Patrick R. Johnson, MJE

The Good: Education as a liberatory and transformative practice

My work is grounded in the good. I build much of my scholarship with an eye toward transforming education–both the traditional classroom and professional development in our media spaces. When I think about the good, I do so by thinking about how news and media literacy can provide more equitable and inclusive spaces. I also question how our JMC pedagogy constructs normative values and identities that enforce both democracy-building and moral authority of journalism in particular, but also media broadly.

The Bad: Deviant practices and problematic norms

I am passionately interested in studying people (actors), places (publications/newsrooms), and ideas (moral panic) that are perceived as deviant in journalism and media and by the general public. This area reflects my desire to recognize the role of deviance in relation to public perception, journalistic/media norms and values, and the educational underpinnings of media texts. Oftentimes, these are understood as the bad. They are framed as being outside of the boundaries of journalism or at least positioned at the margins. For me, “the bad,” or what we define as such, are an opportune avenue for studying potential futures, equitable needs, and means of inclusionary practice and discourse. This includes my attention to certain values (i.e., trust and objectivity), beats (i.e., politics and media), or texts (i.e., far-right podcasting), as ways for us to understand our boundaries and what we are willing to accept. It also includes my desire to interrogate not just the news, but, in fact, the areas the news elites position as low-brow or “bad” to journalism’s identity. This includes tabloids, genre-based magazines at the margins of communities and crowds (i.e., Fangoria), and pop culture coverage and media (i.e., celebrities, professional wrestling, and reality television). I rely on media criticism and media texts most often in this work but hope to interview and speak directly to media producers in this.

The “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole”

One of the areas I am most interested in is the discussions and discourses associated with sex and sexuality in journalism and media spaces. This includes focusing on certain issues (i.e., sex coverage, contraception use, AIDS responses, and corporate social responsibility), texts (i.e, Playboy, Hustler, Pornhub, and OnlyFans), industries (i.e., pornography and sex work), and identities (i.e., LGBTQ+). My approach to this work is liberatory and attempts to find ways in which these perceived-to-be highly deviant pieces can be seen as ways to improve our moral compass and learn to be more accepting in our daily lives and media practices.

Instead of relying on calling this “the ugly,” I find that it is the place that many scholars possibly are unwilling to go. The political climate and heightened rhetoric against LGBTQ people, “obscene” material, and legislation impacting sex work and sexual minorities are critically important to my identity and deeply fascinating to my work. As a nation, the United States is one of the few that favors violence above sex in its content. It regulates sex more than violence. Yet, the growing need for sex-positive discussions and interpretations of sex and sexuality in media still emerge.

Each of these pieces can be understood by examining key frameworks and core areas of my research identity. Those are included next.

Framework and Core Areas of Research Identity

Metajournalistic Discourse

I use metajournalistic discourse as a guiding framework to understand the institution of journalism, especially as it seeks to define, create boundaries, and legitimize itself. My projects rely on the components of this approach to provide commentary and establish an understanding of journalism as an evolving institution.

News (Media) Literacy

My time as a teacher informs my research practices, which in this area often seek to provide applied research. I see this work as an opportunity to break outside of the ivory tower to provide opportunities for marginalized voices. Projects in this area span humanistic and social scientific paradigms in an attempt to further civic and democratic outcomes through media use, practice, and knowledge.

Journalism (Media) Ethics

The bulk of my work aims to understand the normative values and roles of journalism and media through the lens of ethical practices. While I engage in theoretical labor in this area of research, most often the context of my projects is considerably more applied in nature. My work in ethics often addresses actors within the journalism or media industries, as well as organizational concerns with codes of ethics or corporate social responsibility.

Mixed Methods Research

I describe myself as a truly mixed methods researcher. I am a transformative pragmatist, meaning I attempt to enact and impact social change through questions and methods appropriate to them. Many of my questions lead to me prioritizing qualitative methods, but my mixed methods practice is open to finding and utilizing the appropriate methods to solve and respond to the problems and questions I identify.

I am a collaborative scholar with a love of pursuing my own work as well. I traditionally utilize interviews, critical discourse analysis, and surveys to respond, analyze, and interrogate the data I collect. I am interested in visual communication and am continuing to explore methods appropriate to that practice. Additionally, in conjunction with two co-authors, we are in the process of developing and proposing a method that emerges from queer theory and camp. We are calling this method detachment/attachment analysis, and are working through its applicability to both humanistic and social scientific theories and questions.