Joseph Jones

Joseph is an assistant professor at the WVU College of Creative Arts and Media who has expertise in media history and culture and teaches Media Ethics and Law.

Taking the historical long view and using a variety of critical/cultural approaches, Joe investigates media and the creation of meaning in everyday life. Examining consumer culture, lifestyle journalism, news, and popular forms of entertainment, he is primarily concerned with the entanglements of pleasure and power in constituting worldviews, identities, and ethical scripts. These have material consequences, and Joe seeks to understand how such media enable or constrain our abilities to think holistically about other people and the environment. Engaging in both empirical analysis and theory building, Joe is the epitome of an interdisciplinary scholar capable of teaching and researching an array of subjects.

Joe has taught a wide range of courses on topics including history, globalization, popular culture, media ethics, media law, and the principles of journalism. He has also co-led a study abroad. Regardless of the course, Joe seeks to cultivate well-rounded students capable of critical thinking, empathy, and articulating their diverse views and positionalities.

Joe’s research often engages the intersections of race, gender, class, and environmental consciousness. His recent work includes the influence of commercialism on the Black press, the discourse of sustainable fashion, and the construction of cultural identities, gender norms, and race through food media. He won a top paper award on the potentials of feminist and environmental theory for journalistic ethics. The common thread of this research has us question how everyday communications and seemingly innocuous topics invite us to imagine and treat ourselves, each other, and the world we all inhabit.