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Michael J. Socolow

Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

Michael J. Socolow is a media historian whose research centers upon America’s original radio networks in the 1920s and 1930s. His scholarship on media history has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Technology & Culture, and other scholarly journals. He is the author of Six Minutes in Berlin: Broadcast Spectacle and Rowing Gold at the Nazi Olympics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016). He was awarded the 2018 Broadcast Historian Award by the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation and the Broadcast Education Association for Six Minutes in Berlin.

He is also a former broadcast journalist who has worked as an Assignment Editor for the Cable News Network and as an information manager for the host broadcast organization at the Barcelona, Atlanta, and Sydney Olympic Games. He has written pieces on media regulation and media history for Slate, Columbia Journalism Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Chronicle Review, and other journalistic outlets. In the Department of Communication and Journalism, he serves as Internship Coordinator and teaches CMJ 211: Journalism Studies I, CMJ 237: Journalism Across Platforms, CMJ 380: Advertising, Media & Society, CMJ 489: Seminar in Media Ethics, CMJ 520: Media History, CMJ 525: Propaganda and Political Persuasion, and other courses.

For more on Professor Socolow’s scholarship check out his Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YxTJsxoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao. He tweets at @michaelsocolow.

Good profits from bad news: How the Kennedy assassination helped make network TV news wealthy

Nov 21, 2023 04:02 am UTC| Politics

In journalism, bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads is a famous industry catchphrase, which explains why violent crime, war and terrorism, and natural disasters are ubiquitous on TV news. The fact that journalists and...

Don't trust the news media? That's good

Mar 15, 2023 15:53 pm UTC| Insights & Views

Everyone seems to hate what they call the media. Attacking journalism even accurate and verified reporting provides a quick lift for politicians. Its not just Donald Trump. Trumps rival for the 2024 Republican...

Olympic Games are great for propagandists – how the lessons of Hitler's Olympics loom over Beijing 2022

Nov 13, 2021 07:48 am UTC| Sports

On the morning of Aug. 14, 1936, two NBC employees met for breakfast at a café in Berlin. Max Jordan and Bill Slater were discussing the Olympic Games they were broadcasting back to the United States and the Nazi...

Aiming for novelty in coronavirus coverage, journalists end up sensationalizing the trivial and untrue

May 20, 2020 15:21 pm UTC| Insights & Views

For centuries, what has made news valuable and news organizations profitable has been the speed at which journalists collect and disseminate information. This is useful for both commerce and public service. But the rush...

The first fireside chat calmed an anxious nation and provides a model for today

Mar 12, 2020 15:48 pm UTC| Politics

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers knew he had to do something. The U.S. banking system faced imminent collapse; depositors around the country waited anxiously in line to withdraw their funds. To stop the...

Misinformation, evasion and the informational problem of live TV interviews

Oct 02, 2019 02:59 am UTC| Insights & Views Business

First, it happened on Fox News. Chris Wallace asked White House adviser Stephen Miller about the presidents decision to use private lawyers to get information from the Ukrainian government rather than go through …...

Audiences love the anger: Alex Jones, or someone like him, will be back

Aug 08, 2018 11:31 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics

Confrontational characters spouting conspiracy theories and promoting fringe ideas have been with us since the invention of American broadcasting. First on radio, then on television, the American audience has consistently...

Economy

Western Pharma Shifts Focus from China to India Amid Rising Geopolitical Tensions

Western drugmakers are increasingly turning to alternative sources for drug production and clinical trials, shifting their attention away from Chinese contractors. According to industry experts and executives, this...

Stellantis and Italian Government Discuss Measures to Increase Car Production

Stellantis has initiated in-depth discussions with the Italian government with the primary objective of bolstering car production within the country. This collaborative effort aims to boost economic growth and streamline...

How governments use IMF bailouts to hurt political opponents – new research

Sri Lanka received a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in March amid soaring inflation, debt and a sovereign default. In exchange for US$3 billion (2.4 billion), the government committed to spending...

