Personal Statement

Gina Gayle – Doctoral Candidate

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
Syracuse University

I am not the traditional student, nor have I been a traditional photojournalist. It took me six years
to complete my undergraduate degree by working full-time the last three years. I returned to the
Ph.D. program at the Newhouse School after a career in journalism and higher education. When
I was looking at doctoral programs to apply to Newhouse had many interesting programs
including the stellar and highly respected one in photojournalism. When I met with the
professors during the interview process, each and every time I mentioned an area of interest, they
did not dismiss it or encourage me to narrow my focus, the people in the interview would
mention who at Newhouse could help me with a particular interest.

Coming from the practitioner side of media and communications, theory and methodology was
new to me. I was both enthralled and perplexed by the ways of doing quantitative and qualitative
research. Those first methodology classes under the careful guidance of Dr. Carol Liebler
proved for a strong foundation to allow me the ability to use different research methods. My first
group project in quantitative methods became the basis for all of my other research interests in
news media credibility. The final project was accepted at the AEJMC 2017 conference winning
the Best Student Paper for the Visual Communications Division and the Kappa Tau
Alpha, National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication. It was Dr. Liebler who
introduced me to ethnography as a research method and encouraged me to take the advanced
seminar in Ethnography from Dr. Gretchen Purser in the Maxwell School of Citizen and Public
Affairs. I discovered that ethnography was closest to journalism and could be of great use in
visual research.

Theory was harder for me to embrace as I never formally studied journalism or photography in
college, I am self-taught. So, I did not know about news, communications and photography
theories and it was difficult for me to grasp that not all journalists or journalism companies were
as credulous as I was (explain and expand here). The Critical and Cultural Studies class with
Dr. Anne Osborne allowed me to better understand theories of newsrooms where I became
interested in political economy theories.

TO BE CONTINUED