About Us

The Center for Digital Ethics and Policy was founded through the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago in an effort to foster more dialogue, research, and guidelines regarding ethical behavior in online and digital environments.

FOUNDER
Don Heider, Dean, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
Dr. Heider is the founder of the center and the founding Dean of the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago. Heider’s recently released edited volume Living Virtually explores politics, social behavior, journalism, and ethics in virtual worlds. He spent over three years gathering data for his research on Second Life. Heider is a multiple Emmy-award winning producer and reporter who spent ten years in news before beginning a career in teaching.

DIRECTOR
Adrienne Massanari, Assistant Professor, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
Dr. Massanari does research and writes about virtual worlds, information architecture, youth culture, and gaming. She is co-author of Critical Cyberculture Studies: Current Terrains, Future Directions.

AFFILIATED FACULTY
Jessica Brown, Instructor, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
Professor Brown is a visual journalist with a background in daily newspapers. In today’s changing world of visual journalism, Brown believes it is critical that writers, reporters and editors understand the important roles that design, photography, graphic reporting and editing and the Internet play in today’s media. She has won several design awards from various organizations including the National Association of Black Journalists and the Illinois Press Association.

Mark Deuze, Associate Professor, Indiana University, Department of Telecommunications
Mark Deuze has a joint appointment at the Department of Telecommunications of Indiana University and as Professor in Journalism and New Media (personal chair) at Leiden University in The Netherlands.  His research interests include the cultural and technological convergence of media culture in general and the creative industries in particular. He is particularly interested in the professional identity of people working in the media – journalism, advertising and public relations, computer and video game development, film, radio and television, web design. As a visiting professor he has lectured at various schools and departments in the fields of journalism, communication and media in The Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United States.

Frank Durham, Associate Professor, University of Iowa, School of Journalism & Mass Communication
Frank Durham’s research focuses on the role of media as a part of social change. He has investigated the ways in which journalism has defined the social meanings of key events in a variety of contexts, including in news coverage of the crash of Flight 800, the 1997 Thai currency crisis, the Katrina disaster, and the Southern labor and civil rights movements.

Meghan Dougherty, Assistant Professor, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
Dr. Dougherty studies e-research and digital cultural heritage. Her research focuses on the the preservation and interpretation of web culture, collaboration tools to aid knowledge production, and web archiving practices as emerging cyberinfrastructure for e-research. She is an associate of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Virtual Knowledge Studio, and a researcher for Webarchivist.org.

David Kamerer, Assistant Professor, Loyola Chicago School of Communication.
David Kamerer serves as assistant professor in the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in digital public relations and marketing. Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola, he worked in public relations and corporate communication, including six years as director of communication for Envision, a not-for profit agency in Wichita, Kansas; and as consultant to Greteman Group (branding agency), Via Christi Health, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kansas and Communities in Schools. He has also previously served on the faculties at Trinity University, Kansas State University and Wichita State University. He earned the Ph.D. in Telecommunications from Indiana University, and accreditation in public relation (APR) from the Universal Accreditation Board. He also holds the BA with Honors from the University of Iowa.

Gilda Parrella, Associate Professor, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
A founding member of the Media Ethics Hotline, Professor Gilda Parrella continues her work in Media Ethics by integrating her research in Conflict Management with a new model of Consensus-building Journalism. Dr. Parrella presented her research this past summer at an ethics conference in Milwaukee at Marquette University. She continues to teach courses in Media and Communication Ethics as well as Conflict Management.

Bastiaan Vanacker, Assistant Professor, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
Bastiaan Vanacker has an MA in philosophy from the University of Ghent, Belgium and earned his PhD at the School of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on media ethics and law, particularly but not exclusively in a new media context. His published doctoral research deals with regulation of online hate speech in a global context. His most recent research project examines the ethical and legal dimensions of plagiarism detection software.

Don Wycliff, Distinguished Journalist in Residence, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
Wycliff, a long time Chicago journalist and member of the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, has written extensively on ethics. He is newly appointed Board Member for the McCormick Foundation and has served as an Ethics Fellow for the Poynter Institute.

Bren Ortega Murphy, Associate Professor, Loyola Chicago School of Communication
Bren Ortega Murphy has been a faculty member in Communication Studies at Loyola University Chicago since 1984 after receiving her PhD from Northwestern University. She later joined the Women’s Studies/Gender Studies faculty and now holds a joint appointment in both the School of Communication and the Women’s Studies/Gender Studies program in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her research is primarily in the area of gender representation and communication ethics. Us