Faculty

Rodney Benson

Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication

Rodney Benson

Phone: 998 5820
Email:

Rodney Benson holds a Masters of International Affairs degree from Columbia and an MA and PhD in sociology from the University of California-Berkeley.

Prior to joining the NYU faculty, he was a sociology lecturer at UC-Berkeley and an assistant professor of international communications at The American University of Paris. 

Benson is also an affiliated faculty member in the NYU Dept. of Sociology. He has been a visiting scholar or invited lecturer at universities in France (Toulouse and Paris), Germany (Bremen and Weimar), Denmark (Copenhagen and Roskilde), and Norway (Oslo). 

He has published articles on comparative media research, media and immigration, the French and U.S. news media, and Bourdieu's field theory in such journals 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 has taught the PhD theory seminar, MA courses in comparative media and media analysis, and undergraduate courses on media and globalization.


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)

Urls

Degrees Held

  • M.A. Columbia University
  • Ph.D. University of California-Berkeley

Publications

  • Rodney Benson. Framing Immigration: How the French and American Media Shape Public Debate (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
  • Rodney Benson and Erik Neveu, Eds. Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2005). (link)
  • 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. "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 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. "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. "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. "Tearing down the ‘Wall' in American Journalism." Core: International Journal of the Humanities (Paris) 1, 1 (2001). (Published in French originally, as: "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)
  • Rodney Benson. "Normative Theories of Journalism." Contribution to The Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Communication (Wolfgang Donsbach, ed.), in press, forthcoming 2007. (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. "American journalism and the politics of diversity." Media, Culture & Society 27, 1 (2005): 1-20.
  • 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. "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)
  • Rodney Benson. "Journalism, French and American Style." On-Line Interview with Jay Rosen, "Pressthink" website, December 2003. (link)
  • 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)
  • UNDERGRAD-LEVEL COURSE SYLLABUS: Media and Globalization (view)
  • MA COURSE SYLLABUS: Introductory Seminar on Media, Culture, and Communication (view)
  • GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSE SYLLABUS: Comparative Media Systems (spring 2007) (view)
  • Rodney Benson. Review of Paul Starr's The Creation of the Media. Archives européennes de sociologie 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)
  • "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, in press).
  • "What Makes News More Multiperspectival? A Field Analysis." Poetics, 37, 5-6 (fall 2009): 402-418. (link)
  • "Shaping the Public Sphere: Habermas and Beyond." The American Sociologist, 40 (fall 2009): 175-192. (link)
  • "Futures of the News: International Considerations and Further Reflections." In Natalie Fenton, ed., New Media, Old News (London: Sage, 2009): 187-200. (link)
  • "Comparative News Media Systems." In Stuart Allan, ed., Routledge Companion to News Media and Journalism Studies, ed. Stuart Allan (London: Routledge, 2009): 614-626.

Awards

  • 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

  • International communications
  • Sociology of journalism and public relations
  • Comparative media systems
  • Media and immigration
  • French press history
  • Alternative media
  • Cultural globalization
  • Discourse and image content analysis