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Sam Martin, author of “Decoding the Digital Church,” explains why she spent the 2020 election season attending megachurch services online. An “impassioned defender of the need to have conservatism in the United States,” Martin confesses she’s terrified at the prospect of a 2024 Trump nomination and what it means for the stability of our rhetorical and political world.
Content Warning: today’s episode includes discussions about gun violence and school shootings.
How do we talk about violence? How we do we deal with violence after it happens? These are the kind of questions we discuss with Brad Serber of Penn State University and we learn what patterns of public discourse have him concerned. He also shares what he thinks would actually help the discussion on targeted violence.
Content Warning: Be warned! The FYR fog lamp turns to media portrayals of violence against women.
Guest scholar Dr. Lea Hernandez of the University of Utah is too sensitive a media interpreter to fall into the trap of sensationalizing stories of violence against women, but this material is not for the faint of the heart. Graciously, Dr. Hernandez shares some tips on not falling into despair.
This time we welcome on guest scholar Ira Allen (Northern Arizona University), rhetorical theorist, professor, and unlicensed clinician of “ebullient gloom.” Allen shares the experience that foisted his forthcoming book “Panic Now?” upon him: a career-ending snowboarding accident that left him with a permanent disability and a strong feeling for the support systems we rely on in times of crisis. He asks, “what can we do now, when times are relatively good, to set up greater capacities when things get worse?”
FYR welcomes Dr. Lucas Logan, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Houston Downtown. Logan is an ardent watchman of piracy, intellectual property, and media rights issues in the US and EU. He gave us a whirlwind tour of the issues, ranging from the tape making and file sharing crises of the 1980s and 90s to the platform streaming wars and AI lawsuits of the present.
Our global ecosystem is confronting new and ever more frequent disasters and our media ecosystem seems intent on making it worse. Disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracy theories are everywhere.
We want to help.
In a world filled with chaos, knowledge really is power.
We are the team at FYR and we want to help you navigate the crazy, confusing, hot mess that is our media landscape.
Robin currently serves as Associate Director for the University of Tennessee Press, having previously built award-winning marketing teams for academic libraries, designing campaigns that not only won national awards, but were featured as exemplars of library marketing in multiple textbooks. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Clemson University, a master’s in library and information science from the University of South Carolina, a master’s in communication studies from the University of Kansas, and a PhD in Communication from Texas A&M University.
Paris is the Student Success Librarian for Media Literacy at the University of Tennessee Libraries. Her position grants her the opportunity to collaborate with The Studio services, to provide guidance and instruction on media creation to amplify the ideas and research for the University of Tennessee community. She has a bachelor’s degree in graphic design and new media from Johnson & Wales University, and a master’s degree in information science from the University of Tennessee.
Joshua is an assistant professor and the Digital Scholarship Librarian of the Scholars’ Collaborative, University of Tennessee Libraries. He received his PhD in Iberian and Latin American Literatures and Cultures from the University of Texas, Austin. His research focuses on 19th century print culture of Latin American abolitionists and the applications of digital humanities for recovery and remediation of Caribbean and Brazilian cultural heritage.
Sam Martin, author of “Decoding the Digital Church,” explains why she spent the 2020 election season attending megachurch services online. An “impassioned defender of the need to have conservatism in the United States,” Martin confesses she’s terrified at the prospect of a 2024 Trump nomination and what it means for the stability of our rhetorical and political world.
Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin is a scholar of public address and political communication, with a particular interest in the public discourses of conservative social movements, especially evangelical voters. She has written or edited three books, most prominently Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump (University of Alabama Press, 2021). Her research has also been published in top journals including the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric and Public Affairs and Visual Communication Quarterly. Martin frequently appears as an expert commentator and consultant for news stories, and has appeared in USA Today, NPR, NBC, the Boston Globe, the Texas Tribune, and The Dallas Morning News, among others.
“‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says the Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” So broils The Onion’s infamous, oft-recycled headline dating back to the Isla Vista tragedy of 2014. Brad Serber joins FYR to explain why he sympathizes with the sentiment and relates what he thinks is the way forward for an affluent society afflicted with mass shootings and targeted violence. (Hint: It’s less a matter of why than what now.)
Then Paris and Joshua bring it home with some tips for media literacy practitioners researching targeted violence.
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