At 5:30 a.m. every morning, Shanae Cole ‘13, Media and Communication Studies, sits down in the control room as she assists with managing cameras, news anchors, and viewers of the popular celebrity news show, TMZ. She carefully searches through all of her leads and quickly reviews the website for any last minute breaking news before going live.

Growing up, Cole was glued to her television screen watching the latest and greatest cartoons and entertainment television. She laughed along with Bart on “The Simpsons” and Stewie on “Family Guy,” immersing herself in the cartoons and taking on the role of audience member. She also remembers falling in love with the action and thrill that superheroes provided.

When the time came to start college, Cole found a home within UMBC’s Media and Communication Studies department under the mentorship of Jason Loviglio and Donald Snyder. She says she cannot emphasize enough the impact her education provided on her career. “Today we live in a world where being media literate is important,” Cole says. “Especially since the need for new technologies to make life more efficient will only continue to proliferate.”

At UMBC, Cole had exceptional opportunities to gain hands-on experience through internships with 92 Q Jams Baltimore, “Variety”, and Katalyst Films, Ashton Kutcher’s production company.

Cole had set her sights on moving to California and working in the entertainment industry, and she knew she had to persevere to find a path that would lead her to her ultimate goal. “I had high hopes of getting an internship with Warner Brothers because of DC Comics and the Looney Tunes,” says Cole. “but I was devastated when I got an email saying that they went with another candidate.”

Unwilling to accept defeat, Cole sought other opportunities to help expand her experience and strengthen her reputation within the entertainment industry. And she found her opportunity in an internship with Fox 45 and the CW Baltimore.

“The more hands on experience you have,” says Cole, “the better off you’ll be, especially in the entertainment industry.”

And that hands-on experience paid off. It was through this internship that Cole won a National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter Emmy and later a bronze medal at the National PROMAX Creative TV Marketing Awards. The award recoginzed Cole’s efforts on a promo the network aired, a promo inspired by some of Cole’s earliest TV memories — it featured a storyline based on superheroes and followed examples from “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons.”

These achievements opened doors at Warner Brothers. The dream job she thought was over resurfaced at an even greater moment in her life, and this time the position was hers for the taking. And while interning for Warner Brothers, Cole was able to launch her career at TMZ. Now, Cole says, she’s grateful to have the ability to help others chase their dreams in the entertainment industry.

The recipe for attaining your dreams? According to Cole, all you need to do is “Keep the faith, keep working hard, and great things will come.”

-Samantha Hanssen ’15

In an article published May 18 in The Conversation,  Rebecca Adelman, an assistant professor of media and communication studies, wrote about Adam Gadahn’s complicated relationship with the U.S. government in the wake of the announcement of his death on April 23. Gadahn, an American propagandist for al-Qaida, was killed by an accidental drone strike in Pakistan on January 19. He had previously been charged with treason in 2006.

“The federal government’s decision to indict him for the capital offense of treason reveals its need to confront and contain visual threats. Like a latter-day Toyko Rose, Gadahn’s skillful use of propaganda made him a potent enemy in the eyes of the state,” Adelman wrote.

In her article, Adelman draws reference to her book Beyond the Checkpoint: Visual Practices in the Global War on Terror, in which she closely examines how the Gadahn case evolved: “I analyze the documents surrounding the case to argue that the state did not truly desire to execute Gadahn or even to try him. Neither of these actions would have satisfactorily redressed his explicitly visual crimes Instead, I suggested that the most likely outcome for a captured Gadahn would have been indefinite detention: active, perpetual disappearance in an effort to finally control his image. My hypothesis that the government would not seek to kill Gadahn was borne out by his status as an unintended casualty of this drone strike.”

To read the full article titled “What the accidental killing of an American ‘traitor’ says about the power of visual weapons,” click here.

Join the Baltimore Traces project team for an event focusing on two Baltimore communities and their shared legacies of industrial development: Brooklyn-Curtis Bay and Sparrows Point. The event will feature Mapping Baybrook, a media-based documentation of projects in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay and a film screening of Mill Stories: Remembering Sparrows Point Steel Mill. Members of the Sparrows Point and Brooklyn-Curtis Bay communities will also discuss the challenges they face and possible futures. (Note: this event is rescheduled from April 28.) 

