Andrew Kennis, PhD
Andrew Kennis is an academic researcher specializing in Digital Journalism Studies, Communications Policy, Political Communication, Global Media, Political Economy and International Communications. Dr. Kennis is also an international journalist and a higher education pedagogue.
Dr. Kennis was recently appointed as a member of the prestigious national research body, the National Council of Science and Technology's (CONACyT) National System of Researchers (SNI). As an invited scholar and research collaborator, Dr. Kennis affiliated a research stimulus grant awarded exclusively to CONACyT/SNI's national researchers with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the largest university in the Western hemisphere.
This semester, Dr. Kennis is in the midst of completing a book under contract with Routledge which will be published in the book series, "Internationalizing Media Studies." The book manuscript is entitled, "#Resist: Digital-Age Social Movements in the New Trump Era and the Media Dependence Model." The project is based on several decades of his research and focuses on mainstream news media failings, the impact the Trump administration has had on the news media and the role that digital-age social movements and social media often play in crafting out and forcing important exceptions to news coverage tendencies. Additionally, Dr. Kennis is a collaborator and participant in a research team based at UNAM's College of Political and Social Sciences, where he has also taught undergraduate as well as graduate-level classes. The internally funded research project is being forged ahead by the college's leading scholars; it is entitled, ""Analyzing Discursive Processes in Public Policy: Negotiation and Dissent in the Public Sphere," and focuses on media, policy and society.
Previously, Dr. Kennis served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP). While at UTEP, Dr. Kennis undertook research on and taught courses in journalism studies and practice, the global media and the drug war. In addition to publishing peer-reviewed, scholarly research and completing grant-funded studies, Dr. Kennis still continues to practice journalism from many corners of the globe.
As a researcher, Dr. Kennis has investigated, written and published in peer review journals ranging across three different disciplines (communications, political science and technology studies). In addition to his own aforementioned book project, he is also one of the authors of several books that are pending publication as a result of the UNAM-based research collaborative project with which he is closely involved. He has won top conference paper awards and presented his work in both the United States and abroad (London, Tokyo, Vancouver and Mexico City).
University-level courses Dr. Kennis has designed and taught have included "The Political Economy of the Internet," "Investigative and Public Affairs Reporting," “Global Media, Money and Power," "Multimedia Writing," "Digital Media and Globalization," "Media and the Drug War," "Media and Democracy," “Politics and the Media,” and a number of other classes and materials in political science and society & technology studies.
As a journalist, Dr. Kennis has practiced online-based / convergence reporting, investigative and print reporting, citizen journalism, and online-based and traditional radio throughout the last seventeen years. He has practiced professional journalism from locations based in four continents and over twenty countries across the globe, including on-the-scene reporting from the El Paso / Ciudad Juarez border corridor, Brazil, Colombia, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Japan, Venezuela, Taiwan, Guatemala, Quebec and Mexico City.
Dr. Kennis has served as the border correspondent for teleSUR's English division and published in a variety of news sources, including The Guardian, VICE, Good Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera English, Proceso (Mexico), Time Out, emeequis (Mexico) and many other outlets ranging from daily newspapers and newsweeklies to monthly periodicals based both in the States and abroad. His work has garnered him interviews on both live international television (RT) and national radio (NPR) outlets.
Before arriving at UNAM, Dr. Kennis had previously taught at Northwestern University, UTEP, Cal State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dominican University and William Paterson University.
Dr. Kennis received his doctoral degree from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His dissertation posited a critical model of global news analysis entitled, "The Media Dependence Model: An analysis of the performance and structure of U.S. & Global News." Internationally renown scholars, such as Noam Chomsky and W. Lance Bennett comprised his dissertation committee which was led by John Nerone.
Supervisors: John Nerone, Noam Chomsky, W. Lance Bennett, Inger Stohl, Scott Althaus, and Francis Boyle
Dr. Kennis was recently appointed as a member of the prestigious national research body, the National Council of Science and Technology's (CONACyT) National System of Researchers (SNI). As an invited scholar and research collaborator, Dr. Kennis affiliated a research stimulus grant awarded exclusively to CONACyT/SNI's national researchers with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the largest university in the Western hemisphere.
