The Rutgers School of Graduate Studies has named Qun Wang, Ph.D. ’20, a recipient of the 2020 Outstanding Doctoral Student Award, recognizing her overall record as an academic, including her dissertation, publications, teaching, and other academic achievements.
Wang is an assistant professor at Fordham University in the Communication and Media Studies Department.
One of only four Ph.D. students selected from across all of Rutgers University for this prestigious honor, Wang received the award in the social sciences category. The other recipients were awarded in the three other categories: humanities, physical sciences and engineering, and biological and biomedical sciences.
“I was thrilled when I heard the wonderful news,” Wang said. “It also brings back some good memories of my Ph.D. time at Rutgers. I want to give my sincere thanks to Susan Keith, my mentor at Rutgers who nominated me for this award. Thank you, Rutgers, my alma mater, for this recognition. This is a great encouragement, especially at this challenging time. I hope I can live up to this recognition in my new role as an Assistant Professor at Fordham University.”
Wang will be honored at a virtual awards ceremony held by SGS this month. “I look forward to celebrating this moment with other award winners and Rutgers colleagues,” Wang said.
Associate Professor Susan Keith, Wang’s doctoral advisor, who nominated Wang for the SGS award, said, “We at SC&I are enormously proud of Dr. Wang, who excelled as both a researcher and a teacher while at Rutgers. She taught four courses for the Department of Journalism and Media Studies and one for the Master of Communication and Media program while at SC&I, earning strong teaching evaluations from students. In 2020, her dissertation, “Normalization and Differentiation in Google’s News Business: A Multi-Method Analysis of the World’s Largest News Aggregator,” won the top dissertation award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, an academic organization that honored her with its Promising Professor award in 2018. Her dissertation also received an honorable mention from the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association. We have been delighted to see her take this strong record into a tenure-track position at Fordham University in New York City.”
“Google’s developments in the news area in the past two decades,” was the focus of her doctoral dissertation, Wang said. “It provides empirical and theoretical contributions to understand the changing media environment in the digital age. From historical, technological, legal, and journalistic perspectives, this dissertation analyzes the dynamics, trends, and complex interrelationships between old and new media actors, which have been shaping and will continue to shape the future media landscape. As a journalist-turned-researcher, I’m interested in the intersection of journalism, technology, and media.
“My research is interdisciplinary that involves mixed research methods, both traditional and computational, and theoretical frameworks across different fields. My studies pay attention to the interrelationship between news industry and tech industry, the media’s digital transformation, and global and comparative studies. At Fordham, I’ll continue my research and teaching interest in journalism, technology, and media, and hope to explore ways to connect research and practice. Right now, I’m leading a project about television news and video algorithm supported by Tow Center for Digital Journalism.”
In addition to Keith, Wang’s dissertation committee included Philip Napoli, formerly a faculty member at SC&I, now at Duke University; Matthew Weber, formerly a faculty member at SC&I, now at the University of Minnesota; and Seth Lewis, a faculty member at the University of Oregon.
“It is important to underline Dr. Wang’s tenacity in these achievements,” Keith said. “She was originally admitted to our Ph.D. Program without funding, and she had only one year of a fellowship during her Ph.D. studies. Yet she built a remarkable record of scholarship, graduating with single-authored publications in top journals in our field.”
Learn more about Wang:
Columbia Journalism School's Tow Center Names Christoph Mergerson and Qun Wang 2020 Fellows
Qun Wang ‘20 Awarded for her Doctoral Dissertation by the AEJMC and ICA
Ph.D. Candidate Qun Wang Receives Two Top Awards from the AEJMC
More about the Ph.D. Program and the Department of Media and Journalism Studies at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information is available on the website.
Image: Courtesy Qun Wang Ph.D. ’20
