Media Studies

Deer in the spotlights: What Bambi tells us about animation and death

Joe Arney — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 15:45:51 +0000

Deer in the spotlights: What Bambi tells us about animation and death Joe Arney Thu, 11/06/2025 - 08:45

Joe Arney

When she asks her classes who remembers this scene from Bambi, Marissa Lammon says everyone's hand goes up. But while you probably can also recall this image, this isn't a scene from Bambi—it never appeared onscreen. A new paper from Lammon studies what this recollection teaches us about how we encounter and interpret violence and death as children.

You know that heartbreaking scene in Disney’s Bambi, in which the title character cuddles up to his mother’s lifeless body after she’s been shot by a hunter?

No, you don’t. It never happened.

“I show this image to my students all the time in class, and ask who remembers this scene,” said Marissa Lammon, a lecturer in the communication department at the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information at 51�Թ��. “And everyone raises their hand, even though this is never shown onscreen.”

Lammon (PhDMediaSt’24) is an expert in popular culture and children’s media, especially as they relate to death. And, she said, the widespread misremembering of how Bambi’s mother dies is a testament to the impact her death has on audiences.

“The image represents collective trauma, and how the vast majority of people interpreted this death as traumatic,” Lammon said. “We talk about animated deaths that really stick with us, and Bambi’s mother is the one. And it actually changes the way we remember the film.”

In a new paper in Omega, Lammon looks at the story of Bambi’s mother dying and what it says about Western culture, which has made death taboo, and how children interpret the media they absorb.

“We tend to think about children as passive, blank slates,” she said. “My work suggests children are active agents who are creating and negotiating meaning from what they see and hear. And what’s fascinating is that, as a culture, we don’t talk about death, but we show it profusely in media.”

How children create meaning from media

“Children are active agents who are creating and negotiating meaning from what they see and hear.”

Marissa Lammon (PhDMediaSt’24), instructor, communication

Lammon’s interest in mediated death started while she was studying psychology as an undergraduate at UCCS, and evolved while she was doing her master’s work there.

“Children create meaning in ways different from how we do, but they’re still very social,” she said. “I wanted to bridge this gap between psychology and media and cultural studies to understand how children use media to reinforce or challenge ideology in ways that are significant to their development.”

It’s particularly important work at a time when our environment is becoming even more hypermediated.

“If we, as adults, are struggling to discern what is factual information and what is ‘fake news,’ then it’s more crucial than ever to encourage media literacy, critical thinking and reflection with children, so they can develop those skills,” she said.

CMDI advisory board member Christopher Bell (PhDMediaSt’09) advised Lammon’s master’s work, and gave her opportunities to consult in the industry. They have become close collaborators on researching popular culture.

“Marissa has fully embraced the idea of public scholarship—the idea that the knowledge generated at the academic level should belong to the public,” said Bell, president of Creativity Partners and a longtime consultant in animation. “When she goes to Pixar or Skydance and presents her work to people who make things, it changes how these companies produce media for children. It literally changes the world.”

That’s something she’s trying to do with Bemoaning Bambi: Visual Communication of Trauma From Witnessing One of Disney’s Saddest Character Deaths.

Marissa Lammon, right, presents work on animation and death at Fan Expo Denver. ‘Children’s media actually are the most violent out there, but when we think about animation, we tell ourselves it’s just fantasy, it’s just fun, it’s not actually harmful,’ she says. Photo by Kimberly Coffin.

“Children’s media actually are the most violent out there, but when we think about animation, we tell ourselves it’s just fantasy, it’s just fun, it’s not actually harmful,” Lammon said, adding that our culture uses violence to teach moral lessons. “In the case of Bambi’s mother, her death embodies traumatic frames in ways that make it so salient in our recollections of animated death.”

Those frames, she said, are homicide, gender coding—especially the theme of maternal sacrifice—and character development after the act of violence.

‘Completely shattered’

While most of us remember Bambi’s mother being shot in the early stages of the movie, “in fact, it happens about 40 minutes in,” Lammon said. “So for 40 minutes, you see this loving and nurturing relationship develop, and then Bambi’s world is completely shattered.”

That trauma changes how Bambi develops, “leaving you, as an audience member, thinking about how he has to completely change the way he exists,” she said.

And that goes for the children in the audience, as well.

“The conversations I have with children are so deep and intellectual,” she said. “If parents really talked with their children about what they’re seeing and how they’re interpreting it, they would be so surprised with what they’re picking up on and how they reflect on it.”

Lammon’s hope is that her findings change both how the industry communicates themes around death and how parents and caregivers have conversations about what their children absorb.

“There is a lot that the industry is doing well, but we need to change media texts to include death that is natural, not just murder, so we can prepare them for what bereavement will look like in their own lives,” she said. “Meanwhile, we need to make parents more comfortable about having these conversations with their children, instead of just ignoring what they’ve watched or prevent them from seeing it.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

Children aren’t just blank slates—they create meaning from the media they experience. An expert says that’s a reason to think about how we show themes like violence and death.

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CMDI brings the conversation on immigration to center stage

Joe Arney — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 20:33:18 +0000

CMDI brings the conversation on immigration to center stage Joe Arney Thu, 10/16/2025 - 14:33

Joe Arney

Courtesy Motus Theater

For the first two years of its existence, the CMDI Distinguished Speaker Series has invited nationally recognized guests to provide insights on relevant topics like how technology encodes inequality into its products and services, and how to remedy a deeply polarized society.

While the focus on impact and important topics is the same, this year, the college invited local voices to share the stage and lead a conversation on immigration.

