Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

Stephen L Vaughn

Stephen L Vaughn
Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Biography

Stephen Vaughn is a Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, specializing in history. He has an affiliated appointment with the Department of History. Vaughn joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1981. Vaughn’s research and teaching interests include the history and social impact of new media, history of journalism, censorship, propaganda, modern entertainment and American culture, the uses and misuses of history, and U. S. intellectual and political history.Most recently, Vaughn is Editor of the Encyclopedia of American Journalism (Routledge, 2008), which contains more than 400 articles on the fourth estate. In 2006, Cambridge University Press published his book Freedom and Entertainment: Rating the Movies in an Age of New Media. It is the first behind-the-scenes history of the motion picture rating system and places movie regulation in the context new media technologies, media effects research, censorship and First Amendment issues, and America’s culture wars. Also in 2006, the University of Wisconsin Libraries System published online his New Communication Technologies, which is now one of the largest reference works dealing with the literature about the history and social influence of new media.Vaughn’s current research includes two projects. One involves finishing a book on cinema and censorship in the early 20th century that will be a companion volume to Freedom and Entertainment, and will examine how the press and new media technologies magnified personalities and changed the nature of fame. He has also started another project that deals with privacy and national security during the Gerald Ford administration. It will explore how new technology revolutionized surveillance during 1960s and 1970s, and how these years were a formative period for the current war on terrorism.

Research Interest

History and social impact of new media, history of journalism, censorship, propaganda, modern entertainment and American culture, the uses and misuses of history, and USA intellectual and political history.