The Rutgers University Board of Governors has conferred the title of Distinguished Professor to Professor and Chair of Journalism and Media Studies Amy Jordan effective July 1, 2024.

“Amy Jordan is so deserving of the promotion to distinguished professor,” said SC&I Interim Dean Dafna Lemish. “As we said when discussing her case in the school – she ticks all the boxes: she’s an internationally known prolific scholar; adored by her students for her outstanding pedagogy and care; a leader and role model on so many levels – from being the former president of the International Communication Association to chairing the Journalism and Media Studies Department here at SC&I – and she’s doing so much for the well-being of children consumers of media. She brings so much prestige and pride to our school! I am thrilled with this news!”

Jordan joined SC&I in 2018 as Professor of Journalism and Media Studies after a 21-year career at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. In 2020 Jordan was elected chair of the Journalism and Media Studies Department.

Jordan’s teaching and research focus on the role of media in the lives of children and adolescents. In addition, she has been involved in creating and testing culturally sensitive health-related media communications directed at audiences across the life span.

Her studies have examined the impact of public policy mandates on the landscape of children’s television, the use of public television materials in low-income, preschool classrooms, the effect of exposure to sexual media content on adolescent sexual risk taking, and the impact of media campaigns on parent’s and children’s sugar-sweetened beverage consumption. 

Jordan’s current interests include the educational potential of digital media in under-served and under-resourced communities, the politics of children’s policymaking, and the relationship between adolescent nighttime media use and sleep behaviors. 

Jordan served as co-editor of the Journal of Children and Media from 2012-2020 and president of the International Communication Association from 2015 to 2016. In 2018 she was elected to the Board of Trustees of Sesame Workshop, where she currently serves as chair of the Education Committee.

Jordan is the author of several books. “Media and the Well-Being of Children and Adolescents,” published by Oxford University Press in 2014 and edited by Jordan and Daniel Romer, “covers a broad range of topics regarding the risks and opportunities children encounter on the Web; offers a balanced perspective on the media's impact on children and adolescents, and features contributions from top scholars in the field.”

Published by Taylor & Francis in 2017, “Adolescents and Children, Adolescents, and Media: The Future of Research and Action,” was edited by SC&I Interim Dean Dafna Lemish, Jordan, and Vicky Rideout. According to the publisher, the book “brings together the leading researchers on children, adolescents, and the media,” and “offers their cutting-edge, ‘big picture’ ideas for the future of research and scholarship in the field. Individual chapters focus on topics such as the role of big data in media research, digital literacy, parenting in the era of mobile media, media diversity in the digital age, the impact of media on child development, children’s digital rights, the implications of ‘intelligent’ characters and parasocial relationships, and the effectiveness of transmedia for informal education.”

Jordan’s work has been published in many journals, including Journal of Communication, Pediatrics, Communication Research, Journal of Family Communication, and Media Psychology, among others.

Her work has been funded by several federal agencies and private foundations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the National Captioning Institute.

Two recent projects led by Jordan and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include the establishment of dissemination outreach strategies for the UPenn Prevention Research Center (PRC) which employed state-of-the art techniques and technologies to foster communication, forge strong connections, and disseminate cutting edge tools and research to the academic, scientific, local health, and local news media communities.  As part of the PRC, she also developed and tested messages and communication strategies to address skin cancer risk behaviors (e.g., indoor tanning) and to encourage those with concerns about memory loss to “make a visit and make a plan” with a health care provider.

Her current research focuses on the role of AI in teens’ media use and ways in which teens and their parents understand and accommodate AI’s ubiquitous presence in their lives.  She is collaborating with Associate Professor of Communication Jeff Lane, Associate Teaching Professor of Library and Information Science Joyce Valenza, and doctoral students Niki Natarajan and Zhuozhi Shao on this project.

Jordan earned a bachelor’s degree in communication studies from Muhlenberg College, and  M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in communication from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

To learn more about Jordan, see the following SC&I articles:

Amy Jordan Named New Chair of the Journalism and Media Studies Department

Amy Jordan Joins the SC&I Faculty as Professor

Learn more about the Journalism and Media Studies Department at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.