51�Թ��-based Motus Theater, which creates original works to facilitate dialogue on important contemporary issues, will stage a performance that will be followed by a panel discussion featuring journalists from The Colorado Sun, 9News and Colorado Public Radio.

If you go

What: Reapproaching Media and Migration

When: 6 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 22, CASE Chancellor’s Hall, fourth floor.

Who: Motus Theater, which brings silenced histories and marginalized voices to the stage, will give a performance of UndocuAmerica, followed by a panel conversation featuring local journalists.

Why: The CMDI Distinguished Speaker Series showcases some of the most pressing challenges of our time and invites future journalists, communicators, designers and technologists to consider their responsibilities as citizens and storytellers.

The event is open to all members of the 51�Թ�� community and the public.

Learn more

“What this series demonstrates is that CMDI is at the center of important conversations in our society,” said Nabil Echchaibi, associate dean of scholarly and creative work at CMDI and a professor of media studies. “We’re not just isolated in our own world. What we teach, what we do research on, what we explore creatively, it all has direct relevance to the world.”

Echchaibi encountered Motus as an advisor to one of the company’s performances, and invited the group to participate in a seminar class he taught a few years ago to help the students sharpen their media literacy skills.

“One of the things Motus excels at is reframing the conversation about these communities, around undocumented immigration,” Echchaibi, noting the company has been doing such productions since 2011.

UndocuAmerica, the project Motus will perform at CMDI, was created to counter the dehumanizing portrayal of immigrants through thoughtful engagement on the challenges facing the undocumented community, as well as the assets new arrivals bring to the United States. Motus works with leaders from the undocumented community to help them write powerful stories about their lives and experiences, then showcases them in moving monologues.

Echchaibi said he hopes the audience of communicators, storytellers and designers leaves with a better understanding of “our obligation as citizens, neighbors, journalists and educators to immigrant justice and honoring life for everyone.”

“I see CMDI as a convener of these conversations at a time when fewer people are having them,” he said. “We want to give a sense of perspective, some clarity about what we are all dealing with on a daily basis. Those conversations don’t only happen in the classroom—we are trying to foster a culture of meaningful and constructive discussion about issues of great public concern.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

A performance by Motus Theater headlines this year’s Distinguished Speaker Series.

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‘Little community,’ big class: Meet CMDI’s groundbreaking Class of 2029

Joe Arney — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 16:17:48 +0000

‘Little community,’ big class: Meet CMDI’s groundbreaking Class of 2029 Joe Arney Mon, 10/13/2025 - 10:17

Iris Serrano

Chip the Buffalo leads CMDI's newest class of students in doing the wave during the college's orientation activities. The college's Class of 2029 is 25% larger than last year's, which was at the time the largest ever. Photo by Hannah Howell.

When Kellen McFarland made the short drive from Thornton to 51�Թ��, he immediately fell in love.

Not just with the university, or its dramatic views of the Flatirons, but with the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information

“I remember thinking it was not only pretty out here, and close to home but all the classes I took were really fun,” said McFarland, who attended Connections, a summer academy for high school students that helped him experience life on campus. “After the program, 51�Թ�� felt like the best fit for me, and I considered it as one of my top options.”

In enrolling at CMDI, McFarland joined a monumental class of new first-year students. With 548 new first-year students, this new cohort is by far the largest in the college’s history, reflecting a 25% increase from the previous year.

Some other highlights from the Class of 2029:

The college also added 73 transfer students, bringing the total count of new undergraduate students to 621.
The strategic communication major had the highest number of admits by department, with 155. Information science saw the largest increase in enrollments, jumping by 16 over last year.
Despite the vastly increased size of the class, average high school GPA (3.76) and standardized test scores are slightly up, or on par with, last year.
CMDI also added 38 master’s students and 23 doctoral students for the fall.

Photo by Jack Moody

Notably, the incoming class is the first to be admitted to the renamed college, reflecting the integration of the environmental design department into CMDI.

“It’s so exciting, in our 10th year as a college, to have such a large and dynamic class of students joining us,” said Lori Bergen, founding dean of CMDI. “I’m especially thrilled to welcome our environmental design students, and am excited to see how their energy and enthusiasm continues to positively shape the direction of our community.”

‘Trying to be ambitious’

McFarland also participated in Pathways, another summer program designed to help students acclimate to college life and build community. It was there that the aspiring sports journalist also had the opportunity to learn more about the clubs and student organizations that would help him build a network and develop experience outside of the classroom.

“I learned about the opportunities that Sko Buffs Sports offers. Members have gone to Big 12 media days, and they get to interview athletes and get flown out to games,” McFarland said. “I’m trying to be ambitious. I know I won’t get there on day one, but I want to experience what it’s like on the field.”

Media production major Eloisa Samper participated in Pathways with McFarland, crediting the experience with preparing her for college life.

“We got really close in our group. We all have different majors, but when we see each other, we stick together,” Samper said. “It was comforting to know I had this little community on my first day.”

She’s no stranger to working in the creative field. Samper has practiced photography for years, and over the summer, she explored videography and content creation to support the global seminar in Medellin, Colombia, run by environmental design each year.

“After that, I started getting invested in my education and trying to figure out how I could do the kind of art that I am passionate about. That’s how I decided to study media production,” said Samper, who hopes her education prepares her to become a cinematographer on feature films or even work as a war correspondent.

Interests in sports, sustainability

Kennah White also came into college knowing what she wanted to do. The first-year student moved from Colorado Springs to study environmental design after taking an introductory class in high school.

Christopher Bell (PhDMediaSt'09) presents to students at orientation. Photo by Jack Moody.

“We still have a lot of problems with sustainability,” White said. “I want to help solve those problems and teach people how to help and utilize the environment.”

