Research — Initiatives

Illinois Initiative for Media Policy Research

Seeking to strengthen the connections between academic work and policy making, the IIMPR held a two-day conference in May 2005 examining media ownership. "Can Freedom of the Press Survive Media Consolidation?" featured artists, media executives, academics, policy makers, activists and journalists. Speakers included Seymour Hersh, Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman, Rep. Bernie Sanders and more.

Initiative on Communications, Culture and Policy

The Institute of Communications Research received a grant from the Ford Foundation's Division of Knowledge, Creativity & Freedom to study communication, culture and policy — more specifically, to organize an interdisciplinary conversation among scholars, students and professionals over a 15-month period about these three areas and how they intersect (or fail to intersect). Some goals of the project have been to (1) identify policy-related scholars, research, initiatives and other resources on the Illinois campus and beyond, (2) hold a series of introductory "briefings" on different policy arenas and (3) produce a broad-reaching cultural/media policy resource directory and annotated reading list for the project Web site.

Illinois Initiative on Global Communication and Information Policy

The Illinois Initiative, founded by Bob McChesney and Dan Schiller, is designed to build a knowledge base about global information and communication policy and contribute to forming a worldwide community of scholars and other experts on these topics. One component is a program to host international media policy scholars, journalists and activists.

Media Matters

The "Media Matters" radio show features Bob McChesney as host in conversation with a variety of guests. The show is broadcast on WILL-AM 580 on Sundays from 1 to 2 p.m. Central time. Taped shows are available on the Media Matters Web site. Listeners may call with comments or questions. McChesney is a research professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Communication, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science.

Persuasion and Propaganda Studies

The ICR is the host of the Karin and Folke Dovring Scholars Program in the Analysis of International Propaganda and Persuasion in War and Peace, a $500,000 bequest to the Institute from Dr. Karin Dovring to support research, teaching and travel in the analysis of propaganda. In addition, it has been proposed that the ICR organize a campus conference on persuasion and propaganda that would bring together academics from the University and around the world who are working on the relationship between democratic politics and the new media environment. The conference would revisit a series of influential seminars funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s that wrestled with the central international crises of that time — the rise of fascism, fears about the effectiveness and antidemocratic implications of World War I propaganda and concern about the indifference of many Americans to events overseas. This would be a collaborative effort with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ethika.org

Ethika.org is an independent, nonprofit, international organization created by faculty and doctoral students from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ethika.org provides an informative and stimulating interdisciplinary forum for persons wishing to share their knowledge and insights with a broad, diversified audience. This site publishes Aesthethika, an online, bilingual journal, twice a year. The journal seeks to articulate a variety of knowledge, methodologies and perspectives to understand and interrogate the complex interplay of culture, subjectivity, discourses and politics, and their expression in all forms of human life.

The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network

The CWN, funded by the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, is developing wireless technology to be used around the globe, with a focus on developing nations. Champaign-Urbana is the testing ground for this technology. Sascha Meinrath, a Ph.D. student in the Institute of Communications Research, was a co-author of the grant along with David Young, a programmer from OJC Technologies in Urbana. Meinrath, Young and others have been developing cutting-edge wireless technology in Urbana for more than three years. The Community Wireless Network is building a high-speed communications network that promises to support publishing and citywide Internet radio broadcast by citizens, a community-owned local telephone service, and bandwidth sharing.

Interfacings

A new online publication created by the graduate students of the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois is called "Interfacings." This open, peer-reviewed periodical is devoted to contemporary interdisciplinary approaches to media practices. Original manuscripts that examine the frontiers of the field of media studies from a qualitative, critical perspective are welcomed.

Medical Scholars Program

The Institute cooperates with the University of Illinois College of Medicine in the Medical Scholar's Program, an ambitious and innovative program of study that enables highly qualified students to enroll in the College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign and simultaneously pursue a second degree, usually a Ph.D., in an academic unit on the Illinois campus. Distinguished from other joint M.D.-Ph.D. programs by the depth and breadth of participating Ph.D. fields, the MSP offers, to our knowledge, the only formal combination degree in the United States — perhaps anywhere. Recent graduates are in residency programs at the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico.

The Program in Cultural Studies and Interpretive Research

The ICR serves as the administrative home for the campus' interdisciplinary concentration in Cultural Studies and Interpretive Research, directed by Norman Denzin.

Gender Studies and Feminist Media Studies

The ICR cooperates with the Gender and Women's Studies Program in offering a graduate minor.