Matt Binford, Assistant Professor of Broadcasting, received an award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) at their annual conference in August and worked on two major country music concert tours throughout the summer.
Binford accepted the Top Faculty Paper Award from the Visual Communication Division of the AEJMC. The paper is titled: The Visuals of a Changing Newsroom: Analyzing Local Coverage of the Midterm Election in Georgia.
Binford and his co-author did a qualitative analysis of images that accompanied news stories in the 2022 midterm election in Georgia. With a specific interest in how newspapers in the state captured the candidates for governor, Brian Kemp and Stacy Abrams, and the United States Senate, Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock.
“I’ve always been interested in political communication,” said Binford. “I am fascinated with how images that accompany news articles can fundamentally change the way audiences perceive the information they read in the text.”
The AEJMC is an educational group for journalism and mass communication professionals, educators and students. The association promotes research in the field of mass communication and has an annual conference.
“I would argue that they are the largest and most impactful association in the field of mass communication,” said Binford.
Additionally, Binford worked for Shania Twain and Sam Hunt concert tours this summer.
Binford built LED screens and ran a camera for a stadium show of Shania Twain’s tour.
However, from June to early September, Binford was the Video Director for country music singer Sam Hunt.
“I was responsible for what the audience saw on the large video screens during the Sam Hunt set,” said Binford. “In total for this tour we had 10 cameras: 3 manned cameras, 3 robo cameras and 4 stationary POV cameras.”
As Video Director, Binford communicated with camera operators to direct what shots to take and operated the video switcher to live cut among the cameras.
“The experience was a ton of fun and it was great to get a chance to direct for live music again,” said Binford.
Binford has creative experience beyond this summer as well. He has worked with live productions like the CMT Awards and Latin Grammys. And has experience with network TV shows with ABC’s Nashville. As well as additional work in video tech and camera operations for artists on tour like Sara Bareilles, Andrea Bocelli, Weird Al Yankovic and Twenty-One Pilots.