The government just killed 50 infrastructure projects – what matters is whether it will fund them on merit from now on

The federal government has just announced a list of projects to be abandoned as a result of an independent strategic review of its infrastructure investment program. The review found the cost of the A$120 billion,...

Interim housing isn't just a roof and four walls. Good design is key to getting people out of homelessness

State governments across the country have plans to increase social and affordable housing to address ballooning waitlists. While necessary, this wont be enough to clear the backlog of people waiting for public...

Politics

What Joe Biden's meeting with Xi Jinping means for geopolitical tensions

U.S. President Joe Biden has engaged in a crucial face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. This high-stakes diplomatic encounter was...

How a new identity-focused ideology has trapped the left and undermined social justice

Yasha Mounks new book, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, explores a radical progressive ideology that has been taking the world by storm. From its unlikely beginnings in esoteric scholarly theories...

Rwanda plan: Rishi Sunak has insisted on pushing ahead – here's where he could take it next

The UK supreme court has ruled against the governments plan to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing. But this isnt the end of the story a version of the plan is likely to resurface in some form. The initial...

Myanmar’s military junta appears to be in terminal decline

Myint Swe, the acting president of Mynamars military government, has warned that the country will be split into various parts after his armed forces suffered huge territorial losses to resistance fighters recently. His...

China: why there has been a sudden 'surge' of antisemitism in the People's Republic

During the conflict between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, many nations have tried to maintain a neutral stance by not explicitly supporting either side. But despite attempts at balanced commentaries at the top of business and...

Science

NASA's first successful recovery of asteroid samples may reveal information about the origins of the universe

The OSIRIS-REx mission is NASAs first mission to collect samples from an asteroid in this case 101955 Bennu and return to Earth. OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification,...

Did this chemical reaction create the building blocks of life on Earth?

How did life begin? How did chemical reactions on the early Earth create complex, self-replicating structures that developed into living things as we know them? According to one school of thought, before the current era...

Will Saturn's rings really 'disappear' by 2025? An astronomer explains

If you can get your hands on a telescope, there are few sights more spectacular than the magnificent ringed planet Saturn. Currently, Saturn is clearly visible in the evening sky, at its highest just after sunset. Its...

Specialized training programs using sensory augmentation devices could prevent astronauts from getting disoriented in space

When landing on the surface of the Moon, astronauts can become spatially disoriented, which is when they lose sense of their orientation they might not be able to tell which way is up. This disorientation can lead to...

Is some of the body that collided with Earth to form the Moon still recognisable inside our planet?

Scientists have dated the birth of the Solar System to about 4.57 billion years ago. About 60 million years later a giant impact collision between the infant Earth and a Mars-sized body called Theia created the...

Technology

European Tech Sector Faces Challenges and Shows Resilience Amid Global Economic Shifts

The European technology sector is navigating a challenging economic environment, as evidenced by recent data from venture capital firm Atomico. This year, European startups are expected to raise around $42 billion, a...

Hexa, Paris's Quiet Powerhouse in the Startup World

Tucked away in Paris, Hexa, a startup studio, has quietly made waves in the business-to-business (B2B) software realm. Though Hexa may not be a household name, its the force behind several successful unicorns like Front,...

Amazon Launches New Serverless Solutions to Simplify Database Management

Amazon recently unveiled its latest advancements in serverless technology during the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. These innovations aim to simplify the management of Aurora, Elastic Cache, and Redshift serverless...

Hussain Elius Ventures into DeFi with Wind.app

Hussain Elius, known for co-founding Pathao, one of Bangladeshs leading ride-sharing applications, is making strides into the decentralized finance (DeFi) space with his new venture, Wind.app. This smart contract wallet,...

Bitcoin Mining Enhances Energy Efficiency and Grid Stability, New Study Reveals

A recent study brings a different view of Bitcoin mining, highlighting its potential benefits for energy management and grid stability. This study, crafted by Bitcoin advocates and a former key figure in Texas electric...