Jo Ellen Fair
Ph.D., Indiana University
Professor

Education:
Purdue University
BA, Mass Communication with French minor, 1982

Indiana University, Bloomington
MA, Journalism, 1984
Ph.D., Mass Communication, 1988

Courses:
International Communication
Mass Communication in Developing Nations
Mass Communication and Society
Analysis of Contemporary Affairs
Readings in International Communication
Media, Performance, and Identity in World Perspective
Survey of Research on International Communication

Recent Publications:
Bilbija, Ksenija, Fair, Jo Ellen, Milton, Cynthia, and Payne, Leigh (eds.) The Art of Truth-telling After Authoritarian Rule. (Forthcoming, September 2005, University of Wisconsin Press.)

Med] wo*, my Val: The creation of Valentine’s Day in Accra, Ghana. (*I love you in Twi; forthcoming, 2004, African Studies Review.)
Jo Ellen Fair and Lisa Parks. (2001).

Africa on camera: Televised video footage and aerial imaging of the Rwandan refugee crisis. Africa Today, 48(2), 35-58.

Biography: Jo Ellen Fair is professor of Journalism & Mass Communication and also serves as faculty director for Chadbourne Residential College. Fair joined the UW faculty in 1989. She earned her Ph.D. in mass communications from Indiana University in 1988.

Much of Fair’s research has examined U.S. media images of conflicts in Africa. This work is concerned with how American notions of race shaped the telling of African conflicts and catastrophes. Over the past several years, she has explored the ways that African media influence popular culture to create new social realities for Africans.

Instead of exploring what the West says about Africa, Fair looks at what Africans are saying about themselves, to themselves, and to others. One of her field-based research on media and new forms of identity in urban Africa resulted in a book chapter called “Francophonie and the National Airwaves: A History of Television in Senegal.” Based on archival work, observations, and interviews, this work explored how the Senegalese government, after 1960, took Western television technology and its accompanying institutions, and transformed them according to local needs, creating a television culture recognized by viewers as Senegalese.

In 2001, Fair was invited to Ghana to develop a training protocol for Ghanaian journalists preparing to report on the proceedings of the country’s National Reconciliation Commission, charged with uncovering abuses of past authoritarian governments. This training exercise in Ghana led to a research project with Audrey Gadzekpo, a faculty member at the University of Ghana, on the capacity of Ghana’s under-trained and politically polarized journalists to provide accurate reporting and credible interpretation of the work of the Ghanaian reconciliation commission. Recently, she has a new interest in the emergence of bourgeois culture and the importance of mass media in shaping middle class cultural ideas and values in African cities. Fair is especially interested in changing ideas of love because the contrasts are so sharp between older customs deriving from rural realities (arranged marriage, brideprice, polygamy, normative male philandering) and new urban ideals (monogamy, the love match, marriage as a partnership).

Fair has facilitated journalism-training workshops in Zambia and Namibia, and was involved in curriculum development for the media studies program at the University of Namibia. She is editor of African Issues and on the editorial board of several African Studies journals and communications journals; she is a frequent reviewer for numerous African Studies and media journals. She also has served as research chair and president of the International Communication division for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She is an active member of the African Studies Association, the West Africa Research Association, and the International Communication Association.

Fair has developed courses on media in developing countries; international communication; news reporting and writing; international studies and global cultures.