School of Communication doctoral student Svitlana Jaroszynski recently had her research paper Defending the Right to Know: Foreign Agent Registration Act and Its Place in the System of Broadcast Media Regulation accepted for the 2019 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) convention. The BEA is a prestigious international academic media organization and their annual convention produces over 250 sessions focused on networking, research, and hands-on workshops.

At the convention, Jaroszynski’s paper won first place in the debut paper category of the Law and Policy Division. The study looks at the history of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) and its current application to broadcast media, according to the paper’s abstract. FARA was adopted in 1938 as an anti-propaganda law but changed over time to address political activities rooted in the economic interests of foreign countries. The 2017 case of statute enforcement to T&R Productions, an agent representing Russian media outlet RT America, attracts particular attention in view of the on-going investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. The study uses the political economy of media as its research methodology.

Svitlana Jaroszynski is a doctoral student at the School of Communication. Her research areas include media regulation in new democracies, political rhetoric, and communication in Eastern European immigrant communities. Her dissertation will explore the application of the Law on Language to the media in Ukraine.