In order to understand how organizations adapt and respond to new technology, Assistant Professor Valerie Belair-Gagnon examines the environment in which media organizations and technology intersect. For example, as part of a larger project on the role of technologists in media organizations, she explored the institutional logics of intrapreneurial units or groups within organizations that are designated to foster organizational innovation. “This study illustrates the shaping influence of competing institutional logics and their negotiation in the development, deployment, and success or failure of intrapreneurial activities within organizations,” she wrote.
Belair-Gagnon is also examining how technologically-oriented actors in newsrooms are legitimating their work and coordinating within news organizations to understand how the business of journalism is changing the news media industry and its role.
And with colleagues at OsloMet, Kristiana University and Wisconsin-Madison, she was awarded a Norwegian Research Council Grant titled SCAM (Source Criticism and Mediated Disinformation) which looks at how journalists and other media workers can develop their approaches to digital opportunities and challenges, including their principles and practices for knowing what is true or likely untrue. Part of this project is exploring how news and platform companies employ technology in relation to practices of fact-checking and source criticism.