Meredith D. Clark

Meredith D. Clark (Assistant Professor, Department of Media Studies, University of Virginia) will deliver Chautauqua Institution's morning lecture in the Amphitheater on Tuesday, July 13, as part of the theme "Trust, Society and Democracy."

Clark’s research focuses on the intersection of race, media, and power, exploring the relationships between Black communities and the news on social media. Clark’s academic analysis of Black Twitter landed her on the Root 100 list of most influential African Americans; now evolved into a theoretical framework of Black digital resistance, her book is under contract with Oxford University Press. Clark will focus on reparative journalism as a way to rebuild trust in the Fourth Estate.

Clark is the author of “DRAG THEM: A Brief Etymology of Cancel Culture,” published in Communication & the Public in 2020. Her research has also been published in Electronic News, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Journal of Social Media in Society, New Media & Society, and Social Movement Studies. She is Academic Lead for Documenting the Now II, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and develops new scholarship on teaching students about digital archiving and community-based archives from a media studies perspective. She is also currently a faculty fellow with Data & Society, a faculty affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, and sits on the advisory boards for Project Information Literacy, and for the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at New York University.

Clark earned her bachelor's degree in political science and her master's degree in newspaper journalism from Florida A&M University, and her Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Learn more about attending Meredith D. Clark at Chautauqua Institution