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University of Florida

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Mindy McAdams

Mindy McAdams

Professor - Department of Journalism
Knight Chair, Journalism Technologies and the Democratic Process

Office: 3049 Weimer

Phone: 352-392-8456

Email: mmcadams@jou.ufl.edu

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Mindy McAdams

Professor - Department of Journalism
Knight Chair, Journalism Technologies and the Democratic Process

Mindy McAdams teaches production and theory courses about interactive media and online journalism. Her book Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages was published by Focal Press/Elsevier in 2005. She has trained hundreds of journalists in digital skills (at the Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, Montreal Gazette, Austin American-Statesman, various state newspaper associations, Nieman Fellows at Harvard, two National Writers Workshops, and several Poynter seminars).

She has led journalist training workshops in South Africa, Argentina, Vietnam, Laos, and Bulgaria on missions for the U.S. State Department. She has also given presentations about online journalism in Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Thailand, and Canada. In 2011-12 she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar on a teaching grant in Indonesia for 10 months. Her first Fulbright award was in 2004-05, for teaching/research in Malaysia for eight months.

A pioneer in online newspapers, she was No. 15 on the Online Journalism Review’s list of 50 “Names to Know” in new media in 1998. She joined the UF faculty in 1999.

Before moving to Florida, she worked on the Metro desk at The Washington Post and at TIME magazine in New York. In 1994, she was the first content developer at Digital Ink, The Washington Post’s first online newspaper. In the mid-1980s she was a business editor and reporter covering personal computers, and earlier, a copy editor at Dell Publishing in New York.

Her most recent publications: (Re)defining multimedia journalism and a chapter about multimedia journalism in the forthcoming (October 2014) book Ethics for Digital Journalists: Emerging Best Practices (New York: Routledge).

Areas of Expertise

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Communication Technology, Data, Numeracy and Coding, Human-Machine Communication, Web Design

Education

M.A., New School for Social Research (New York), 1993
B.A., Penn State University, 1981

News

Publications

Articles 

Armstrong, C. L., & McAdams, M. J. (2009, April). Blogs of information: How gender cues and individual motivations influence perceptions of credibility. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(3), 435–456.

Book Chapters

Armstrong, C. L., & McAdams, M. J. (2009). Believing blogs: Does a blogger’s gender influence credibility? In Rebecca Lind (Ed.), Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers. Allyn & Bacon.

Books

McAdams, M. Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages (Burlington, Mass.: Focal Press/Elsevier, 2005).

McGuire, M., Stilborne,L.; McAdams,M. and Hyatt,L. The Internet Handbook for Writers, Researchers, and Journalists, 2002-2003/3rd ed. (New York:Guilford, 2002. Toronto:Trifolium Books, 2002)

Research

Professor McAdams studies new communication technologies, online journalism, interactivity and multimedia, the Internet, and changes in societies that are related to the adoption and diffusion of new communication technologies. She is especially interested in ways of ensuring that people in a democratic society have the information they need to effectively self-govern.

Research Keywords

interactivity, journalism, digital, digital journalism, online journalism, social media, online media, storytelling, graphics, interactive graphics, design, Web design, interface design, usability, databases, blogs, bloggers, citizen journalism, citizen journalists, user generated content, UGC, participatory, mobile, mobile data, mobile Internet, code, programming, Web development, networks, social networks, network society, community, access, alternative media, public sphere, democratic discourse, participatory democracy, democratic society

Research Areas

  • Communication Technology/Interactive Media
  • Digital and Emergent Media

Courses