Her passion for advocacy started in high school, where she was part of an organization that raised awareness and funds to support women’s and children’s rights around the world. She hopes to continue that work in college.

CMDI is also welcoming plenty of students who have found their home away from home. Jhordynn Garcia, a media studies major, came to 51�Թ�� from San Antonio in hopes of breaking into the sports media industry.

Garcia is eager to learn foundational skills in her classes and hopes to better understand audiences and what drives engagement, so she can do multimedia marketing for professional sports teams.

“I’m curious about how to make people feel excited, how to connect with an audience and bring people together through social media,” she said.

With the semester already underway, students said they’re already making the most of the opportunities available to them in and out of class. Sam King, a strategic communication major from Minnesota, hopes to start his own business one day. To that end, he’s started to build his skill set by joining the 51�Թ�� chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America.

“We’ve had LinkedIn workshops and learned how other students got their internships. These are things that will help me pursue my goal, even if I’m still figuring out exactly what that is,” King said. “If you can communicate well and express yourself, that helps you get along with people and lead them.”

The Class of 2029, with Chip, in the CU Events Center during orientation activities. Including transfer students, the incoming class is made up of 621 new undergraduates. Photo by Kimberly Coffin.

Iris Serrano is studying strategic communication and journalism at CMDI. She covers student news and events for the college.

CMDI’s first cohort since integrating with environmental design is made up of even more ambitious and creative students.

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In its milestone year, CMDI welcomes more than a dozen new faculty

Joe Arney — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 20:40:01 +0000

In its milestone year, CMDI welcomes more than a dozen new faculty Joe Arney Fri, 08/15/2025 - 14:40

Joe Arney

Kevin Hoth is among the new faculty at CMDI this fall, though he's been lecturing at the university since 2011. ‘It feels like a perfect home for me; I’m very grateful to be with such a forward-thinking department,’ he says. Photo by Hannah Howell.

Kevin Hoth probably knows what it’s like for a longtime AAA pitcher to at last get the call to join the big leagues.

Hoth has been teaching at 51�Թ�� since 2011—originally as part of the ATLAS Institute—but this fall, he joins the critical media practices department at the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information as an assistant teaching professor.

“I’m so excited to have this department as my home on a more permanent basis,” said Hoth, previously a lecturer in critical media practices. “It feels like a perfect home for me; I’m very grateful to be with such a forward-thinking department.”

Hoth is one of 14 new professors to join CMDI this fall, bringing experience in artificial intelligence, surveillance studies, technology, journalism and more to the college. Coincidentally, the college is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its founding this year.

Lori Bergen, founding dean of CMDI, said while the quantity of new faculty is impressive, it’s the quality that helps this group stand out.

“I am so impressed with the credentials our new faculty are bringing to the college,” Bergen said. “Whether it’s their published work, varied research interests or boundless enthusiasm for teaching young people and preparing them for professional and person success after college, I know we have an impressive group that will create a lasting impact on the college and university.”

The full lineup of new faculty:

Ian J. Alexander, assistant professor, media studies. He researches the implementation and effects of media technologies in U.S. prisons.
Ashley Carter, assistant teaching professor, journalism. Carter earned her PhD in journalism from the college in the spring. As a a student, she took first place in a best paper competition at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She has written for The Denver Post, 303 Magazine and elsewhere.
Yiran Duan, teaching professor, information science. Duan studies how different types of users shape the flow of information using machine learning models, inferential statistics and data visualizations.
Cheri Felix, assistant teaching professor, advertising, public relations and design. Felix has been a lecturer at the college since 2022. She brings varied experiences to CMDI, including work as a writer, founder and program manager.
Kevin Hoth, assistant teaching professor, critical media practices. Hoth is a fine art photographer who has won multiple grants for his work.
Erica Hunzinger, assistant teaching professor, journalism. Hunzinger has been a lecturer at the college since 2022. Her journalism experience includes work for The Associated Press, The Denver Post and elsewhere.
Seonah Kim, assistant teaching professor, media studies. She studies global discourses around racial and gender identity in media that are shaped by structural inequality.
Julia Proft, teaching professor, information science. Proft brings experience in software engineering in educational technology to the college.
Mehak Sawhney, assistant professor, media studies. Her research interests include sound and media studies, surveillance studies, and environmental humanities.
Victoria Pihl Sørensen, assistant teaching professor, media studies. Sørensen conducts research at the intersection of media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the history and philosophy of science and technology.
Ilana Trumble, teaching professor, information science. Trumble also is returning to 51�Թ��, having earned her bachelor’s degree here in 2014. She is an expert in statistics and data science.
Hong Tien Vu, associate professor, journalism. Vu brings a decade of experience in journalism from living in Vietnam, including a stint with The Associated Press, to the classroom. He also is director of the college’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
Cody Walizer, assistant teaching professor, communication. Walizer has been teaching game studies, sports communication and related topics at CMDI since 2022. He specializes in debate and game studies.
Jonathan Zong, assistant professor, information science. Zong joins CMDI from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. He also studied at Princeton University and was a visiting student at the University of Oxford.

Alexander said he’s excited to join the college as part of such a large group of newcomers.

“It almost feels like a cohort, which is really exciting,” he said. “And at the same time, there are folks in the media studies department who have been around awhile, so it feels like I get to join a new group, and also a good, established one.”

Alexander brings particularly interesting research to CMDI. His work studies the introduction of media technologies—radio, telephone, tablets—into the U.S. carceral system. Through his research, he’s interviewed incarcerated people over phone and video call to better understand how technology advances have been used to isolate politically active people trying to create community within—or among—prisons, or to broadcast to communities in the event of an escape.

