
Dr. John Durham Peters is a leading scholar in the area of media history, communication theory, and philosophy. He is the María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies at Yale University. Previously, Peters taught at the University of Iowa between 1986-2016. He is the author a range of books, including Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication, Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition, and most recently, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. He has held fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust.
The Media Ethics Initiative is part of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow Media Ethics Initiative and Center for Media Engagement on Facebook for more information.
Weather Media in the Public Sphere
The Center for Media Engagement and Media Ethics Initiative Present:
Weather Media in the Public Sphere
Dr. John Durham Peters
María Rosa Menocal Professor of English &
Professor of Film and Media Studies
Yale University
May 2 (Thursday) ¦ 1:30-3:00PM ¦ BMC 5.208
On its face, weather sounds like the most banal and mundane thing possible. Ordinary people look down on talking about it and journalists often regard it as the lowest kind of news. This talk aims to show that the accusation that talking about the weather is intellectually empty is hardly the case in the age of climate change, and even dangerous. The rise of weather as a topic of conversation coincides with the rise of the bourgeois public sphere. More broadly, weather is a key part of media history. The history of human interaction with weather is also a history of cultural techniques and media technologies. Dramatists and divines have sought meaning from atmospheric events. Reading the skies is one paradigm case of human-nature interaction, and studying weather can stand in as part for whole as an inquiry into the environments humans have made or unmade. The history of modern weather forecasting is also a history of the militarization of the sky and oceans, and is co-extensive with the history of modern telecommunications, computation, and reporting. Weather raises two questions of profound interest to recent media theory: how mundane infrastructures are full of meaning and how vaporous or evanescent entities can be tracked, recorded, and programmed. Talking about the weather is not dumb; it may be essential.
Dr. John Durham Peters is a leading scholar in the area of media history, communication theory, and philosophy. He is the María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies at Yale University. Previously, Peters taught at the University of Iowa between 1986-2016. He is the author a range of books, including Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication, Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition, and most recently, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. He has held fellowships with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust.
The Media Ethics Initiative is part of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow Media Ethics Initiative and Center for Media Engagement on Facebook for more information.
Media Ethics Initiative events are free and open to the public.
Race, Democracy, and Media
The Center for Media Engagement and Media Ethics Initiative Present:
The Spectacle of Lynching Redeployed:
On the Performance of Democratic Regard
Dr. Melvin Rogers
Associate Professor of Political Science
Brown University
April 9 (Tuesday) ¦ 3:30-5:00PM ¦ BMC 5.208
America’s history is marked by a striking image—“black bodies swinging in the southern breeze.” Abel Meeropol—a Jewish American—first articulated this line in his 1937 published poem, “Bitter Fruit,” after viewing Lawrence Beitler’s horrific lynching photograph. Although Meeropol eventually put the words to music, it was jazz singer Billie Holiday’s haunting rendition of the song, now titled “Strange Fruit,” first recorded in 1939 that made it a classic. How does one practically and conceptually engage the simultaneous existence of a professed commitment to equality and liberty alongside the fact that white Americans visually digested those with whom they otherwise shared the polity? I engage this vexing issue by reflecting on the normative possibilities latent in Holiday’s performative rendition of Meeropol’s song.
Dr. Melvin Rogers is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University. He is the author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2008) and co-editor of African American Political Thought: A Collected History (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). His articles have appeared in major academic journals as well as popular venues such as Dissent, The Atlantic, Public Seminar, and Boston Review. Rogers serves as the co-editor of the New Histories of Philosophy series at Oxford University Press. Presently, he is at work on his second book, The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought.
The Media Ethics Initiative is part of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow Media Ethics Initiative and Center for Media Engagement on Facebook for more information.
Media Ethics Initiative events are free and open to the public.
Disrupting Journalism Ethics
The Center for Media Engagement and Media Ethics Initiative Present:
Journalism Ethics amid Irrational Publics: Disrupt and Redesign
Distinguished Lecturer, University of British Columbia
Founding Director, Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin
November 5, 2018
Dr. Stephen J. A. Ward is an internationally recognized media ethicist, author and educator, living in Canada. He is a Distinguished Lecturer on Ethics at the University of British Columbia, founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, and director of the UBC School of Journalism. He was a war correspondent, foreign reporter and newsroom manager for 14 years and has received a lifetime award for service to professional journalism in Canada. He is editor-in-chief of the forthcoming Springer Handbook for Global Media
Ethics, and was associate editor of the Journal of Media Ethics. Dr. Ward is the author of 9 media ethics books, including two award-winning books, Radical Media Ethics and The Invention of Journalism Ethics. Also he is the author of Global Journalism Ethics, Ethics and the Media, and Global Media Ethics: Problems and Perspectives. His two new books, Disrupting Journalism Ethics and Ethical Journalism in a Populist Age were published in 2018.
Co-sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism
The Media Ethics Initiative is part of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow MEI and CME on Facebook for more information. Media Ethics Initiative events are open and free to the public.
Is Incivility Ever Ethical?
The Center for Media Engagement and Media Ethics Initiative Present:
Is Incivility Ever Ethical?
Assistant Professor of Journalism
University of Texas at Austin
October 16, 2018
Dr. Gina Masullo Chen is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and the Assistant Director of the Center for Media Engagement, both at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the online conversation around the news and how it influences social, civic, and political engagement. She is the author of Online Incivility and Public Debate: Nasty Talk and co-editor of Scandal in a Digital Age. She is currently writing her third book, The New Town Hall: Why We Engage Personally with Politicians. She spent 20 years as a newspaper journalist before becoming a professor.
The Media Ethics Initiative is part of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow MEI and CME on Facebook for more information. Media Ethics Initiative events are open and free to the public.
