Communication

Terry Britt

Title: Assistant Professor, Mass Communication
Department: Communication
Building: CAS 220
Email: tbritt@uttyler.edu

Biography

Dr. Terry L. Britt returned to The University of Texas at Tyler as a faculty member in fall 2019 after having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 2013. He subsequently earned his master’s degree in journalism from the UT Austin in 2015 and was a teaching fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism, where he earned his Ph.D. in December 2018.

His research area incorporates media sociology, new media studies and psychology in examining cognitive, emotive and sociological processes of engagement with archival media content, including news, advertising and entertainment media. This research focuses upon the role of new media and digitization of news archives in connecting to autobiographical and collective memory, mediated concepts of time and space, and the challenges of preserving the mediated past for future generations. Dr. Britt employs both qualitative and quantitative research methods, the latter including psychophysiology and neuroscience. Theories and concepts utilized in this research include collective memory, episodic and autobiographical memory, telepresence, social identity theory, self-perception, gatekeeping as well as uses and gratifications.

Prior to his graduate schoolwork, Dr. Britt spent nearly 30 years – beginning in 1980 at the age of 14 — in print and digital journalism, mainly working with weekly and small daily news organizations in Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. He currently serves as the department coordinator for the sports communication minor and currently serves as interim faculty adviser for the Patriot Talon student newspaper and Talon Student Media.

Refereed Publications

Britt, T. (2017). Home computing’s halcyon days: Discourse frames in computer magazines in the mid-1980s. The Journal of Magazine Media (under revision for publication February 2018).

Britt, T. The news of your youth: Memory and subjective experience of time during major news events. #ISOJ, Vol. 7 (1), spring 2017.

Britt, T. Back and forth in time: Online news archives and presence as transportation. #ISOJ, Vol. 5 (1), spring 2015.

Presentations and Panels

Britt, T. (2020, March) Mediated temporal consciousness: Memory and concepts of time through engagement with online news archives. Virtual presentation at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Southeast Colloquium, University of Memphis (host).

Britt, T. (2017, April). And now…a few words about the news and memory. Presentation at the 18th Annual International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin, Texas.
Panel member – International Symposium on Online Journalism 2017, Austin, Texas, April 20-22, 2017: “Diving deep into the layers of journalism, the journalism practice and its audiences.”

Britt, T. (2016, October). Digital media archives as collective memory. Presentation at Dodging the Memory Hole 2016, University of California at Los Angeles.

Britt, T. (2016, August). Home computing’s halcyon days: Discourse frames in computer magazines in the mid-1980s. Paper presented at the annual conference of AEJMC, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Panel member – AEJMC 2016 Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Aug. 4–7, 2016, Magazine Division: “Magazines and technology across the eras: Computing, gaming, and digitization.”

Britt, T. (2015, April). Back and forth in time: Online news archives and presence as transportation. Paper presented at the 16th Annual International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin, Texas.

Panel member – International Symposium on Online Journalism 2015, Austin, Texas, April 16–8, 2015: “Influence, consumption, and participation: Paths to news engagement.”

Britt, T. (2015, May) Another time, another place: Archival media content as constructor of temporal consciousness and collective memory. Master’s thesis on file at the UT Austin.

Britt, T. (2014, August). Bringing back the past: New media and archived media content providers. Paper presented at the annual conference of AEJMC, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Britt, T. (2013, April). Sounds of a new frontier: Music journalism in the digital age. Paper presented at the annual conference of Alpha Chi Honor Society, Nashville, Tennessee.