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The Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication hosted its second Reaching Audiences Conference April 7-8, 2015, with the focus on four key areas: media management, media economics, big data and media strategies.

Kent Wilkinson, Ph.D., and the Thomas Jay Harris Regents Professor in Hispanic and International Communication and one of the organizers of the conference, said that the two main objectives were to bring academic researchers and industry professionals together to discuss current topics in media, and to include Texas Tech students and faculty in the conversations.

“The conference's two central themes are critical in today's media environment where trends and conditions change quickly,” Wilkinson said. “This is the situation students will be facing when they enter the industry, so the conference provides an excellent opportunity for them to learn more and connect with insiders.”

Erik Bucy, Ph.D., the Marshall and Sharleen Formby Regents Professor of Strategic Communication and co-organizer of the conference, said that Reaching Audiences also seeks to shed light on the emerging area of research and practice in Big Data.

“Big Data are beginning to define certain media-related events, such as social media responses to presidential debates, trending topics in the news, and the popularity of new movie releases,” Bucy said. “But surprisingly few people who talk about Big Data really know what it consists of and how to leverage large volumes of user-generated information to understand media-related dynamics.”

The first day of the conference was centered on the theme of Media Management and Media Economics. Sessions included an academic panel discussion about trends and opportunities in media management, a local industry panel discussion of perspectives on management in Lubbock’s growing market, a panel discussion on media entrepreneurship, and a workshop on Big Data analytics.

The local industry panel featured prominent voices in the media from around Lubbock, such as Terry Greenberg of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Todd Knowlton of Smooth Fusion, Pam Sharpe of the Price Group, and Joel West of KAMC-TV/KLBK-TV.

Reaching Audiences included the Thomas Jay Harris Plenary Address, which was given by Greg Lowe, Ph.D., and a professor at the University of Tampere, Finland. Lowe presented a lecture titled, “The Collaborative Challenge: Connecting Academe and Industry for Mutually Beneficial Ends.”

In addition to speakers from outside the university, Wilkinson noted that the conference also featured some of CoMC’s own “in-house experts,” including Todd Chambers, associate dean for undergraduate affairs, Geoffrey Graybeal, assistant professor of media strategies, and Maria Elena Gutierrez Renteria, visiting professor in the Thomas Jay Harris Institute for Hispanic and International Communication.

One of the highlights of the conference was the Cathryn Anne Hansen Buesseler Lecture, which was given by W. Russell Neuman, Ph.D., a professor of media technology in the Educational Communication and Technology program at New York University. Neuman spoke on “The Digital Difference: How Technology and Economics Interact in Media Evolution.”

“I’ve enjoyed the informal conversations, offline,” Neuman said. “All of us have PowerPoint slides and do our talks, but the most important thing is to keep the presentation short enough, so that you can interact. Most of the time, there’s someone in the audience who knows more about the topic you’ve been talking about than you do. Drawing those people out and getting the conversation going is important.”

The second day of the conference focused on the theme of Big Data and Media Strategy. Sessions were centered on the topics of how industry and higher education institutions will increasingly depend on Big Data and how to assess the conceptual and applied utility of Big Data insights.

Bucy said that the discussion panels were meant to provide an opportune setting for starting a dialog between industry and academic researchers. He explained that CoMC’s broader aim with Reaching Audiences is to “build bridges between these two worlds.”

Josh Pasek, Ph.D., an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, led one of the sessions on Big Data. He said that he has been studying how data collected from social media relates to data collected from individuals in their everyday lives.

Pasek said, “The work that I’ve been doing has been trying to figure out how traditionally we understood society through things like surveys or experiments, and now increasingly, a lot of companies and a lot of social scientists are starting to take this view that maybe we can use trace data off of social media to help society as a whole.”

Wilkinson said that in his opinion, one of the most interesting parts of the conference was the panel discussion that focused specifically on media in Lubbock.

“I think it is really good for the people from outside of this region to hear about the conditions here and to be able to compare what they know about media markets in their own cities or countries with what’s going on in Lubbock and to have an idea of what Lubbock and the South Plains is about,” Wilkinson said. mc

(Rachel Blevins is a sophomore journalism major from Mineral Wells, Texas. Jacob Copple is the Coordinator for Photo & Video from Lubbock. Jay Crain is a senior electronic media and communications major from De Kalb, Texas. Eli Ramirez is a freshman electronic media and communications major from Donna, Texas.)