Hi, It's Great to meet you
I’m Jessica, a digital journalist by training, academic and educator by profession, and community advocate at heart. Currently based in Lansing, Michigan as a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University’s School of Journalism, I combine my love of storytelling, experience with journalism and non-profits, and embedded approach as a researcher and instructor to explore how we can make the process of storytelling more human.
Whether it’s sociological data, pop culture media, news narratives, or community engagement projects, everything we communicate are just stories we tell each other. It’s my goal as public scholar of journalism and media to make that storytelling process one that heals, rather than one that divides.
When I’m not researching, writing, or teaching, you can find me hiking with my dog, sewing some thrift flips, penning sci-fi short stories, or traveling between my home state of California and my adopted home of the Midwest.
And if—like me—you’re a creative/academic/organizer looking to collaborate with passionate people who refuse to give up on their “change the world” idea, look around, read my latest work, and maybe drop me a line to grab a coffee sometime. I’d love to meet you in the real world.
Jessica Pettengill
What I do
humanizing journalism Practice + media discourse
My area of research blends journalism studies, entertainment media, and the sociology of storytelling into one big tapestry. Storytelling is a process by which we co-create meaning by sharing narratives with one another. Whether it's the interaction between a journalist and an interviewee, the sociological symbolism in movies and music, or the vital infrastructure of community storytelling networks, stories are an integral part of the process becoming more fully human.
Designing embedded research + public scholarship
As a mixed methods researcher, I value approaches to research that acknowledge the creation of knowledge as a collaborative and liberatory act. I specialize in methods that situate communities and academics as co-researchers and foreground agency and pragmatism. Some of these methodologies include participatory action research, critical quantitative approaches, participant observation, and artistic qualitative methods.
Rethinking journalism education + communities of practice
The classroom is another place where we co-create knowledge. Journalism education occupies a unique space in secondary education, where our subject matter involves not just skills and theory, but subjects that young journalists care about deeply outside of the classroom. In this way, the journalism classroom is a community of practice that integrates identity, community, meaning, and practice by role playing a real-world newsroom.
integrating digital interactivity + narrative media
Creativity, empathy, and innovation are at the heart of everything I do. Before my career as an academic, I helped create engaging digital stories about communities by experimenting with how we tell those stories. Narratives transport or transform people, and so the stories I create, whether it was for a news station, museum, or non-profit organization, take these ideas of transportation and transformation into account by using the technology that helps us to experience those stories.