media and communication at muhlenberg college

Dr. Pooley has published a chapter, ”Media and Communications,” in the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology, co-authored with John Durham Peters.  Information about the book can be found here.  Congratulations, Dr. Pooley!

The department congratulates Dr. Kahlenberg on her sabbatical leave this semester and the opportunity to develop her scholarship on gender stereotypes on children’s commercial television.  Her work in this area has previously been published in the journal Sex Roles. We look forward to her return in Fall 2012!

Dr. Jennifer Horner has joined Media & Communication as a visiting assistant professor for Spring 2012.  Dr. Horner is teaching Media & Society and War and the Media. Dr. Horner was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her Ph.D. in 2006.  Please welcome Dr. Horner to Walson Hall!

ProfessorJansen has published a chapter, “Redesigning a Nature: Welcome to E-stonia, 2001-2018″ in Branding Post-Communist Nations: Marketizing National Identities in the ‘New’ Europe edited by Nadia Kaneva (Routledge).  From the publisher:

Nation branding–a set of ideas rooted in Western marketing–gained popularity in the post-communist world by promising a quick fix for the identity malaise of “transitional” societies. Since 1989, almost every country in Central and Eastern Europe has engaged in nation branding initiatives of varying scope and sophistication. For the first time, this volume collects in one place studies that examine the practices and discourses of the nation branding undertaken in these countries. In addition to documenting various rebranding initiatives, these studies raise important questions about their political and cultural implications.

HYPE, the youth media program directed by Jenna Azar and Dr. Taub-Pervizpour, is in stage 2 of a grant competition to develop a system of badges for recognizing the learning that occurs in this dynamic program.  The grant is online here and features a beautiful video produced by Tony Dalton showing the amazing teens who participate in HYPE.  Please take a moment to “like” and “comment” and help us evolve this great resource to students, faculty and the community!

I have just completed my internship at Rodale, Inc. Rodale is a publishing company that publishes some of the bestknown health and wellness magazines and trade books. I have previously worked for their Bicycling Magazine and have just wrapped up my time with their Organic Gardening magazine. Both bicycling and gardening were two things that I really did not have a great deal of familiarity with. After the completion of my internship I truly learned a great deal about each. More importantly I have gained extensive knowledge of the publishing world. What I am most proud of is that I have learned how to become a better writer. I have also learned that I am truly interested in print media and I hope to continue on a path that leads me into the publishing industry. The people I have come in contact with at Rodale have been nothing but kind, supportive, and helpful. My daily tasks included writing, research, and interviewing people from all over the country. There was never a dull moment at OG, and I look forward to another internship in the Spring with Rodale.com!

Media and Communication faculty and students enjoyed a 2-day visit from Visiting Honors Scholar Prof. Victor Pickard.  During his visit, Prof. Pickard participated in the Honors Seminar with honors students and department faculty, and gave a very well attended public talk, “The Rise and Fall of a Social Democratic Vision for Media, 1945-1948.”

Prof. Pickard is an assistant professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to Penn, he taught media studies at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and he received his doctorate from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois. Previously he worked on media policy in Washington, D.C. as a Senior Research Fellow at the media reform organization Free Press and the public policy think tank the New America Foundation where he continues to advise their Open Technology and Media Policy Initiatives.

The Visiting Honors Scholar program is a highlight of each year, enriching the intellectual life of the department and bringing students and faculty into conversation with leading scholars in the field of media and communication.

Alumna Ali Perry ’09 poses with Cookie Monster after a taping of the Dr. Oz Show.  Ali is Associate Producer at The Dr. Oz Show.  On this day, they were taping the big Holiday Show and Cookie Monster was the judge of the “Healthy Holiday Cookie Challenge.” Ali’s work is not all play!  She began as production assistant at The Dr. Oz Show in March 2010 and became Associate Producer in July 2010.  Another example of our graduates’ creativity (not to mention, impressive connections…who doesn’t love Cookie Monster?)

Dr. Susan Kahlenberg, associate professor, and Dr. Kate Ranieri, assistant professor, presented their individual research at the National Communication Association Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, November 17-20.

Dr. Kahlenberg presented her paper, “The Selling of Gender and Brand Identity in Toy Commercials:  A Content Anlaysis.”

Guided by cultivation and cognitive development theories, it is argued that toy commercials socialize children to gendered toys. As toys represent ideologies of our culture and are instrumental to children’s play, this study examines the extent toy commercials expose children to traditional gender stereotypes. A content analysis explored 1,091 toy commercials airing during after-school hours on Nickelodeon. This network touts itself as having a progressive corporate mindset, with diverse casts, yet it sustained advertising support via toy commercials that consistently featured traditional gender stereotypes and high frequency counts of branding. Thus, the network eschewed innovation for advertising revenue. Measurements of the type of toy, voice over, gender portrayal, dominant product user, interaction, setting, and activity revealed how commercials reaffirm gender stereotypes, and in turn, influence children’s understanding of their social worlds.

Dr. Ranieri presented a paper titled, “Malachi:  The Return of the Dead.”

This paper explores the voices of the iconic Malachi, a grotesque image of the fetal body that capitalizes on the monstrous to shock viewers. It argues that while pro-life activists believe this image voices their belief that abortion is a threat to the moral order, the tone of that voice actually makes audiences less sympathetic to pro-life activists. The young, the old, the women the activists seek to address often hear in the Malachi image not a cry for restore to moral order, but a disruption thereof. Its voice is loud, but for whom does it speak, and to what effect?

This paper is based on a five-month study of protest activities at a clinic offering abortions in northeastern Pennsylvania. A survey of activists revealed that most believed the image “showed” the public what abortion is all about, laying bare the results of the terminated pregnancy. Yet most aborted fetuses bear little or no resemblance to the Malachi image, which represents a pregnancy terminated far later than most. De-contextualized and made to speak on behalf all abortion, it does not elicit understanding but emotion. It represents not an argument, but what Jacques Derrida calls a “return of the dead,” a haunting indexed to trouble a culture’s present and future. This haunting is, in effect, an assault on the emotions. 

Yet the study suggests that while the image does indeed assault the emotions, it does so in a manner at cross-purposes with the goals of its users. Those exposed to the image accuse it of insensitivity. They believe its voice too unsettles children, the very population the activists seek to protect. They express misgivings about its power to drown out the voices of the women who use the clinic. In asking the Malachi to speak on their behalf, the protestors alienate the very people they hope to protect and persuade.

Interning at Avaya Inc was my first taste of a large corporate environment. My previous internship experience was in a small subsidiary of a large company, so this was an extreme environment change. Working on the Global Brand Management team was an interesting experience especially since the tagline for the company had just changed so I got to witness the development of the brand around “The Power of We.” My role included working on the media planning for the fiscal year 2012. This involves a great deal of organizing information and connecting with media vendors to ensure all the information was correct. I definitely greatly improved my excel skills. Besides media planning, I also got to see various aspects of marketing by helping to fill in during a team member’s vacation and talking with various people throughout the company to learn their roles. The internship provided a great deal of hands on experience and exposure to areas of media and marketing that I had previously been unaware of, not to mention excellent networking opportunities with Avaya employees and vendors and a New York marketing conference.