Robin Blom
Professor in School of Journalism and Strategic Communication
About Robin Blom
Dr. Robin Blom is a Professor in the School of Journalism and Strategic Communication and an affiliate faculty member in Ball State’s honors college. He also serves as the director of the Unified Research Lab (URL) to facilitate research projects in eye tracking, psycho-physiology, and user experience.
His research focuses on the role of cognitive bias in acceptance of misinformation to better understand why people believe things that are false and do not believe things that are true. Dr. Blom also studies the role of journalists in wrongful conviction cases. He is the co-editor of Teaching race: Struggles, strategies, and scholarship for the mass communication classroom.
Dr. Blom’s “The honors of the Nobel Peace Prize” course has been recognized by Partners in Peace, a collaboration between the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, and the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC). Blom formally accepted this recognition on behalf of Ball State University in a ceremony with Jørgen Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Some of the other courses Dr. Blom has developed include: “Eyewitness misidentification and social injustice,” “Pseudoscience and conspiracy theories,” “Disney storytelling,” and “Disney culture and culture in Disney.” He also teaches courses about media theory, media analytics, and sociology of news.
Professional Experience
- Ball State University: Assistant/Associate Professor/Professor, 2013-present
- Michigan State University: Instructor and Teaching Assistant, 2007-2013
- Point Park University: Teaching Assistant, 2006-2007
Education
- Ph.D., Media & Information Studies, Michigan State University
- M.A., Journalism & Mass Communication, Point Park University
- B.A., Journalism, Hogeschool van Utrecht
Selected Research and Publication
- Blom, R. (2023). Lippmann’s triangular relationship on the crime scene: Pseudo-environments convicting the innocent. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 18(2-3), 141-159.
- Blom, R. (2023). The awkward moment when you agree with news outlets that you normally distrust. Media & Communication, 11(4). Open Access.
- Blom, R., Tait, G. B., Hultquist, G., Cage, I., & Griffin, M. K. (2023). True crime, true representation? Race and injustice narratives in wrongful conviction podcasts. In G. S. Larke-Walsh (Ed.), True crime in American media (pp. 67-82). Routledge.
- Blom, R. (2022). Objectivity as a Post-Truth excuse in dystopian realities. In J. Lynch & C. Rice (Eds.), Responsible journalism in conflicted societies: Trust and public service across new and old divides (pp. 183-197). Routledge.
- Blom, R. (2022). Eyewitness memory in journalistic context: An interdisciplinary research agenda to study post-event misinformation effects. Journalism Practice, 17(9), 1962-1979.
- Blom, R. (2021). Believing false political headlines and discrediting truthful political headlines: The interaction between news source trust and news content expectancy. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 22(3), 821-837.
- Blom, R., & Huang, K.-T. (2021). Eyewitness memory contamination through misleading questions by reporters. Newspaper Research Journal, 42(30), 346-363.
- Blom, R. (2019). The irony at the heart of “fake” news and “alternative” facts. In S. Jimenez Murguía (Ed.), Trumping truth: Essays on the destructive power of “alternative facts, McFarland.
Honors and Awards
-
Partners in Peace, National Collegiate Honors Council, 2024
- Ball Brothers Honors College Faculty Fellow, 2020-2022
- Distinguished Researcher Award, College of Communication, Information, and Media, 2019
- High Technology Award, College of Communication, Information, and Media, 2016
- Martha Rayne Award for Media History Research, Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, 2011