The newest tool he’s interested in are tablets, PDFs and video visit systems, which are starting to replace letters from home and legal communications.

“I look at these technologies as tools of struggle, oppression, isolation and manipulation—but also as tools of connection,” he said. “So, for instance, the way people inside are using them to make radio shows or podcasts, produce literature, or build solidarity and community and raise political consciousness.”

It’s work that is historical in its approach, but is worth studying in the current moment—both as the nation dramatically increases investment in policing and incarceration, and with generative artificial intelligence strongly reshaping how we communicate.

“It feels like I get to join a new group, and also a good, established one.”

Ian J. Alexander, assistant professor, media studies

“Like many people who study systems of structural oppression, I wish it were less relevant,” Alexander said. “But beyond just the massive expansion of ICE, and the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, there’s a larger question around what social and political function prisons serve—and what the state is saying about itself through its carceral system.”

Proft, who was a lecturer in the information science department in the spring, said she’s excited to bring her industry experience to the classroom, especially since she worked in educational technology.

“I enjoyed that work, but the impact I was able to have was pretty far removed from the actual students,” she said. “I really value having that smaller, but closer, connection to the students.”

Information science, she said, is a comfortable fit for its attention to creating human impact. That’s something she felt she missed while studying computer science.

“I think information science is one of those things where you ask people what it is, and you get tons of different answers,” she said. “But I think having that diversity—whether it’s technical, or business, or design applications—is really important, because that brings back the more human aspects of technology. So we get away from talking about computing as a topic divorced from anything else in the world.”

She said A.I. and large language models are a topic she’s excited to explore with her students, some of whom consider the advent of LLMs as an invitation to not have to learn to code anymore. Crucially, students must learn to use these tools—but they must be taught that they are tools, not shortcuts.

“When you learn to code, you’re developing a problem-oriented mindset, and learning how to approach and solve those problems,” Proft said. “If they’re leaning on LLMs to generate code, they don’t think about what the code is actually doing, which means when something goes wrong, they can’t address it.”

Hoth, as a fine art photographer, has given plenty of consideration to A.I.’s disruptive impact on the creation of images.

“Especially in media production, A.I. is a huge concern,” he said. “But I don’t put my head in the sand and say, ‘You can’t use any of this, we’re not going to talk about it.’ We have to talk about it. We have to integrate it into our teaching and our practices. But I have to show them where the line is.”

Hoth mentioned a conversation with a past student, who used A.I. to touch up nighttime photos in a project he did that took him around the state.

“I liked that he wasn’t afraid to share that with me,” Hoth said. “In this case, these were meant to be creative pictures—he’s not a documentary photographer—and so we discussed, you couldn’t put this in the Denver Post or New York Times, but with limited usage on a creative project, this kind of tool is OK.”

A major lesson in his classes, outside of technology, is that the right kind of failure is required for growth. He often shares failures from his own career to show how getting things wrong can be helpful.

“The learning environment should be a place of safety, in terms of play and also of learning how to fail well,” he said. “If you put forth your best effort, you’re trying something new and you fail, that’s commendable. That’s how you get to great things.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

The college is welcoming experts in artificial intelligence, surveillance studies, technology, journalism and more this fall.

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Public defenders: Alumni in news are undeterred as Congress claws back funding

Joe Arney — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 15:13:19 +0000

Public defenders: Alumni in news are undeterred as Congress claws back funding Joe Arney Mon, 07/28/2025 - 09:13

Joe Arney

Kirk Siegler reporting on location for NPR in the Amazon. The rescission package will almost certainly limit the ability for rural stations to afford journalism from NPR and PBS; Siegler says he's trying to let his reporting into rural communities and the challenges they face—especially related to climate—speak for itself.

Going-to-the-Sun Road is known for its natural beauty, its sweeping views of Glacier National Park, its white-knuckled masses of tourists travailing its winding roads. It is not known for cellular service.

So, when Kirk Siegler was driving the road while on assignment in the park over the summer, he turned the dial to the local NPR station to see what he’d missed while being away from coverage.

“I tuned in to the top-of-the-hour newscast and got it loud and clear,” said Siegler (Jour’00), an NPR News correspondent. “There have been a lot of investments in towers and infrastructure by local public radio stations in recent years—especially here in the West, where the topography is so challenging—to ensure information gets out during disasters, as well as basic news services.”

When Congress clawed back more than $1 billion in approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—which will close in January after laying off most of its employees in the fall—it created new challenges for alumni working in public media. But the real pain has been felt at rural stations, which can no longer afford to license content from NPR and PBS, creating vast news deserts.

In fact, when Siegler is in the field—he is based in Boise, Idaho, and covers the western United States—most people he interviews have never met a reporter.

“They’re mostly following the cable news networks, and the rancorous debate they see there,” Siegler said. “Once people talk to me, they’re appreciative of a reporter coming to listen to them, and having their stories get out there.”

Funding cuts are just the latest challenge for rural publishers and station managers, said Patrick Ferrucci, chair of the journalism department and a researcher who studies the business models of rural newsrooms.

“You’re mostly talking about family-owned newspapers that haven’t changed their approach in a hundred years,” Ferrucci said. “It’s easy to say ‘just innovate,’ but it’s not that simple.”

He said rural journalism must diversify its funding structures—away from focusing solely on advertising—and change its community engagement practices.

“Rural journalism has always done a good job of being part of a community,” he said. “We don’t want to change that emphasis on community-based storytelling, but we’ve seen some success with things like membership models and events that make the newspaper a public space.”