This semester, Dr. Kennis is in the midst of completing a book under contract with Routledge which will be published in the book series, "Internationalizing Media Studies." The book manuscript is entitled, "#Resist: Digital-Age Social Movements in the New Trump Era and the Media Dependence Model." The project is based on several decades of his research and focuses on mainstream news media failings, the impact the Trump administration has had on the news media and the role that digital-age social movements and social media often play in crafting out and forcing important exceptions to news coverage tendencies. Additionally, Dr. Kennis is a collaborator and participant in a research team based at UNAM's College of Political and Social Sciences, where he has also taught undergraduate as well as graduate-level classes. The internally funded research project is being forged ahead by the college's leading scholars; it is entitled, ""Analyzing Discursive Processes in Public Policy: Negotiation and Dissent in the Public Sphere," and focuses on media, policy and society.
Previously, Dr. Kennis served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP). While at UTEP, Dr. Kennis undertook research on and taught courses in journalism studies and practice, the global media and the drug war. In addition to publishing peer-reviewed, scholarly research and completing grant-funded studies, Dr. Kennis still continues to practice journalism from many corners of the globe.
As a researcher, Dr. Kennis has investigated, written and published in peer review journals ranging across three different disciplines (communications, political science and technology studies). In addition to his own aforementioned book project, he is also one of the authors of several books that are pending publication as a result of the UNAM-based research collaborative project with which he is closely involved. He has won top conference paper awards and presented his work in both the United States and abroad (London, Tokyo, Vancouver and Mexico City).
University-level courses Dr. Kennis has designed and taught have included "The Political Economy of the Internet," "Investigative and Public Affairs Reporting," “Global Media, Money and Power," "Multimedia Writing," "Digital Media and Globalization," "Media and the Drug War," "Media and Democracy," “Politics and the Media,” and a number of other classes and materials in political science and society & technology studies.
As a journalist, Dr. Kennis has practiced online-based / convergence reporting, investigative and print reporting, citizen journalism, and online-based and traditional radio throughout the last seventeen years. He has practiced professional journalism from locations based in four continents and over twenty countries across the globe, including on-the-scene reporting from the El Paso / Ciudad Juarez border corridor, Brazil, Colombia, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Japan, Venezuela, Taiwan, Guatemala, Quebec and Mexico City.
Dr. Kennis has served as the border correspondent for teleSUR's English division and published in a variety of news sources, including The Guardian, VICE, Good Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera English, Proceso (Mexico), Time Out, emeequis (Mexico) and many other outlets ranging from daily newspapers and newsweeklies to monthly periodicals based both in the States and abroad. His work has garnered him interviews on both live international television (RT) and national radio (NPR) outlets.
Before arriving at UNAM, Dr. Kennis had previously taught at Northwestern University, UTEP, Cal State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dominican University and William Paterson University.
Dr. Kennis received his doctoral degree from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His dissertation posited a critical model of global news analysis entitled, "The Media Dependence Model: An analysis of the performance and structure of U.S. & Global News." Internationally renown scholars, such as Noam Chomsky and W. Lance Bennett comprised his dissertation committee which was led by John Nerone.
Supervisors: John Nerone, Noam Chomsky, W. Lance Bennett, Inger Stohl, Scott Althaus, and Francis Boyle
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Papers by Andrew Kennis, PhD
These questions are answered by the positing of an original model of news analysis called the media dependence model (MDM). The name was chosen to emphasize the chief failing of the U.S. news media system: its reliance on corporate funding and ownership and the unfortunate result of this structure leading to a lack of independence from Washington (the White House and key Congressional leaders) and Wall Street (Madison Avenue and the public relations industry) positioning.
