Named in honor of Frank Luther Mott, Pulitzer Prize winner, educator and long-time leader of Kappa Tau Alpha, the award is made for the best research-based book about journalism or mass communication published each year.
Kappa Tau Alpha, the national college honor society founded in 1910 for scholarship in journalism and mass communication, has recognized research contributions to the field since the inauguration of the award in 1944. The winning author receives a $1,000 prize.
Entries are judged by a panel of university professors of journalism and mass communication and national officers of Kappa Tau Alpha.
This year’s winner of the Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award explores how U.S. media coverage contributes to determining who deserves to be seen as an American and why.
Angie Chuang, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will be honored at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication national convention in August for her book American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging.
Chuang analyzed nine case studies from the past two decades, including mass shootings, protests and legislative battles, through the lens of false balance, stereotypical selection, default Whiteness and the protest paradigm.
KTA President Raluca Cozma praised Chuang’s book for connecting theory to real-world examples.
“The author’s professional experience as a former newspaper reporter informs her nuanced and compelling analysis that encourages scholars as well as current and future practitioners to interrogate news media practices and portrayals of race and social identity,” said Cozma, a professor of journalism at Kansas State University and contest judge.
KTA Vice President Patrick File, also a contest judge, praised American Otherness in Journalism for its readability and teachability for both professional newsrooms and mass communications classrooms.
“As American identity and belonging continue to be contested and re-litigated, Chuang’s research provides a clear framework for students, scholars and practitioners to reflect, study and act on how media construct ‘us’ and ‘them,’” said File, an associate professor of journalism at University of Nevada, Reno.
Chuang previously worked for American University’s School of Communication and, before academia, was a national and regional award-winning reporter for publications including The Oregonian, The Hartford Courant and Los Angeles Times. In 2014, Chuang published The Four Words for Home, a literary journalism-memoir book about her time spent reporting in Afghanistan.
Other finalists were Elizabeth Atwood for Deadline: 200 Years of Violence Against Journalism in the United States (University of Missouri Press); Rodney Benson, Mattias Hessérus, Timothy Neff and Julie Sedel for How Media Ownership Matters (Oxford University Press); Leticia Bode and Emily K. Varga for Observed Correction: How We Can All Respond to Misinformation on Social Media (Oxford University Press); and Eunji Kim for The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy.
Contact: Beverly Horvit, umcjourkta@missouri.edu, 573-882-0880