Creating Inclusive Media Spaces Through A Model of Intersectional Journalism

This event is supported by the CALS Office for Diversity and Inclusion and is part of the CALS Dean’s Inclusive Excellence Seminar Series, which highlights academic excellence through inclusive science and creates a platform for extended discussions on how our science can and should be transformative in leading to best practices and policies that support social, economic, environmental and climate justice.

The CALS Dean’s Inclusive Excellence Seminar Series and the Department of Communication present: A conversation with Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin.

Talk Abstract

Over the past decade, Black women, femmes, and queer folks have increasingly employed digital communications technologies to build community, engage in information-seeking, and create informational and resistant discourses online. In this talk, I will explore the inclusive and innovative ways Black women and femmes use digital technologies to produce ‘intersectional journalism,’ a journalistic practice that actively engages intersectional frameworks and Black feminist praxis in news production. I lay out a functional model for operationally engaging in an intersectional journalism practice. I argue that this model can and should be employed more broadly by news outlets and digital platforms as we look towards making media spaces, and society more broadly, equitable and inclusive.

Speaker Bio

Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin is a Ph.D. Candidate in Northwestern University’s Media, Technology, and Society program. Her research focuses on the culturally specific ways marginalized communities, most often Black women, femmes, and queer folks, engage with mass and digital communications technologies to seek information, produce knowledge, and build community, as well as ways the infrastructure of these technologies help these communities to overcome or continue to replicate systemic barriers to equity. Her research has been published in the peer-reviewed journals Critical Studies in Media Communication, Media and Communication, and Social Media + Society. Before working on her Ph.D., Chelsea worked at CBS This Morning as an Associate Editorial Producer. During her tenure at CBS, Chelsea received a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award, which recognizes exceptional professional journalism, for her role in the network’s coverage of pharmaceutical companies' price hikes on EpiPens.