University of Missouri Opens New Center on Diversity in the Media

The University of Missouri has announced that it has launched the new Media & Diversity Center on campus. The new center will conduct research and advocate for increasing racial, ethnic, gender, and other diversity in traditional and new media.

According to the center’s website, “our mission is to take broad approaches toward examining media and diversity with regard to the complexity of social group identities and experiences. We aim to make recommendations to promote socially productive portrayals in the landscape of modern media. In so doing, we hope to contribute to addressing the roles of media in influencing prejudice and social stigma in society.”

Lissa Behm-Morawitz, an associate professor of communication at the University of Missouri, has been named a co-director of the new center. She states that “when we say diversity, we’re thinking about diversity in very broad ways, so of course things like gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality, but also things such as mental health, disability, and religion. We hope to build momentum behind gathering expert researchers and scholars who work in this area and drawing them together so we can share resources and have a larger impact with the research we are doing.”

Dr. Behm-Morawitz holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Arizona. She also earned a master’s degree in communication at the University of Southern California.