Serena Miller is an Associate Professor of Journalism Innovations, the Co-Director of Graduate Studies in Michigan State University’s School of Journalism, and Associated Editor for Journalism Studies. Miller recently stepped down from chairing the Information & Media Ph.D. program for the School. The Association in Education in Journalism & Mass Communication elected her to the Standing Committee on Research to serve a three-year term. MSU faculty also elected her to serve on the University Committee on Faculty Tenure and the University Military Education Advisory committee. Miller received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University's Media and Information Program, her M.S. in Journalism from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and her B.A. in Communication Studies & Theatre from South Dakota State University. Prior to joining MSU, she was an assistant professor at Arizona State University where she led the digital media and Ph.D. programs for several years and she also worked as an instructor at Bloomsburg University prior to attending her Ph.D. program.
Before becoming a teacher-scholar, Miller served in the mechanic's platoon in the U.S. Army, raised crops and cattle on a 1,000-acre farm in South Dakota, and worked as a television journalist in the U.S. She is not only a traditional academic scholar but a creative one as well. She recently won 2 awards for her documentary and photographic work on documenting and preserving food cultures of Michigan-area Native American populations
Miller's ultimate goal is to bring out the best in her students to confidently grow as independent scholars and futurist thinkers through the undertaking of challenging projects and the exploring of their inner architecture. She recognizes that students need to connect to a higher-level inner calling in order to face challenging career pressures and personal life obstacles that they will eventually face in their futures. She envisions her job as a teacher is to help them discover their potential. To encourage problem-solving, critical thinking, and intellectual curiosity, her classes weave together technical applications, lab experiences, theory, and research.
In her courses, she seeks to inspire her students to be futurist thinkers in the profession and research by teaching them about cutting-edge technologies and underutilized approaches such as data scraping, website coding, transmedia storytelling (i.e., telling stories across social media platforms), community partnerships, social media analytics, YouTube channel web series, multimedia editing applications, interactive video documentaries, mobile journalism storytelling, oral history method, photo elicitation method (i.e., participants visually document their own realities), social media verification, scale development, and concept explication, for example.
Research
Media Sociology
Journalistic Practices
Social Media
Journalism and Graduate Education
Empirical Methods and Measurement
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods
Scholarly Communities
Social Science Theory Building
Research Overview
Miller’s earliest research focused on media sociology, news content characteristics, and emerging media, especially issues such as news quality, “citizen journalism,” and journalism education. Her quantitative and qualitative approaches addressed fundamental questions such as who should be classified as a journalist and what should be categorized as news because the identification of these characteristics is critical in understanding journalists’ role in supporting an informed society.
She sees her role as an educator of both the MSU community and broader academic community. Today, due to her role in the Information & Media PhD. program, her interests have evolved toward investigating large social scientific research problems by targeting concepts that need conceptual and empirical specification. She believes that journalism scholars can encourage unity within the field by identifying and exploring theoretical concepts that represent the discipline’s identity. Example constructs that she has created or advanced include journalistic interviewing competencies, journalism degree motivations, citizen journalists, journalistic expertise, frequent news comment contributors, news content diversity, dialogic communication, journalistic role enactments, news source affiliation diversity, social media communicator roles, journalistic self-categorization, visual self-presentation, and journalism major mediated influences.
Computational Communication
Health & Risk, Environment & Science Communication
Political Communication and Civic Engagement
Knight Center for Environmental Journalism
Health and Risk Communication Center