About
Short story
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon is Associate Professor and Cowles Fellow in Media Management at the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication. She has been researching and teaching in the areas of journalism studies, media innovation and social media engagement, well-being at work. She is the author of The Paradox of Connection (2024, Illinois University Press, with Diana Bossio, Holton and Logan Molyneux), Happiness in Journalism (2023, Routledge, edited with Holton, Mark Deuze and Claudia Mellado), Journalism Research that Matters (2021, Oxford University Press, edited with Nikki Usher), and Social Media at BBC News (2015, Routledge). Past affiliations included Yale Information Society Project and Oslo Metropolitan University. She also worked in communications in corporate and non-profit environments.
Longer story
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon is Associate Professor and Cowles Fellow in Media Management at the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication. She also is a McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota and visiting researcher at the Oslo Metropolitan University Department of Journalism and Media. From 2017-2022 she was Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center based at the Hubbard School.
Trained in sociologist and as a journalism studies scholar, she has been researching and teaching journalism and the business of news, digital and social media, and qualitative methods at the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication since 2016. Her research interests include: 1) journalism, professions, knowledge production and identity; 2) digital labor and engagement; 3) business and future of journalism; and 4) well-being and happiness at work.
She is the author of The Paradox of Connection (2024, Illinois University Press, with Diana Bossio, Holton and Logan Molyneux), Happiness in Journalism (2023, Routledge, edited with Holton, Mark Deuze and Claudia Mellado), Journalism Research that Matters (2021, Oxford University Press, edited with Nikki Usher), and Social Media at BBC News (2015, Routledge).
Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, she was executive director and research scholar at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and fellow at Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. She also worked in communications in corporate and non-profit environments. She earned her BA (McGill), MSc (Université de Montréal), and PhD (City, University of London) in Sociology.
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