media studies spotlights

Meet Nabil Echchaibi

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 22:27:00 +0000

Meet Nabil Echchaibi Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/22/2016 - 15:27

Chair, Department of Media Studies • International Commentator

For Nabil Echchaibi, the media have always been more than a source of information or amusement.

As a child, he used books and films to explore the world beyond his home in Morocco. As a graduate student, he studied how Arabs used radio to share the difficulties of living in foreign cultures. And as a professor, he examines many types of media to understand how Muslims shape their identities in a modern and sometimes hostile world.

“The media are ubiquitous,” he explains. “We all use these technologies, but we don’t really pause to think about what these things are doing to us, and what we can actually do to harness the power of these technologies for better causes.”

That focus on thinking about media and its impacts is at the heart of what Echchaibi and his colleagues in the Department of Media Studies do. While Echchaibi focuses on Muslim culture, other faculty members look at how media can strengthen democracy, or how media influence the way people view race, gender and sexuality.

The goal, Echchaibi says, is to help students become knowledgeable consumers—and producers—of media.

One of three children from a middle-class Moroccan family, Echchaibi describes himself as a “cultural rebel.” He came to the United States on a graduate scholarship and by 2001 was thinking about his career.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 determined that course. In the days after the attacks, mentions of his Moroccan heritage were often followed by critical questions about religious extremism. Realizing the questions that now surrounded his religion, he turned his focus to what it means to be Muslim and modern.

“We live in a world where people are moved through vigorous discourse.”
- Nabil Echchaibi

His research covers many geographic areas and media formats. While studying televangelists in Egypt, for instance, he found that the Islamic tradition of sermonizing is well suited to television and the Internet. In Colorado he teamed up with historians, filmmakers and journalists to chronicle the history of Muslims in the mountain states.

Echchaibi writes often for international and national publications, including The Guardian in the United Kingdom andThe Huffington Post. As experts on the media’s impact, he says, he and his colleagues have an obligation to inform public discussion.

“Media studies allow you to see things beyond what they appear to be on the surface,” he explains. “The research I’m doing, hopefully and humbly, allows me to reveal something about a certain world that normally gets reduced to a caricature. I want people to see things differently.”

A professor who studies the media and publishes in the media. — “We live in a world where people are moved through vigorous discourse.”

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Meet Griselda San Martin

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 22:24:36 +0000

Meet Griselda San Martin Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/22/2016 - 15:24

(MJour’13) • Visual Journalist • Co-founder of Transborder Media

Not long ago, Griselda San Martin travelled to Mexico City to claim a second-place award for her short film, Soldiers Without a Nation, in a competition sponsored by the Mexican government and the United Nations.

The film tells the stories of permanent U.S. residents who fought for the American military only to be deported to Mexico for later criminal offenses. The deported veterans feel lost in the middle and San Martin believes their stories are too.

San Martin, originally from Spain, lived in several countries and always enjoyed taking pictures of the people and places she saw in her travels. When she came to ��Ƶ-Boulder to pursue a master’s degree in journalism, she wanted to tell stories–a certain type of story. “I don’t like hard news,” she says. “I like in-depth stories.” Some of the stories San Martin wanted to explore in-depth were the lives of immigrant and their communities in the United States.

“We’re trying to tell stories from beyond the mainstream.”
- Griselda San Martin

San Martin’s favorite class in her first year at ��Ƶ-Boulder was Media and Diaspora, a media studies class that explored how media portray and impact immigrant communities. After learning how the mainstream media reported on marginalized immigrants, San Martin completely changed her own approach. Rather than talking about immigrants, as many in the media do, she realized the best way to fight stereotypes and report a more truthful story was to let immigrants tell their own stories.

San Martin teamed up with classmate Elaine Cromie and travelled to Tijuana, Mexico to meet and interview many of the deported U.S. veterans living there. The duo have since returned many times and have produced several short videos about the veterans. “We’re not activists. We’re not taking sides,” says San Martin. “We’re trying to tell stories from beyond the mainstream.”

To further that goal, San Martin, Cromie and a third collaborator—Biana Fortis—have founded Transborder Media, a company dedicated to producing written and visual media that crosses borders. Currently, San Martin is documenting the Garifuna community in New York City in portraits and a documentary. Because the Garifuna immigrated from the Caribbean and Central America, they speak English, Spanish and their own language. San Martin is translating her work into all three, as part of her dream to tell stories “that transcend borders.”

A graduate of the journalism and media studies programs who tells stories that cross borders — “We’re trying to tell stories from beyond the mainstream.”

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Meet Tyler Rollins

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 22:23:20 +0000

Meet Tyler Rollins Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/22/2016 - 15:23

Media Studies Graduate Student • Researches Government Surveillance Programs

Tyler Rollins got his master’s degree in sociology at a school that, as he puts it, “has a reputation for being a somewhat radical campus.” Environmental activists sometimes slept in tree canopies to deter loggers. Others drove metal spikes into trees, ensuring any trespassing chainsaws would snap. The sociology department placed a big emphasis on social movements and their organization.

But “one of the things I always found lacking,” Rollins remembers, “was an understanding of the role the media played in these social movements.”

That type of understanding—the ability to think about and analyze the role and the impact of the media in society—is just what CMCI’s Department of Media Studies offers, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

“There’s always something fun about disrupting people’s preconceptions.”
- Tyler Rollins

Rollins came to ��Ƶ as a doctoral student. His research focuses on American domestic surveillance projects between the end of World War II and 1975. Unknown to most Americans, U.S. intelligence agencies during this time intercepted and read the mail and telegrams of many citizens. Rollins uses historical and legal techniques to discover how these covert, questionably legal projects were operated, justified and criticized at the time.

Ultimately, he hopes that his work will help Americans grapple with recent revelations that the National Security Agency continues to collect the personal information of many American citizens. “If you can understand what was truly going on in the past and then compare that to our present issues, it gives you a new perspective,” he explains.

A graduate student who studies the history of government surveillance programs — “There’s always something fun about disrupting people’s preconceptions.”

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