I’m Kristy Roschke, executive director of the McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies and Associate Research Professor at Vanderbilt University. I was previously director of the News Co/Lab at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
I am a media literacy educator and researcher. I first became interested in media literacy while teaching high school journalism, before I was even familiar with the term. It was the early 2000s and my students were engaging with media and technology in ways I could never have imagined. I saw how it impacted the way they learn and communicate, and knew that if we didn’t get ahead of it, it would upend just about every aspect of life. And, well, here we are.
My research is mostly focused on how people find, consume and use media and information. I am interested in how local journalism can compete and earn audiences’ trust and how experts can effectively communicate credible information in a noisy attention-driven information landscape.
