SU's Cox Earns AEJMC Honors

Dr. Catherine Cassara of Bowling Green State University presented the Association of Journalism and Mass Communication Editors' third-place Best Practices in Teaching Award to Dr. Jennifer Brannock Cox.

SALISBURY, MD---Dr. Jennifer Brannock Cox, assistant professor of communication arts at Salisbury University, recently earned two honors from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Cox placed third in the association’s “Best Practices in Teaching” competition for her submission “Ethics in Real Time – Using Periscope to Increase Accuracy, Truth and Transparency.” The topic for this year’s award was “Ethics in an Emerging Media Environment.”

Her entry detailed an assignment in her Mobile Journalism class at SU through which student reporters used the Periscope streaming app to conduct interviews and broadcast them live online while communicating with editors. The students dug deeper when some online information conflicted with what their interview sources said. The assignment helped them understand the demands of social media journalism, which require both speed and accuracy in reporting.

Cox also received an honorable mention from the “Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century” competition hosted by the association’s News and Online Division. Her entry, “Flipping the Lens: Using Photo Elicitation to Turn Participants into Reporters” allowed students in her Participatory Journalism class to serve as both journalists and sources as they took photos and then were interviewed about their motivations and feelings when capturing the images.

The exercise helped them not only participate in the story to gain a better understanding of the topic and produce truthful news, but to tell the story in a new, interesting way. The honor marked Cox’s fourth from the division.

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU website at www.salisbury.edu.