Tuesday, June 2, 2015
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Chesapeake Arts Center
194 Hammonds Lane Brooklyn Park, MD

This is a free event. Parking is available.

For more information visit baltimoretraces.org

This is event is funded in part through the UMBC BreakingGround initiative
and the Hrabowski Innovation Fund.

On March 31, Kimberly Moffitt, an associate professor of American studies, guest hosted The Marc Steiner Show on WEAA Radio. During the program, Moffitt led a cultural roundtable segment on youth and social media and Confederate flags on license plates. Donald Snyder, senior lecturer of media and communication studies who developed and teaches a course entitled Social Media: Networking and Mobility, participated in the engaging discussion and reflected on the meaning of social media for today’s youth.

“People made questionable decisions before social media. The key distinction is that social media creates a sort of permanence to those bad decisions,” Snyder said. “And in thinking about that issue, the point becomes in terms of the young people, is making sure they are understanding the implications of the decisions they make.”

Other panelists included Catalina Byrd, media consultant, political strategist, and co-host of “No Hooks for the Hip-Hop Chronicles” on WEAA and Dr. Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead, assistant professor of communication and affiliate assistant professor of African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland. To listen to the segment in its entirety, click here.

Humanities Forum
Thursday, April 9 | 4:00 p.m.
Rebecca Adelman, Assistant Professor, Media and Communication Studies, UMBC 
Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery 

Editors manipulate the tiniest elements of digital images to obscure combat atrocities. The U.S. Army invests deeply in a pixelated camouflage pattern that it expects will keep soldiers safely invisible. The NSA disaggregates human targets into miniscule bits of information. These seemingly disparate phenomena comprise a microscopic visual approach to militarization. It is here that Adelman considers the links between pixelized photos of violence committed by American military personnel, the Army’s failed multi-year, multi-billion dollar experiment with ‘digital’ camouflage, and the NSA’s approach to “identity intelligence,” built on the smallest pieces of data. All of these efforts at fragmentation promised to solve problems unique to contemporary war: soldiers’ unregulated use of digital cameras in the field, battles fought on multiplying fronts, and unconventional, undetectable threats. And in every instance, fragmentation failed: uncensored pictures are readily available, digital camouflage rendered soldiers more visible, and Edward Snowden leaked the documents detailing the NSA’s plans. These failures expose the limits of state power over the visual, dependent as it is on the smallest of things, while this new visual culture of fragmentation raises urgent questions about what it means to be a citizen, a spectator, and a subject.

For more information on the event and Adelman’s work, click here.

Sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities and the Media and Communication Studies Department.

Jason Loviglio, associate professor and chair of media and communication studies, was quoted in a March 10 City Paper article that examined WYPR’s use of underwriting. Loviglio, who is writing a book about public media and plans to include a chapter about WYPR, discussed how the station’s use of underwriting has influenced its workers’ union.

Loviglio, who has interviewed many station members for his book, discussed what he discovered while conducting his research.

To read the full City Paper feature titled “Why So Much P.R.?” click here.

In the wake of Brian Williams’ six-month suspension from NBC News, Rebecca Adelman offered a fresh perspective on the story and argued that Williams’ actions were more complex than their first appearance on the surface.

Adelman, an assistant professor of media and communication studies, wrote an article for The Conversation in which she examined public reactions to Williams’ false claims about his experience reporting in Iraq and how they spoke to the way military service is valued in American culture: “…I’d suggest instead that Williams inadvertently revealed something about the profoundly contradictory place military service occupies in American culture,” Adelman wrote.

In her article, Adelman discussed how the automatic nature of public gratitude for military service in the United States makes it easy to mistake its origins.

“The Williams story revealed how readily, and convincingly, such attachments can be fabricated. Indeed, he explained his wrongdoings in terms of bewildered appreciation. It all started, he said in his apology, ‘in an effort to honor and thank’ the man who had protected him. This turned, he admitted, into a ‘bungled attempt … to thank one special veteran’ of the many who have his ‘greatest respect.'”

