Center for Journalism Studies

We’re committed to making journalism better and the study of journalism better.

Journalism plays essential roles in society, but it is under pressure. Our goal is to better understand those pressures and how journalism can better make good on its social obligations. To that end, we also support innovations that provide alternative models for journalism. We believe making journalism better requires systematic study. We foster rigorous research, access to research resources, and opportunities for scholarly collaboration.

Projects and Resources

The Center facilitates journalism projects that model new, better, or innovative ways of doing journalism.

The American Communities Project is our innovation centerpiece. It uses data analysis and on-the-ground reporting to study the cultural, socio-economic, and political changes that are remaking the U.S. ACP receives external support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.

The Center facilitates research projects that enhance our understanding of how journalism does (and sometimes doesn’t) work.

We research a wide range of journalism areas: 

  • Media & Technology
  • Institutions & Organizations
  • News & Content
  • Reception & Engagement

The Center for Journalism Studies is the U.S. partner for the Worlds of Journalism Study. A collaboration of research of journalism in over 100 countries, the study seeks to “better understand the worldviews and changes that are taking place in the professional views of journalists, the conditions and limitations under which journalists operate, and the social functions of journalism in a changing world.” Project team members include Tim P. Vos, Rachel Mourão, and Esther Thorson.

The Center is collecting and curating social scientific measures and qualitative protocols used to study news and journalism-related phenomena.

These resources include items such as:

  • Content analysis codebooks
  • Survey questionnaires
  • In-depth interview questionnaires

Collaborations

We support collaborative projects, both within Michigan State University and across the world.

The Worlds of Journalism Study is just one such collaboration. The Germany-based project is supported by UNESCO, the International Federation of Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders.

We also work with the International Collaboratory on Crisis Communication, which examines how crises are communicated to the public through traditional and social media before, after, and during a crisis.

Visiting Scholars

We welcome journalism scholars who seek to work on collaborative projects. Scholars typically have support from the home universities or external funding agencies. 

Marcos Paulo da Silva

Marcos Paulo da Silva - Estudos de Linguagens

Marcos Paulo da Silva is an associate professor at Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), Campo Grande, Brazil, former president (2019-2021) and former scientific director (2017-2019) of Brazilian Association of Journalism Researchers (SBPJor), and former vice-coordinator (2017-2020) of the Journalism Theory Division of the Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in Communication (INTERCOM).

Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques

Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques

Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques is an associate professor at the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, CNPq research fellow, and lead researcher at the Research Group on Media, Politics, and Technology (PONTE).

 

Qing Wen

Qing Wen is a doctoral student at the Communication University of China, Beijing, China.