Siegler is at his happiest when he’s melting shoe leather talking to residents of rural communities—he’s been co-producing a series, “American Voices,” where he visits places ignored by national media to understand how Donald Trump’s policies are affecting people and communities. But he’s often among the first on the scene for NPR when big news breaks in the West. He was at the campus of Utah Valley University just hours after a gunman killed conservative commentator Charlie Kirk earlier this fall.

That assignment, he said, underscored the value journalists bring to breaking news in a highly polarized climate.

“This is not the time to fall on our sword, but to raise our sword and cut a new path.”

Neal Scarbrough (Jour’84),
vice president and general manager, Marketplace

“I saw it more on this one—this race to know all the answers on social media,” Siegler said. “At NPR, our job is not to race to conclusions. Our job is to cut through the noise and only report what we know. Sometimes when we’re on the air, we talk about how we don’t know all the facts and why it’s important to not speculate until we learn everything. I think our listeners appreciate that.”

At Marketplace—a publicly funded media outlet that licenses its business and economics coverage to stations around the country—Neal Scarbrough is broadening his offerings to make the company’s services invaluable, especially in rural areas.

“We’ve maintained our audience, even as radio listenership is dipping,” said Scarbrough (Jour’84), vice president and general manager. “In this moment of economic turmoil, we do have relevance for our listeners, who are seeking answers to questions on tariffs, trade wars, the markets and so on. But we have to demonstrate our value every day.”

Scarbrough has an editorial background, but his day-to-day focus at Marketplace is innovation. Of late, that’s meant offering more digital content to partner stations; as he put it, “the longer we’re restricted to radio, the quicker we’ll decline.”

Siegler’s reporting on climate catastrophe is especially important in the West. Major coastal outlets cover fires, flash flooding and mudslides, but he also reports on the local governments and developers turning arid places into the nation’s fastest-growing areas.

“The West is positioned to bear some of the most serious effects of climate change,” he said. “If there aren’t reporters covering city hall, holding politicians and developers accountable, then people don’t see it in the news and change doesn’t happen.”

Both Siegler and Scarbrough said there are other ways to make a living, but neither is giving up the fight. Siegler hopes journalism students will be able to compete for more jobs as rural communities realize what they lost when public funding disappeared.

“This is not the time to fall on our sword, but to raise our sword and cut a new path,” Scarbrough said. “Rather than say ‘woe is us, we lost our funding,’ we need to see this as a moment to redefine what public media is, in a way that helps our audience make sense of the world around them.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

The $9 billion rescission package is going to hurt local stations, but journalists and managers working in public broadcasting aren’t going away without a fight.

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The roads net taken

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 20:10:55 +0000

The roads net taken Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 14:10

By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)

Robert Frost once wrote of two roads diverging in a yellow wood, and imagining his narrator eventually regretting whichever choice he made.

“I want to introduce a sense of wonder and marvel about what has happened—and what could still be possible.

Lori Emerson
Associate Professor
Media Studies

Lori Emerson is also fascinated by the road not taken. But unlike Frost, who is looking forward down those roads, she is looking backward, to the technology-related choices—around networks, protocols and structures—that led us to this moment.

And, especially, what we can learn from the choices we didn’t make along the way.

It’s something Emerson, an associate chair of media studies at 51�Թ��’s College of Media, Communication and Information, explores at length in Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook, which she published last month.

“I want to introduce a sense of wonder and marvel about what has happened—and what could still be possible,” Emerson said.

It can be difficult to imagine what something like the internet might look like in an alternate timeline. But in fact, just calling it “the internet” makes it feel like the preordained platform that we were inevitably going to get.

“The internet is just a network of networks,” she said. “There are other networks of networks, and there could be others in the future. What bothers me is this unquestioned narrative about the internet as this singular endpoint—that it only could have been created in the U.S. in the way in which it currently exists.”

A quiet activist

There is a quiet strain of activism in Emerson’s work that’s getting a little louder: She’s trying to be more outspoken at a time when technology is increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few major players.

“The future feels predetermined and has left most people feeling like they have no power to intervene, and we all just have to accept things as they are,” she said. “And so what I’m trying to do is poke holes in that ideology with very simple, compelling examples from the past.”

Simple and compelling are rarely adjectives used to describe an academic publication, but Emerson leaned on her background in experimental poetry and poetics to break a few boundaries. The result is a beautifully designed book that wouldn’t seem out of place among the vintage instruction manuals created for telephones and telegraphs from generations ago.

“Women played a huge role in the creation, adoption and maintenance of networks, from the telephone to the radio, but have been erased in favor of individual white guy inventors,” she said. “I wanted to create an alternate universe in a book that echoed that history you see in those cloth, hardcover, gold-foiled instruction books—but in a way that was feminized.”

Her book isn’t the only public-facing space where Emerson offers critical thinking around technology. CMCI’s Media Archaeology Lab started as a way for Emerson, the lab’s director, to collect Apple IIe computers in order to run an experimental kinetic digital poem in class. It has evolved to become an extremely thorough repository of obsolete, but still functioning, technology, from Ataris to Zip drives.

“The more we gathered, the more I became convinced that hands-on access to historical technology is essential to understand how it actually works,” she said. “You have to be able to use it, to take it apart. By doing so, you come to appreciate how we got to the point where these technologies were created, and imagine alternative presents and futures.”

New book, old story

The book is new, but the story of technology as a linear narrative isn’t. Beyond the lab, Emerson’s work has gone as far back as how rural communities created the party-line phone system by tapping the miles of barbed-wire fence spanning their properties. That kind of alternate network—one Ma Bell didn’t control—is something she wants readers to think about while questioning the narrative Silicon Valley has put forth as the internet’s origin story.

