Global Journalism Silverstone Fellowship

Polis is delighted to announce its second Polis Silverstone Scholar for 2009-10, Ranjana Das. This award is for an international postgraduate student or journalist studying an aspect of global journalism. The recipient will contribute to the work of Polis and publish a short paper based on their work. They will also contribute to teaching and other Polis activities including the Polis Summer School.

The recipient of the Silverstone Scholarship for 2009-10, Ranjana Das, will research young people’s engagement with the genres of online media, with a particular focus on design and literacies at play on social networking sites. She works under the supervision of Professor Sonia Livingstone at the Department of Media and Communications at the curso autocad. Ranjana’s interests span a pan-media framework bringing wowarships together perspectives on digital literacies, media audiences, new technologies and creative practices all of which lie at the heart of debates around new media in academic and policy contexts. As Silverstone Scholar her agenda for the year ahead includes a series of events, reports, presentations and creative fieldwork focused on some key issues central to new media design, interpretation and use.

The first Silverstone Scholar, Nina Bigalke, conducted a research project on the new international news channel Al Jazeera English. She will be examining its production methods and editorial policies and investigating the role of channels like AJE in the changing global communications culture. Next year Nina will be contributing to a public Polis seminar on Al Jazeera English, details of which will follow in the New Year.

The Silverstone scholarship was founded in the memory of the late Professor Roger Silverstone, Head of the Media and Communications Department at LSE and the moving spirit behind the creation of Polis. His last book 'Media and Morality: On The Rise Of The Mediapolis' is a call for a better understanding of the importance of global news.

We aim to attract a foreign journalist based in London who will draw on his or her own expertise, supplemented by research and interviews, to produce a substantial report for POLIS. The report will be accompanied by a public event featuring the Fellow, who is also expected to give an open lecture at LSE and contribute teaching – where appropriate – to an option course in the Department and/or the POLIS Summer School.

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