Dr Linda Jean Kenix received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. After completing her studies, she spent four years braving the Minnesota winters as an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and is now a Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She has over ten years of professional media experience in different aspects of visual communication.
Her research interests have traditionally focused on the representation of marginal groups in mass media, giving specific attention to the agenda-setting role of media in society. Dr Kenix’s work has recently expanded to examine how marginalized groups are utilizing various media, particularly the Internet, as a potential tool for social change. Some of her recent research has been published in such journals as Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Television and New Media, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Mass Communication and Society, and Information, Communication and Society.
While at the University of Oxford, Dr Kenix plans to examine how particular Internet blogs may facilitate, or conversely, hinder the process of social change. Contrary to the widespread conception that blogs are assisting in the creation of a Habermasian online commons, she will spend her time at Oxford examining the possibility that many of the most ‘popular’ political blogs are actually functioning as an inhibitor to deliberative democracy.
