News

UMaine professor headed to Bosnia on Fulbright

By Katrina Freedman

Posted on Jan. 30, 2003, at 12:00 a.m.

Shannon Martin, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Maine, has received a Fulbright Scholar Award for teaching and research at the University of Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Fulbright Scholar Program was founded by the U.S. Congress in 1946, and focuses on strengthening U.S. relationships with other countries. Martin will spend the next five months teaching and conducting research in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where state-controlled media has recently changed to privately owned media.

“I’m planning to do research on the media coverage of the war,” Martin said.

Her research will range from conducting interviews with journalists to monitoring the news in print and broadcast media. She also will determine how journalists seek out their sources and databases, and why they favor certain methods.

“It seems to me that what is happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina is people there are less confident of journalists as conduits,” Martin said. “They are accustomed to the government dicta coming through the state-controlled media. And the media are not yet confident enough to challenge the government consistently.”

This is Martin’s second trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina. During her trip in 2000, she trained journalists on how to use Internet sources.

“What I did in the summer was train reporters,” Martin said. “I was training them on good use of the Internet. Not that they didn’t know how [to use the Internet], but they weren’t fully trained on western government sites or search engines like Google.”

This time around, Martin will be teaching journalists things like interviewing skills, spreadsheet software, principles of reporting and western journalism practice ethics.

“People don’t realize that we are pretty spoiled here,” Martin said. “The ease which we gain resource access has not been a given there from being under siege.”

According to Martin, the journalism practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina are quite different from those in the United States.

“There is no real sense of competitiveness among journalists there because before, they were not in an environment to compete between media,” Martin said.

Martin said she expects that she will learn some new things about journalism while teaching.

“Their perspectives are different, and I think that might be useful for us, as the media in the United States is going through many changes,” Martin said.

During her stay in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Martin said she would also like to further build professional relationships with the journalists there, along with her work to help with the transition from government-controlled to privately owned media.

“I hope to come back with some new friendships and scholarly relationships,” Martin said.

Martin will be leaving for Bosnia-Herzegovina this month and returning in mid-June.

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