Steve McDowell

Across the globe, we see the traditional contribution of news media to public affairs eroded as a range of flows of information and disinformation are distributed, shared, and used to shape our understandings of our societies and the world. While the choices of sources and access to more voices have expanded for many audiences, there are significant questions about the quality of many sources and the implications of the use and sharing of these new sources. There are many possible points of entry to examine changes in news media studies, and to exploring challenges and opportunities on our research and teaching about news media. We will discuss questions connected to different parts of news media process, including production and content creation, industry structure, distribution, uses, and how this all matters for how we make sense of the world.

Steve McDowell is the John H. Phipps Professor in the School of Communication at Florida State University, and serves as Interim Dean of the College of Communication and Information at FSU. He also serves as Assistant Provost for International Initiatives at Florida State University. He was Director of the School of Communication at FSU from 2002-2013. His research and teaching interests address news content, new communication technologies, and communication policies in South Asia and North America. He has co-edited with Sahana Udupa, Media as Politics in South Asia (Routledge, 2017). He has co-authored, with Phillip Steinberg and Tami Tomasello, Managing The Infosphere: Governance, Technology, and Cultural Practice in Motion (Temple University Press, 2007), and written a book on India’s communication policies, Globalization, Liberalization and Policy Change: A Political Economy of India’s Communications Sector (St. Martin’s, 1997). McDowell has held fellowships with the Canadian federal Department of Communications in Ottawa, Canada (1987-1989), with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute in New Delhi, India (1989-1990), and a Congressional Fellowship supported by the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C. (1994-1995). He served as Chair of the Communication Law and Policy Division of the International Communication Association from 2008-2010.