Patrick Johnson

I'm Patrick Johnson, a Ph.D. student in the SJMC. I come from nearly a decade of teaching high school journalism and English, and a decade of being an adjunct in journalism and media studies at Marquette University (where I received both my bachelor's and master's degrees). While I'm just now arriving at Iowa, I've always believed myself to be a Hawkeye. For context, when I was deciding where to go for undergrad, I was coming to the Hawkeye state and going to be wearing the black and gold. It was the day before deposits were due when the bells literally rang and I made my decision to trade black for blue and head to Marquette (long-story-short, my grandma raised me and her favorite movie was Wizard of Oz. When I toured Marquette's campus right before I had to write the check for my freshman year, the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" played from the bell tower... and I was on my way to the journalism building). So, after spending lots of time at Iowa with my friends who went to Iowa and my best friend also being an Iowa grad, it is finally now my home. When it comes to research, I'm interested in news literacy, ethics, and the journalism industry and the training toward becoming a journalist; as well as political communication (surrounding news and values). I also am tremendously interested in how the journalism industry has evolved the concepts of objectivity, bias, and truth-telling as a result of both the Fake News presidency and the rise in disinformation and misinformation sharing. And then there are my random side interests that include horror films, media and sex, and the coverage of major events in America's sexual health history. In my free time I probably can be found reading random works of narrative nonfiction, watching way too many horror films (or rewatching countless Disney and Marvel movies), being inundated with the news, making fun of and commentary about politics, consuming far too much pop culture on social media, getting way too involved in college football and basketball, and bouncing around and singing to whatever song ends up playing on my Spotify (which usually is a healthy dose of today's top hits, classic rock, heavy metal, and show tunes).