In August, thousands will travel to San Francisco for the annual Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference. Among those attending is School of Communication’s Summer Harlow.

Harlow will be honored at AEJMC for her dissertation, Liberation Technology? Toward an Understanding of the Re-appropriation of Social Media for Emancipatory Uses among Alternative Media Projects in El Salvador. She has been selected as this year’s AEJMC Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award, which provides recognition for the best Ph.D. dissertation in the field of mass communication research excellence.

The award began in 1984 and has honored the top journalism academics across the country.

Harlow will be presenting four papers at AEJMC, two of which have won awards. Her paper “Framing #Ferguson: A comparative analysis of media tweets in the U.S., U.K., Spain, and France,” was awarded 2nd place for Top Faculty Paper Award in the Minorities and Communication Division. Her paper “Liberation Technology? Understanding a Community Radio Station’s Social Media Use in El Salvador,” took 3rd place in the International Division as well.

“I am beyond thrilled,” she said. “I’m still in shock, and humbled and grateful to receive such recognition. What a way to celebrate the end of my first year as a professor!

This award is named for pioneering journalism and mass communication educators Ralph O. Nafziger and David Manning White, who donated the royalties from their book Introduction to Mass Communication Research to fund the award.

The award recognizes and encourages outstanding dissertation research in journalism and mass communication. Michael Salwen’s name was added to the award in 2008. Salwen, who died in 2007, was a co-author of “An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research”, the royalties of which now help fund this award.