Faculty

Rodney Benson

Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication

Rodney Benson

Phone: 998 5820
Email:

Curriculum Vitae/Syllabi

Rodney Benson is associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. He is also an affiliated faculty member in the NYU Dept. of Sociology and has been a visiting scholar or invited lecturer at universities in France (Toulouse IEP, Paris EHESS), Germany (Universities of Bremen and Weimar), Denmark (Copenhagen Business School, Roskilde University), and Norway (University of Oslo). 

Benson's research lies at the intersection of the sociology of culture, the sociology of globalization, political communication, and journalism studies. He has published articles on comparative media research, media and immigration, the U.S. and French (and other European) news media, and the theories of Bourdieu and Habermas in journals such as Press/Politics, The American Sociologist, Poetics, Political Communication, American Sociological Review, European Journal of Communication, Media, Culture & Society, Theory and Society, French Politics, Culture & Society, and Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. His book, Framing Immigration: How the French and American Media Shape Public Debate, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Benson is also co-editor (with Erik Neveu) of Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Cambridge: Polity, 2005) and has written book chapters on U.S. alternative newsweeklies in Contesting Media Power (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, J. Curran and N. Couldry, eds.), comparative media research in The Routledge  Companion to News Media and Journalism Studies (Routledge, 2009, S. Allan, ed.), and journalism and the internet in New Media, Old News (Sage, 2009, N. Fenton, ed.). 

Benson teaches the PhD core theory seminar, a PhD/MA course on comparative media systems (cross-listed with sociology), and undergraduate courses on media and globalization.

Prior to joining the NYU faculty, he was assistant professor of international communications and sociology at The American University of Paris. He received his PhD in sociology from the University of California-Berkeley. 


Selected Presentations

  • After Habermas: The Revival of a Macro-Sociology of Media
    Invited Session on "The History of Sociology, Media and Communications" American Sociological Association Annual Conference New York August 11, 2007 (view)

Awards

  • 2010 : Axel and Margaret Ax:Son Johnson Foundation (Sweden), 2-Year Grant for Research on Media Ownership
  • 2008 : NYU Global Fellowship (Paris research)
  • 2008 : NYU Steinhardt Methodology Award (online news media research)
  • 2007 : NYU Humanities Council Grant
  • 2005 : "MediaCity" European Union Fellowship, Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany
  • 2005 : Top Paper Award (one of three awarded; co-authored with Dan Hallin), Political Communication Division, ICA conference, New York
  • 2005 : Top Journal Article Nomination (one of six articles nominated), Political Communication Division, ICA conference, New York.
  • 2005 : NYU University Challenge Fund Grant
  • 2004 : NYU Steinhardt Challenge Fund Grant
  • 2002 : Council for European Studies, Young Scholars Network Travel Grant

Courses

  • PhD Theory Seminar
  • MA Introductory Seminar in Media, Culture, and Communication
  • PhD/MA Seminar (cross-listed with sociology): Comparative Media Systems and Sociology of News
  • Undergraduate Course: Media and Globalization
  • Undergraduate Senior Seminar: Public Opinion
  • Undergraduate Senior Seminar: Public Relations and Society -- Critical Approaches

Research Interests

 

  • Fields, public spheres, networks 
  • Sociology of culture and news
  • Comparative media systems
  • Media and immigration
  • French media 
  • Alternative media
  • Cultural globalization
  • Discourse and image content analysis

 

 

Selected Publications

  • "Futures of the News: International Considerations and Further Reflections." In Natalie Fenton, ed., New Media, Old News (London: Sage, 2010): 187-200. (link)
  • "Comparative News Media Systems." In Stuart Allan, ed., Routledge Companion to News Media and Journalism Studies, ed. Stuart Allan (London: Routledge, 2010): 614-626. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. Framing Immigration: How the French and American Media Shape Public Debate (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
  • "What Makes for a Critical Press? A Case Study of French and U.S. Immigration News Coverage." International Journal of Press/Politics, 15, 1 (January 2010): 3-24. (view)
  • "What Makes News More Multiperspectival? A Field Analysis." Poetics, 37, 5-6 (fall 2009): 402-418. (view)
  • "Shaping the Public Sphere: Habermas and Beyond." The American Sociologist, 40 (fall 2009): 175-192. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "Normative Theories of Journalism." The Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Communication (Wolfgang Donsbach, ed., 2008): 2591-2597. (view)
  • Rodney Benson and Daniel C. Hallin. "How States, Markets and Globalization Shape the News: The French and U.S. National Press, 1965-1997." European Journal of Communication 22, 1 (March 2007): 27-48. (view)
  • Rodney Benson and Aurora Wallace. "Space, Place, and the Changing American Mediascape." In F. Eckardt and Martina Zschocke, eds., MediaCity (Weimar, Germany: Bauhaus University Publishers, 2007): 209-226. (view)
  • “News Media as a ‘Journalistic Field’: What Bourdieu adds to New Institutionalism, and Vice Versa.” Political Communication 23, 2 (2006): 187-202. (view)
  • Rodney Benson and Erik Neveu, Eds. Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2005). (link)
  • Rodney Benson. "Mapping Field Variation: Journalism in France and the United States." In R. Benson and E. Neveu, eds., Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005): 85-112. (view)
  • Rodney Benson and Abigail C. Saguy. "Constructing Social Problems in an Age of Globalization: A French-American Comparison." American Sociological Review 70, 2 (2005): 233-259. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "American journalism and the politics of diversity." Media, Culture & Society 27, 1 (2005): 1-20. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "Bringing the Sociology of Media Back In." Political Communication, 21 (2004): 275-292 (Lead article in special issue on "Political Communication and Sociology"). (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "La fin du Monde?: Tradition and Change in the French Press." French Politics,Culture & Society 22, 1 (2004): 108-126. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "Commercialism and Critique: California's Alternative Weeklies." In J. Curran and N. Couldry, eds., Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003): 111-127. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "The political/literary model of French journalism: Change and continuity in immigration coverage, 1973-1991." Journal of European Area Studies 10, 1 (2002): 49-70. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "The Mediated Public Sphere: A Model for Cross-National Research." Working Paper #2001-7, Center for the Study of Culture, Organizations and Politics. University of California, Berkeley(2001). (link)
  • “Tearing down the ‘Wall’ in American Journalism.” Core: International Journal of the Humanities (Paris) 1, 1 (2001). (English-language version of “La logique du profit dans les médias américains.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 131-132 (2000): 107-115.) (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "Field theory in comparative context: a new paradigm for media studies." Theory and Society 28, 3 (1999): 463-498. (view)
  • Review of Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media. Archives européennes de sociologie/European Journal of Sociology XLVI, 3 (2005): 541-544. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. Review of Pablo Boczkowski's Digitizing the News. New Media & Society 7 (2005): 854-857. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. Review of John David Skrentny's (ed.) Color Lines and Joel Fetzer's Public Attitudes toward Immigration in the United States, France, and Germany. Public Opinion Quarterly 67, 2 (2003): 304-310. (view)
  • Rodney Benson. "Journalism, French and American Style." On-Line Interview with Jay Rosen, "Pressthink" website, December 2003. (link)
  • GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSE SYLLABUS: Comparative Media Systems (spring 2010) (view)