Rachel R. Mourão (PhD, The University of Texas at Austin) is an associate professor and graduate director in the Department of Journalism and Media Management at the University of Miami. She studies how news narratives about politics, especially social movements and their backlash counterparts, are constructed and consumed in Brazil and the United States. Her goal is to understand how journalism can improve in an era of social inequality, declining media trust, and fragmented political communication.
Dr. Mourão’s scholarship is guided by three questions:
1) How is political news, primarily related to protests, shaped by various internal and external influences?
2) How do media fragmentation and technological disruption challenge the creation and consumption of political news?
3) What role do journalism research and practice play in addressing complex societal issues in interdisciplinary projects?
This work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and awarded multiple times by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the International Communication Association (ICA).
Dr. Mourão is a former reporter and teaches classes on social media, media literacy, media theory, and quantitative methods.
Featured Publications
Mourão, R.R., Brown D.K. (2024). When the right riots: How ideology, protest tolerance, authoritarianism and news consumption affect perceptions of the US Capitol Insurrection. Mass Communication and Society, online first.
Mourão, R. R. (2023). When the Right Protests: How Journalists Cover Conservative Movements. Journalism Practice, 17(6), 1232-1249.
Mourão, R.R. & Brown, D. (2022). Black Lives Matter Coverage: How protest news coverage and attitudinal change affect social media outcomes. Digital Journalism 10(4), 626-646.
Mourão, R.R., Brown, D.K., & Sylvie, G. (2021). Framing Ferguson: the interplay of advocacy and journalistic frames in local and national newspaper coverage of Michael Brown. Journalism, 22(2), 320–340
Mourão, R.R. & Chen, W.* (2020). Covering protests on Twitter – The Influences on Brazilian Journalists’ Social Media Portrayals of the 2013 and 2015 Demonstrations. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 25 (2), 260-280.
Mourão, R.R. & Robertson, C. T.* (2019). Fake news as discursive integration: a content analysis of sites that publish false, misleading, hyperpartisan and sensational information. Journalism Studies, 20(14), 2077-2095.
Mourão, R. R. (2019). From mass to elite protests: News Coverage and the Evolution of Anti-Government Demonstrations in Brazil. Mass Communication & Society, 22(1), 49-71.
Grants Received
2022-24 Mott Foundation: Energy Convergence for Off-Grid Amazonian Communities Program. Co-PIs: Emilio Moran (PI), Judy Walgren, Norbert Mueller, Aaron McCright, Maria Claudia Lopez
2020-23 National Science Foundation: GCR – Convergence for Innovative Energy Solutions: Empowering Off-Grid Communities with Sustainable Energy Technologies. Co-PIs: Emilio Moran (PI), Maria Claudia Lopez, Norbert Mueller, Aaron McCright
2018-19 U.S. State Department, Mission Brazil: Michigan-Brazil Multimedia Journalism Program. Co-PIs: Bob Gould, Mike Castellucci, Lucinda Davenport and Judy Walgren
2018-19 U.S. State Department, Chile: Michigan-Chile Investigative Journalism Program. Co-PI: Magdalena Saldaña
Awards
2024 Top Faculty Paper, Community Journalism Interest Group, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
2023 Distinguished Partnership Award for International Community-Engaged Scholarship, Michigan State University
2021 Teacher – Scholar Award (Michigan State University-wide award)
2019 Top reviewer, International Communication Association, Journalism Studies Division
2017 Gene Burd Outstanding Dissertation in Journalism Studies Award, International
Communication Association
Dissertation award, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Mass Communication and Society Division