Politics and the Media

Roger Boye has written at least a thousand articles related to numismatics (the study and history of coins/medals/tokens/paper money) and is a contributing editor of The Numismatist magazine. He has been parliamentarian of the Northwestern Faculty Senate since 2016 and is past president of the Northwestern Emeriti Organization..

Stephanie Edgerly's research explores how features of new media alter the way people consume news and impact engagement, particularly among youth and young adults. She is interested in the mixing of news and entertainment content, how individuals and groups create and share news over social media, and how audiences selectively consume media.

Abigail Foerstner is an award-winning reporter covering and teaching health, environment and science journalism. She teaches students how to bridge between an increasingly technological culture and general audiences who rely on science journalism to make critical decisions and understand the wonders around them. She teaches multimedia journalism.

Tim Franklin is leading the Medill Local News Initiative, a research and development project aimed at better understanding the behaviors of digital audiences and finding new approaches to sustainable local news business models.

Mei-Ling Hopgood, author of Lucky Girl and How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm (Algonquin), has won awards for investigative journalism, travel reporting and writing. She is an expert in reporting and multilingual and international storytelling and narrative. She also works on improving diversity and equity in higher education, newsrooms, and coverage.

Kari Lydersen's research focuses, among other things, on the intersection of economics, culture, environment, labor, history and social impacts in regards to extractive industries in Midwestern (specifically water, coal, copper, oil and gas) urban, rural and Native American communities.

Jon Marshall's research focuses on journalism history and the relationship between presidents and the press, especially investigative journalism. His books include Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis and Watergate's Legacy and the Press: The Investigative Impulse.

Joe Mathewson is a former Supreme Court correspondent for WSJ and a practicing lawyer in Chicago. He stimulates coverage of business, finance and the economy. He is author of “A Quick Guide to Writing Business Stories;” “Law and Ethics for Today's Journalist: A Concise Guide;” and “The Supreme Court and the Press: The Indispensable Conflict.”

Nguyen Chaplin conducts research in the areas of children's consumer behavior and branding. She studies how consumer values and behaviors such as materialism, brand consciousness and health knowledge develop throughout childhood.

Elizabeth Shogren has extensive background reporting on environment, energy and climate change. She probed the climate costs of cryptocurrency and natural gas. She covered the Clinton White House, Congress and many federal agencies and was a foreign correspondent in Russia. Her investigations exposed government censorship of science.

Peter Slevin writes about politics and other topics for The New Yorker. He traveled the country and the world for The Washington Post and The Miami Herald and, at Medill, his biography of Michelle Obama was a finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award.

Michael Spikes' research is centered on the practice and pedagogy of media literacy education (MLE) and news media literacy (NML) toward encouraging critical thinking to limit the effects of exposure to mis- and disinformation. His focus is on the design, assessment, and enactments of MLE & NML in classrooms and other learning environments.

Larry Stuelpnagel is a former political journalist. He is experienced with the economic and social pressures that impact the news that the public receives. He focuses on the lack of diversity in news staffing and how that impacts reporting on racial and economic issues.

Steven W. Thrasher's research uses journalistic and social science methods to study the intersection of LGBTQ history, racism, policing, incarceration, health disparities and HIV/AIDS. His most recent research focuses on the criminalization of HIV/AIDS and the Black Lives Matter movement in Missouri.

Yu Xu is an Associate Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications and (by courtesy) Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His research interests include media industries and analytics, social and communication networks, organizational change, ecology and evolution, and computational social science. His work has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Communication Monographs, New Media & Society, the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Service Management, Political Communication, and Information Communication & Society. He serves on the editorial boards of Human Communication Research and the Journal of Service Management. He teaches courses on digital media strategies and social networks at Medill and is the recipient of the “IMC Teacher of the Year 2022” award.