In today’s world, we have more content choices than ever before, and yet the media industry is facing an uncertain future due to declining audiences, failing business models, and threats to free expression.
In an age defined by information overload, viral narratives, and deepening political divides, Vanderbilt University’s McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies is positioning itself at the forefront of media literacy education.
Since her arrival in Fall 2024, Executive Director of the McGee Center Kristy Roschke has led the center through a period of rapid growth, expanding programming and deepening scholarship to provide the Vanderbilt community and broader public with the resources to critically navigate today’s complex media environment.
“There has never been a greater need for the McGee Center,” said Timothy P. McNamara, Searcy Family Dean of the College of Arts and Science. “Our public needs to understand how to assess effectively and make sense of the onslaught of information coming at them. These skills will help to create an informed, empowered, and engaged citizenry.”
Initiatives with real-world impact
Housed within the College of Arts and Science, in close partnership with the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, the McGee Center sits at the intersection of humanities research, data analysis, and public discourse.
Established to promote media literacy through interdisciplinary collaboration, the center’s mission is to equip individuals with the essential skills and knowledge required to adeptly navigate and critically assess narratives in the dynamic media landscape of the 21st century. They do so by supporting faculty who teach innovative courses, conducting research, developing programming, and mentoring students. Under Roschke’s leadership, this mission has taken on new urgency.
Drawing on her extensive background in media literacy and misinformation, Roschke, who is a research assistant professor of communication of science and technology, has prioritized programming that equips individuals with practical tools to evaluate news coverage, digital media, and emerging information platforms. Workshops, panel discussions, and collaborative events have brought together participants from across disciplines to explore how narratives are constructed and contested.
“The McGee Center is unique in part because we take a systems approach to these complex challenges,” Roschke said. “We are inherently collaborative, working with academic researchers, librarians, archivists, media practitioners, and technologists, among others, to design novel and holistic solutions. The basic skills of literacy, reading, and writing are not sufficient to be an active civic participant in the 21st century. We must expand our definition of literacy to include things like media and AI literacy.”
Roschke hit the ground running when she started and has not paused to take a breath. Last year, the center launched its inaugural seminar series, bringing experts to campus to discuss the impact of narratives on our understanding of the world, including timely topics such as fact-checking and freedom of expression on digital media platforms. The center also sponsored a science communication workshop for Vanderbilt graduate students and faculty in collaboration with Vanderbilt’s ASPIRE Program in Molecular Medicine.
In November, the McGee Center and the Heard Libraries hosted the inaugural Amplify Youth Summit in partnership with the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital and the National Association for Media Literacy Education. The summit welcomed more than 100 youth, nonprofit, and tech leaders from across the country to explore what it takes to support mental, social, and emotional health in the online environments where young people increasingly live, learn, and connect.
Over the past year, the center has collaborated on events with campus partners, including Dialogue Vanderbilt and the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, creating spaces where students can engage directly with questions of trust, bias, and civic responsibility. With an emphasis on hands-on learning opportunities that allow students to engage directly in storytelling, the center has also collaborated with Studio 608, a creative space located in the Central Library that gives students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to explore new modes of audio storytelling.
Beyond programming, the center continues to build a research portfolio that bridges media studies, data science, and digital humanities. This academic year, the center conducted focus groups with approximately 100 Vanderbilt students to learn more about their media habits. Roschke intends to continue these focus groups in the fall, with a goal of publishing a preliminary report in the next school year. Additionally, the center conducted a framing analysis of immigration news coverage and published several papers related to building resilient digital media systems.
Core to the success of the center’s work is their close partnership with, and physical location within, the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries. With access to the libraries’ resources, archives, and experts, the center has been able to advance their scholarship, impact, and reach.
“The McGee Center is integrated into the Heard Libraries’ mission in several meaningful ways, from innovative research collaborations that utilize the Vanderbilt Television News Archive to unique programming that brings renowned experts in media literacy to our library spaces to engage students in learning and reflection,” University Librarian Jon Shaw said. “We’re proud to partner with the center and the College of Arts and Science to promote vital discovery.”
A living record
Central to the McGee Center’s work is the Vanderbilt Television News Archive (VTNA). The VTNA is the world’s most complete archive of U.S. network television news, featuring more than 62,000 hours of transcribed and searchable video content, dating back to 1968. This database offers an unparalleled record of how major events have been presented to the public across decades, making it both a historical resource and a tool for contemporary analysis.
“The Television News Archive is such a treasure. It is the only place you can find U.S. television news going back to 1968, and the TVNA gets hundreds of requests for news segments not only from researchers, but also from documentarians, archival producers, journalists, and members of the public,” Roschke said. “The archive has been fully digitized and transcribed, which means we can also conduct large-scale analysis of the nearly 1.5 million records using computational methods. We’re really only scratching the surface of what we can do with this resource. By integrating the archive into coursework and research initiatives, the McGee Center is helping people connect the past and present in meaningful ways.”
On campus, the McGee Center is working with undergraduate students through the Buchanan Library Fellowship to examine U.S. national media coverage of higher education, learning how to search the TVNA and use computational analysis to explore key themes and narrative depictions.
The center has also hosted a Databricks media analysis workshop for faculty to share tips and techniques for conducting computational research with the archive, as well as consulted with students conducting research on presidential debates, climate change, and COVID-19.
The future of media literacy
In the coming year, the McGee Center plans to continue its speaker series while building momentum through expanded partnerships, global engagement, and innovative research initiatives.
The center plans to increase the capabilities of the TVNA and explore new media collections. They will extend their media research footprint with the addition of a Canadian Fulbright Scholar, as well as deepen student engagement by launching a storytelling fellowship in partnership with Studio 608.
Additionally, the center intends to conduct a deep qualitative analysis to significantly advance our understanding of the characteristics young people value in their experts and how they choose to become informed, informing media and AI literacy programming the center is co-developing with national and community collaborators.
Through strategic partnerships, innovative programming, and collaborative research, Roschke and her team aim are helping the public to better understand and improve the information environments shaping public trust, civic life, and democratic discourse. They are also.positioning Vanderbilt as a global leader in the study of narrative and media.
“We’ve spent our first year laying a strong foundation for research and educational programming, which will be expanding over the next two years,” Roschke said. “An informed populace is critical to an effective democracy, but managing the constant influx of information today is a full-time job. Through research, education, and community engagement, the McGee Center helps people cut through the noise to find credible, useful information.”