The research program of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas conducts and publishes original, methodologically rigorous, groundbreaking studies on journalism, press freedom and innovation to better understand the evolving news media landscape throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. We also translate our scholarly research into reports, tools and other practical forms of information that journalists, policy makers and civil society can use to improve and protect quality journalism throughout the hemisphere. In recognition of journalism and mass communication studies’ Global North bias, we believe it is important to bring greater visibility to research from and about the Global South, and we offer resources to make this research more accessible.
Mission: To bring Latin American-related journalism research into the conversation, and create better Global North-South connections among researchers. Our Research Associates are faculty, undergraduate and graduate students and alumni of the Moody College of Communication's School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin.
Rosental Calmon Alves is the first holder of the Knight Chair in Journalism title. A pioneer of online journalism in his native Brazil, Alves had a 27-year career as a journalist and educator before moving to the United States in 1996, where he began his role as Knight Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 1997, he has taught classes in online journalism, international reporting, press freedom in Latin America and entrepreneurial journalism at UT Austin.
He is also founding director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, an outreach program that helps thousands of journalists around the world with online training. The Knight Center’s innovative massive open online courses have reached more than 320,000 students from 200 countries and territories.
In Rio de Janeiro, Alves became a journalist at 16 and a journalism professor at 21. After more than a decade as a foreign correspondent in Europe, North America and South America, Alves returned to Rio to become an editor, then executive editor and director of Jornal do Brasil, then a leading national newspaper. Alves launched the first Brazilian online news service specializing in financial news, and Jornal do Brasil Online, the first Brazilian newspaper on the web and a pioneer in Latin America.
Summer Harlow is the associate director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and a visiting associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously she was an associate journalism professor in the Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston, and an assistant professor of social media at Florida State University.
A former journalist, her research examines the challenges and opportunities for alternative media, independent journalism, freedom of expression and activism brought on by emerging technologies, particularly in Latin America and the Global South. She has written two books: Digital Native News and the Remaking of Latin American Mainstream and Alternative Journalism (Routledge, 2022), which won the Kappa Tau Alpha Frank Luther Mott book award for best journalism and mass communication research and the AEJMC-Knudson Latin America book prize, and Liberation Technology in El Salvador: Re-appropriating Social Media among Alternative Media Projects (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), which also won the AEJMC-Knudson award.
Her research has been published in top peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Communication, International Journal of Press/Politics, New Media & Society, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly and Digital Journalism. Currently, she is the primary investigator for El Salvador and Guatemala in the Wolds of Journalism Study. She also is the Book Reviews Editor for the International Journal of Press/Politics.
Amy Schmitz Weiss is a professor in the School of Journalism & Media Studies at San Diego State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008.
She has received multiple internal and external grants for her research in digital journalism innovation from AEJMC, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Online News Association, SDSU University Grants Program and the SDSU's Projects for the Public Good.
She also is a former journalist who has been involved in new media for more than a decade. She has worked in business development, marketing analysis and account management for several Chicago Internet media firms.
Her research interests include spatial journalism, online journalism, media sociology, news production, multimedia journalism and international communication. Her research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, as book chapters and in a book she co-edited.
She teaches journalism courses in basic writing and editing, multimedia, web design, data journalism, mobile journalism, sensor journalism, media entrepreneurship and spatial journalism.
Vanessa de Macedo Higgins Joyce is an associate professor focused on global journalism, media effects and democracy at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University. Her studies look at the evolution of journalism in an interconnected world, focusing on transnational news and their effects, as well as the changing roles of journalists in comparative, cross national analyses.
Her work specializes in Latin America, which in the past few decades has undergone a particularly relevant transformation within the journalism landscape amidst a tumultuous context of insecure democracies. She received her undergraduate degree in Social Communication/Journalism from Pontifícia Universidade Católica, in São Paulo, Brazil. In her native Brazil, she worked as an analyst for two public opinion research companies and as a journalist for two digital native news organizations. She received her Masters and Doctorate degrees from the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.
She has published two books that were co-authored with leading experts in global media: From Telenovelas to Netflix: Transnational, Transverse Television in Latin America (2021) and The evolution of television: An analysis of ten years of TGI Latin America (2004-2014) (2016). Her work has been published at top peer-reviewed journals, such as Journalism, Journalism Practice and International Communication Gazette. She received the Latino/Latin American Communication Research Award at AEJMC 2018 for her study titled "Seeking Transnational, Entrepreneurial News from Latin America: An Audience Analysis."
Lourdes M. Cueva Chacón is an assistant professor for the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2020 and also holds a M.A. in Communication (UTEP, 2010) and a M.S. in Information Science (UNC Chapel Hill, 2005).
Her research addresses questions about social, historical and systemic forces, as well as individual traits that influence journalistic practices and routines and their effects on the coverage of minority and marginalized communities in the U.S. Her research is informed by her professional experience covering the U.S.-Mexico border and teaching at Hispanic-serving institutions.
Dr. Cueva Chacón also researches Latin American journalism and how digital tools are changing journalistic practices in the continent—especially within investigative journalism— and the ways these new practices are strengthening democracy in these countries. More recently, she has focused on transnational collaboration among digital native media outlets in Latin America.
Her research has been published in top peer-reviewed papers such as Digital Journalism, Feminist Media Studies, Mass Communication and Society, Journalism Practice, among others.
@cuevacha
Silvia DalBen Furtado is a PhD student and teaching assistant in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, where she researches automated journalism and the use of AI in newsrooms. She has a Master's in Communication (2018) from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and her dissertation earned the Adelmo Genro Filho Award granted by SBPJor - Brazilian Association of Researchers in Journalism. She completed her B.A. in Journalism and in Radio and Television from UFMG, with an Exchange Program at the University of Nottingham (UK). As a journalist, she worked as a multimedia reporter at Estado de Minas’ website, in Brazil, and as an executive producer of films, videos, games, apps and new media at D2R Studios.