It’s almost a book that didn’t happen. Emerson was well past her deadline before realizing she had to narrow how deep her focus would go; “a full accounting of all the networks out there would never get finished,” she said.

As it was, the manuscript tripped some wires in China—censors objected to a part discussing how activists in the Tiananmen Square massacre used faxes to communicate with one another—which meant printing had to be moved to Turkey. As the materials arrived for printing, a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm struck, delaying production by almost a month.

Finally, her publisher declared it was going out of business after the first run of books was printed. A limited run is available, and Emerson plans to get it to a new publisher once the existing copies have sold.

“The whole thing has been one surprise after another, honestly,” Emerson said. “When you think about Chinese censorship—of course it happens, but to actually have it happen to you is something else altogether.”

She hopes readers appreciate the look and feel of her text, while maybe finding in it a reason to be hopeful about technology by re-examining its past.

“I hope people take from it a different sense of the history, and feel excited and empowered, rather than just absorbing the dominant narrative about how everything is terrible,” Emerson said.

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

Lori Emerson’s research work examines forks in the road where networks and technology diverged. Her new book argues technology as we know it isn’t inevitable—and should be open to reexamination.

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Congratulations, Class of 2025!

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 19:44:19 +0000

Congratulations, Class of 2025! Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:44

More than 900 graduates were celebrated at CMCI’s annual recognition ceremony this past May. Our newest class of Forever Buffs arrived amid pandemic and leave as outstanding scholars and accomplished leaders.

View the 2025 Graduation Celebration

William W. White honorees
Meet the most outstanding students from each CMCI major, as chosen by our faculty.

‘A rock star who is going places’
The top student in her class, Sarah Carleo, discovered her passion for public relations as a student. She’s now off to Next PR, where she previously was a standout summer intern.

Getting the message
Andrew Johnson made the most of a New York City internship with BBH USA. The top strategic communication major is thrilled to return in an account management role as he gets another bite at the Big Apple.

Bylines are fine, but…
Most college students would be thrilled at getting an Associated Press byline. So is Celia Frazier, but she measures her work in impact, not clips. She graduated as CMCI’s top journalism major.

Meet the environmental design Class of 2025
Get to know some oustanding seniors and watch the recognition ceremony.

Celebrating ENVD

Connections through design
For Serena Langdon-Dimidjian, a graduate with a dual degree in architecture and ethnic studies, design is about building community, asking deeper questions and making space for connection.

"Everything you’ve done up to this moment has prepared you to succeed in a world where you can feel the ground moving under your feet.

Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
CMCI

Our newest class of Forever Buffs arrived amid pandemic and leave as outstanding scholars and accomplished leaders.

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Summer 2025: 2 minutes with...

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 18:29:42 +0000

Summer 2025: 2 minutes with... Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 12:29

Antoinette Kendrick
PhD student, media studies

“One minute, I’m sharing my phone with Deion Sanders, showing him the app,” said Antoinette Kendrick, recalling her visit to a CMCI course that features Coach Prime as a frequent guest lecturer. “Next, he starts calling Snoop, and suddenly I’m on a FaceTime with him. It’s going be a highlight of my life, for sure.”

Responses edited for length and clarity.

So you got Snoop Dogg to come to class. What will you do for an encore?
I was there as a guest, and didn’t want to interrupt the class. The students were pitching ways Prime could expand his brand. But at the end, he’s still asking, “Anyone else?” so I told him about Speechify, a text-to-speech platform with only two Black male voices—a stolen likeness of Barack Obama, and Snoop.

And then he called Snoop.
It was sur(actual)real. Surreal! Honestly, my first thought was, this is where the academy can take you—like, I can be on a Thursday night Facetime with Snoop, who just looks like someone’s grandfather in a regular den.

Speaking of the academy, how does a social worker get to CMCI?
Working with kids illuminated to me what the digital age looks like for them—and how little guidance they have navigating these spaces. My supervisors suggested the problem needed to be studied at a research level. I found social work programs were not meaningfully engaging with media, so I looked at media studies.

Children’s media literacy must be a fascinating topic.
I’m actually looking at tech stress in young adults. I think it’s because I live in a sorority house—

Wait. You live where?
(Laughs.) Well, it’s a refurbished sorority house. A couple years ago the sorority disbanded. The owner rents to students, and I get reduced rates for being house mom.

How does that influence your research?
You see the stresses they encounter. At the low scale is how they respond to the three dots in their messages. Large scale, one girl broke up with her partner because he was looking at pictures of her friend on another social media platform. We have not navigated how to negotiate these encounters.

Back to Prime. Will the experience in the course change how you teach?
Prime comes to class with so much energy, which I think these young white students have never seen. And he doesn’t code switch. He stays true to himself in this highly regimented space. I’d like to do more of that.

A regular feature catching up with people in our community who are doing interesting and impactful work. In this edition, bringing Snoop Dogg to a media studies class.

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Courting justice

Amanda J. McManus — Wed, 28 May 2025 17:49:03 +0000

Courting justice Amanda J. McManus Wed, 05/28/2025 - 11:49

By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18) and Nandi Pointer (PhD candidate, Media Studies)

Ask any of her students how they prefer to get their news, or search for recommendations, or learn about their favorite TV shows, and Sandra Ristovska will tell you that they go on TikTok.

Yet their educations—from the time they first set foot in a grammar school classroom—have focused on textual literacy, with almost nothing devoted to how video and photos are analyzed.

“We just assume that everybody intuitively knows how to understand images, because we don’t have to teach you an alphabet, or grammar,” said Ristovska, associate professor of media studies at the College of Media, Communication and Information. “But we know from research that people can watch the same image and arrive at a vastly different understanding about what that image says or does.”