She added: “The public anger at Williams, in other words, may be rooted in something more than his deceitfulness. What may be upsetting us is his very visible failure to perform what many see as the purest expression of good citizenship – thanking the military.”

To read the full article titled “Brian Williams, the military and American culture, click here.

BBC Radio 4 recently aired a special one hour program about interviewing members of the public in the historic format of the vox pop. Jason Loviglio, associate professor and chair of media and communication studies, was interviewed for the program and provides historical context throughout the segment.

“The origins of vox pop in the United States are almost as old as the origins of broadcasting in the United States. The juxtaposition of the polished, educated voice of the professional radio announcer was then juxtaposed with the voice of the man on the street, sometimes quite literally,” Loviglio said. He pointed to Houston, Texas in 1932 as the origin of vox pop where broadcasters strung a microphone out of a window to interview passers by on the street.

Later in the program, Loviglio describes the differences between American radio and the BBC in the 1940s and 1950s: “The kinds of opinions that were the prerogative of professional journalists and were not the prerogative of anyone else. So the idea that there would be a meaningful contribution from the average person on the street really did not resonate in the same way for the BBC and for very logical business model reasons.”

To listen to the program in its entirety, click here.

On Friday, May 23, WYPR’s Maryland Morning aired a segment that focused on the role that visuals have played in citizens’ understanding of the military and terrorism since September 11th. Rebecca Adelman, an assistant professor of media and communication studies and author of Beyond the Checkpoint: Visual Practices in America’s Global War on Terror, participated in the discussion along with MaryAnne Golon, director of photography at The Washington Post.

Adelman opened the conversation by discussing the role security camera footage of the September 11th highjackers played in the public view after they were released several years after the attacks.   

“What’s really interesting to me is the way that those images mark a limit of those visual systems that are designed to keep us safe,” Adelman said. “As surveillance cameras, they functioned perfectly,” she added. “But they did nothing to keep the country safe.”

Adelman also discussed what the future may hold for citizens’ perception of images of war and terror: “The relationship between state and media and citizen is going to get a lot more complex, particularly as the role of the visual in fighting the war itself changes as we talk about things like drones which have everything to do with visibility and invisibility. We’re going to hear a lot more about questions of transparency.”

You can listen to the full interview on Maryland Morning by clicking here.

Rebecca Adelman, assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies, has authored a new book, “Beyond the Checkpoint: Visual Practices in America’s Global War on Terror” (The University of Massachusetts Press, 2014).

Since the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil, American citizenship has been redefined by the visual images associated with the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Rebecca A. Adelman contends that, in viewing images such as security footage of the 9/11 hijackers, film portrayals of the attacks and subsequent wars, memorials commemorating the attacks, and even graphics associated with increased security in airports, American citizens have been recast as militarized spectators, brought together through the production, circulation, and consumption of these visual artifacts. Beyond the Checkpoint reveals that the visual is essential to the prosecution of the GWOT domestically and abroad, and that it functions as a crucial mechanism in the ongoing formation of the U.S. state itself and an essential component of contemporary American citizenship.

Tracing the connections between citizenship and spectatorship, and moving beyond the close reading of visual representations, this book focuses on the institutions and actors that create, monitor, and regulate the visual landscape of the GWOT. Adelman looks around and through common images to follow the complex patterns of practice by which institutions and audiences engage them in various contexts. In the process, she proposes a new methodology for studying visual cultures of conflict, and related phenomena like violence, terror, and suffering that are notoriously difficult to represent.

Attending to previously unanalyzed dimensions of this conflict, this book illustrates the complexity of GWOT visual culture and the variegated experiences of citizenship that result as Americans navigate this terrain.

Bonnie Miller, author of “From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898” (The University of Massachusetts Press, 2011) writes, “Ambitious in scope and argument, this book stands to make an important contribution to the fields of visual culture, international relations/political science, and American studies.”

Click here for more information.