Prof Alfred Hermida has won this year’s President’s Award for Public Education through the Media.
The University of British Columbia award recognizes a faculty member who has made extraordinary efforts to communicate their scholarship to the public in a meaningful way using the news media and comes with a $3,000 research stipend.
This is the second year in a row that a professor from the UBC School of Journalism has received the award. Prof Peter Klein won the award in 2010.
“Alfred is an important voice in the public discussions about the changing journalism landscape,” said Prof. Klein, the Acting Director of the School of Journalism.
“We’re fortunate to have his voice in our classrooms, and very happy to see the university has recognized his contributions to the broader public.”
Through his research at UBC, and his earlier work at the BBC, Prof Hermida has built an international reputation as an authority on new media. His research focuses on investigating the convergence of media technologies, industries, content and audiences, through scholarly papers, applied projects and media activities designed to bridge theory and practice.
He is co-author of Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, published in 2011 by Wiley-Blackwell. He is now working on his second book, Sharing the News: How Social Media is Changing What We Know.
Prof Hermida is a regular commentator on Canadian and international news outlets on the future of journalism, the impact of social media and new forms of digital story-telling. He discusses the intersection of media, technology and society on his blog, Reportr.net, which won a Canadian Online Publishing Award in 2010.
The 2011 recipients of UBC’s Faculty Research Awards will be honoured during this year’s Celebrate Research Week Awards Reception to be held on Thursday, March 8, 2012 at the UBC Museum of Anthropology.
John Hepburn, VP Research & International, said the professors recognized this year “are prime examples of the dedication to research excellence that UBC is known for. These awards recognize talented researchers on campus, and recognition at the university level can also lead to similar honours at the national and international level.”
Prof Hermida is one of the Faculty Research Award recipients selected to give a talk as part of Celebrate Research Week in March. He will be speaking on how social media is changing the news on Wednesday March 7 at 12.30 p.m. at the Victoria Theatre, Room #182, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC.
Photo courtesy of Cardiff University’s Future of Journalism conference.