More: Bringing student activism to TikTok videos

That’s fun when we’re overanalyzing a plot twist in Severance. But Ristovska’s work centers around what happens when videos make their way into a courtroom, where interpretations can influence a person’s guilt or innocence.

According to one estimate, video appears in about 80 percent of criminal cases, but no guidelines exist for how video can be presented as evidence in court. And that’s also the case for deepfake videos or media created by generative artificial intelligence.

“Anybody who’s seen a legal document knows they’re standardized—if it doesn’t look a certain way, it’s not going to be admissible in court,” Ristovska said. “But when it comes to video, different courts have different guidelines and understandings about what’s admissible.”

Ristovska has been an important contributor to scholarship in media and the law. At a daylong event in April, she helped steer the conversation around these topics while formally presenting the Visual Evidence Lab, a new lab at CMCI that will advance her work in this area.

The workshop, Justice by Video, brought together judges, attorneys, journalists, and scholars from the humanities, social sciences, law and STEM to develop new avenues for research and potential policy proposals around how to ensure justice is best served.

Ristovska’s personal history plays a role in all this, too. Growing up in what is now Macedonia during the Yugoslav Wars, she still recalls how footage from the fighting upset her parents—even if she was too young to understand the news bulletins interrupting her evening cartoons. As part of her graduate school work, she went on to study how footage from civilians and activists made its way to the United Nations’ criminal tribunal, in The Hague.

“I realized the law was an important place to be asking questions about video evidence,” she said. “Some of the citizen footage in the tribunal wasn’t verified through the person who shot it, which had never been the case before. And this footage was both establishing the truth in court while constructing a historical memory about the wars.”

Cross-disciplinary expertise

Sandra Braman, a professor of media and information at Michigan State University, said she was excited to participate in this event because of the range of expertise involved, including practicing judges as well as legal scholars and researchers from across the social sciences.

Braman has twice served as a visiting professor at CMCI, and is considered among the leading scholars in digital technologies and their policy implications. She was impressed with the agenda, which included small group discussions intended to stimulate cross-disciplinary discussion and a detailed reading list to review beforehand.

“Usually, when you go to the first conference of its kind, it’s just a chance to gather and talk generally about the topic,” Braman said. “Sandra has put together a very structured set of tasks that are actually very hard questions to guide us on visual evidence.”

Roderick Kennedy, who retired from the New Mexico Court of Appeals after serving as its chief judge, was part of an afternoon panel discussing the issues raised by Incident, a documentary of a police shooting in Chicago and the role security footage plays in creating a narrative explaining what happened.

Kennedy and Ristovska met through his work with the American Bar Association. Ristovska presented a series of webinars on video evidence and deepfakes to members. They also collaborated when she was a guest editor of an issue of The SciTech Lawyer last winter that took a deep dive on these issues.

Kennedy said video evidence presents similar challenges that he would see with eyewitness testimony throughout his career. Memory is unreliable, he said, as witnesses become suggestible when asked to remember details or are affected by the pressure to have a definitive answer for investigators.

“You have a single viewpoint, but it’s overlaid with other memories that can change things, and is subject to interpretation every time you recall it and restore it,” he said.

‘A vertical learning curve’

A video won’t change its memory under pressure, but how it’s captured and edited can influence the way a jury interprets what happened. And while footage from police body cams or the smartphones of bystanders may get the most attention, Kennedy said the issue crops up elsewhere—even police interrogations. He shared a case involving a pathologist whose findings in a homicide were influenced by hearing a woman confess to the crime on camera.

Her confession, however, was preceded by an exhausting, seven-hour police interrogation. And because we’ve been conditioned to believe videos show reality—without considering how they were framed, trimmed, slowed down or otherwise edited—they have significant potential to mislead jurors.

“That’s the power of video,” Kennedy said. If you only show a jury the last minute or so of that interrogation, “all you see is a mother saying she killed her baby.”

The workshop wasn’t just about editing techniques that may introduce doubt. Invited experts also discussed deepfakes, an emerging challenge for courts that must catch up to the technology. Kennedy said judges and lawyers “have almost a vertical learning curve” when it comes to the technology.

“You have to learn the language of the technology experts before you can accuse somebody of using a deepfake,” he said. “And the experts aren’t taught how to speak legal, or the legal rules for putting their expertise in evidence.”

One thread of Braman’s research on information policy is the history of facts themselves.

“Our social orientation around facts provides the context within which we think about evidence,” she said. “And though we are talking a lot today about A.I. and the problem of deepfakes, the question of the authenticity and validity of digital information in general actually first arose as soon as the internet became available to the general public. We need to solve this problem yesterday.”

Ristovska said she was pleased to see members of the public attend to watch Incident and start thinking about video as a communication tool that is overdue for guidance.

“We’re not going to solve all the challenges around how people see video—we can’t do that with any type of evidence,” she said. “But I hope we can develop research-based guidelines that promote consistency, fairness and equality in the use of video as evidence.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

Video evidence appears in 80 percent of criminal cases, but a lack of consistent guidelines means there’s no standard for how media are presented in court. A workshop led by CMCI faculty may change that.

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Trial by fire

Joe Arney — Tue, 20 May 2025 16:39:56 +0000

Trial by fire Joe Arney Tue, 05/20/2025 - 10:39

Anna Turner was one of 10 finalists in the annual Three-Minute Thesis hosted by the Graduate School. Her PhD journey was marked by trials, including losing almost all her work in a house fire halfway through the program.

