Assistant Professor Brett Johnson Named 2016-17 Emerging Scholar
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Selects His Proposal from 41 Submitted
Columbia, Mo. (Jan. 6, 2016) — Missouri School of Journalism Assistant Professor Brett Johnson is one of four international journalism educators to be named an Emerging Scholar by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).
His proposal, “Measuring New Norms of Intolerance Toward Extreme Speech: Assessing Public Opinion of Extreme User-generated Content and the Extralegal Practices of Managing Such Speech,” was one of 41 submitted to the 2016-17 competition.
Johnson will use the $2,500 award for a mixed-method research project that will seek to assess how much Internet users tolerate extreme and controversial speech on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. He will also measure the willingness of Internet users to allow these platforms to remove such speech.
The Emerging Scholars program is a part of AEJMC’s strategic plan to expand expertise and influence within the academy, industry and the public.
The determining factors in the selection process were an innovative approach and importance of the topic to the discipline; quality of the background research and methodology proposed; feasibility of completing the project with the time available; and proposed budget and use of funds.
Johnson is a member of the journalism studies faculty at the School where he teaches courses in mass communication law. He employs traditional legal research methods as well as mixed- and multi-method approaches to study the social impacts of the rapidly-changing legal and technological regimes governing online communication.
Updated: September 14, 2020