A main pillar of the MDM is the synthesis of two critical models of news analysis and the application of their respective strengths toward the other’s weaknesses. The synthesis is based on Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model (1988, 2002, 2008) and W. Lance Bennett’s indexing model (Bennett, 1990; Bennett, Lawrence, & Livingston, 2007). Indexing has particular methodological strengths, while the propaganda model has more theoretical robustness. Both complement the other.
While the scope of the synthesis is broad and substantial, and contributes much in terms of understanding news content, it still leaves important questions that this dissertation endeavors to address. The MDM answers how and why social movements garner news media attention and sympathy, while others do not. In several chapters, the tendencies of the news media to cover social movements in opposition to U.S. policy in a derisive fashion was illustrated through case studies on opposition movements based in Puerto Rico (Chapter 6) and Ecuador (Chapter 7).
The MDM theorizes ownership of the news media in a manner appropriate for the age of globalization, with findings based on a substantial and thorough content analysis of important events in Fallujah, where the most substantial military operation was conducted during the occupation of Iraq (Chapter 4). This work does not leave domestic matters unaddressed or under-theorized. It does so by distinguishing between foreign and domestic news reporting and modeling domestic coverage, including a detailed case study on immigration which revealed dichotomized tendencies for the press to highlight certain unaccompanied minors over others (Chapter 8).
A number of political communication scholars have argued that the ending of the Cold War has brought about an era of press independence, which avoids the dichotomized coverage tendencies that were characteristic of the previous era. Findings from a case study (Chapter 5) on massacres occurring in similar time periods in Acteal, Mexico and Racak, Yugoslavia, purposefully selected for its occurrence before the “war on terror,” but after the ending of the Cold War, strongly suggest that we are still not in an era of press ambiguity.
Structure, as opposed to the norms and routines of professionalized journalism, is shown to be the leading variable in so far as impact on news content is concerned. A chapter documenting instances of “spiking,” the cutting of stories found to be too critical or incisive, as well as an assortment of other punitive editorial measures taken against journalists, all point to the influence of ownership and advertising as being more important than the particular practices of journalists when it comes to impact on news content (Chapter 9).
In spite of containing “bird’s eye” conclusions and critical analysis on news media performance and its respective tendencies, this dissertation also addresses the conditions and instances in which exceptions are most likely to arise, with references to scholarly literature I have grouped and termed as “press exceptionalism.” Exceptional content characteristics were found, and duly evaluated in relation to the MDM, in nearly every case study undertaken in this work.
The dissertation closes with an eye toward the future. In the midst of a volatile time for the journalism industry and U.S. news media, implications and future trends are taken into consideration. The “Fox effect” and the paradigm shift toward the journalism of assertion; the crisis in journalism and the critical juncture that the industry is currently undergoing; needed policies and reforms to rectify the poor state of press affairs are all considered in relation to the MDM.
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In this trailblazing book, social movements, the mainstream news media system and public policy are tackled in an attempt to arm readers with an “intellectual self-defense” of the dizzying realities of trillion-dollar valued platform conglomerates, the pandemic and the reality television-show-presidency of Donald Trump and its go at a second term. Firmly situated at the intersection between journalism, activism and the deployment of power, the author places his analysis within an international context which further develops a critical paradigm, called the Media Dependence Model (MDM).
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The book offers a cutting-edge overview of the news media landscape both within the U.S. and globally. The MDM critically analyzes dichotomous patterns of mainstream press coverage of the #ClimateStrike, #FamiliesBelongTogether, #EvasiónMasiva (Chile), #FightForHongKong, #RickyRenuncia (Puerto Rico) and #CancelRent movements and the pro-Trump #liberate resistance, contrasting them with social media and other historic movements. “Evergreen” topics such as immigration, climate change and net neutrality are explored on an in-depth basis, along with media reforms and concrete policy solutions.
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The book straddles disciplines including media, policy and journalism studies, political economy and international and political communication. It is a must-read for scholars, students, policy advisers, media makers, social media enthusiasts, grassroots activists, NGO’s and concerned citizens alike.
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