By Joe Arney
Photos by Hannah Howell (media production)

The PhD student’s journey is about learning—not just about the subject that most interests them, but about themselves, and whether they possess the mettle to overcome the rigors of research and teaching.

Part of Anna Turner’s struggle was finding a program that would encourage her to explore her dual interests in the quantitative and critical approaches to media studies.

But the real challenge came halfway in, when she lost virtually all of her work in a fire.

“I knew it was going to take me longer than most students to finish the program, because my dissertation is a little ambitious,” said Turner (PhDMediaSt’25), who graduated from the College of Media, Communication and Information at 51�Թ�� in May. “But basically, I lost my fourth and fifth year rebuilding everything.”

Turner was staying with her boyfriend over spring break when another unit in the building caught fire. They fled with their pets; while the unit itself didn’t burn, water from the fire hoses damaged the technology that was left behind.

And while her work was backed up to a cloud drive, that was also lost when she turned in a borrowed computer two months after the fire. A technician accidentally deleted the cloud backup, instead of just wiping her local profile from the machine.

“The experience taught me how resilient I am,” she said. “Because every time I tell the story to another PhD, they’re like, ‘Wow, I would have quit.’”

More assignments for a top teacher

Turner credited CMCI and its media studies department with supporting her through the worst, including finding teaching assignments and other opportunities to fund her journey. The extra teaching duties benefited both Turner and the college, said Rick Stevens, then the chair of the media studies department.

“CU was one of the few places that didn’t try to change me. Everything I had imagined about Colorado came to fruition when I visited—it was everything I wanted, academically and socially.”

Anna Turner (PhDMediaSt’25)

“Anna never seems to get flustered, no matter what is thrown at her,” said Stevens, now associate dean of undergraduate education at CMCI. “She always finds a way to not just come through, but come through in a way that best serves our undergraduate students.”

Faculty support amounted to more than just financial support when her graduate funding ran out. It started when she was applying to schools—and being told to narrow her focus. Few media studies doctoral programs specialize in both social sciences and culture studies work; more than a few admissions offices were impressed with Turner’s credentials, but warned her to pick a lane.

“CU was one of the few places that didn’t try to change me,” she said. “I got accepted and the director called and said, ‘How can I get you to come here?’ And everything I had imagined about Colorado came to fruition when I visited—it was everything I wanted, academically and socially.”

Turner’s advisor, Stewart M. Hoover, was among the people who challenged her, rather than changing her.

“You got a sense from Anna right away that she had the moxie to stick through a long and arduous doctoral program,” said Hoover, an emeritus professor of media studies who has worked in both the quantitative and qualitative spaces. “I wanted to encourage her because I felt she had the background, knowledge and drive to do something special.”

While it meant a longer program and more work on her part, Turner’s quantitative-meets-critical work hasn’t been a hindrance. In fact, she was among the 10 finalists at the university’s annual Three-Minute Thesis competition, where PhD students showcase their work and its impact to a nontechnical audience under strict time limits.

Turner’s work looks at polarization from the standpoints of both popular culture and social media. She devised surveys based on scenes from TV shows and social media posts to understand how people reacted to different messages—important because, when it comes to polarization in the media, most research has focused on the media we choose to watch, such as the different audiences for Fox News or MSNBC.

In interpreting her results, she found a lot of broad agreement about topics that fuel the media culture wars—surprising, but then, the business model of media and tech titans relies on driving users into different camps.

“The algorithms create echo chambers that we’re not selecting on our own,” she said. In a sense, we are—our feeds are built from what we like and don’t—“but the algorithms are doing the work for us, as opposed to when we just had cable news to choose from. We’re getting our news from algorithms, rather than from what we choose with popular culture.”

‘It’s a back and forth’

That’s worth studying because popular culture’s ability to influence is well documented. For instance, adding gay and lesbian characters to primetime television shows in the 1990s played a role in the mainstream public eventually becoming more supportive of same-sex marriage.

“Popular media imitates culture, but culture also imitates popular media. It’s a back and forth,” she said. “The idea that exposure to people we haven’t seen before can change our views is really interesting to me.”

A logical place to take this kind of work would be to a streaming service, to study how exposure to ideas can mitigate, rather than exacerbate, polarization. That’s her dream job.

“There’s a lot of nuance to my work that still needs to be pulled out,” Turner said. “I hope to do the kind of social experiments that help us examine how we introduce people to characters and story arcs, and how those play out beyond just a short clip you see as part of a survey.”

Hoover, her advisor, said that direction lines up with the values-based impact she wants her research to create.

“She has a set of ideas about the way we should live together as a society, and the way our politics ought to represent and express that,” he said. “I’m excited to see how she uses her research to promote that more helpful, more generalized view of what we as a society share in common.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

As she neared the finish of her PhD program, Anna Turner lost all her work in a fire. How she came back to complete her degree is a testament to her resilience.

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Media Studies

Deer in the spotlights: What Bambi tells us about animation and death

How children create meaning from media

‘Completely shattered’

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CMDI brings the conversation on immigration to center stage

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‘Little community,’ big class: Meet CMDI’s groundbreaking Class of 2029

‘Trying to be ambitious’

Interests in sports, sustainability

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In its milestone year, CMDI welcomes more than a dozen new faculty

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Public defenders: Alumni in news are undeterred as Congress claws back funding

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The roads net taken

A quiet activist

New book, old story

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Congratulations, Class of 2025!

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Summer 2025: 2 minutes with...

Antoinette KendrickPhD student, media studies

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Courting justice

Cross-disciplinary expertise

‘A vertical learning curve’

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Trial by fire

More assignments for a top teacher

‘It’s a back and forth’

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Antoinette Kendrick
PhD student, media studies