This spring, Dr. Yayu Feng collaborated with Kevin Lynch, a junior majoring in journalism and digital media arts, on a journalism ethics research project that was recently accepted for presentation at the national convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the largest national conference in the field of journalism and mass communication. They will present the paper in New Orleans this August.

Kevin Lynch, a journalism and Digital Media Arts student with Dr. Yayu Feng

Together, they examined national news coverage of a high-profile suicide case linked to ChatGPT through the lens of anthropomorphism—the tendency to attribute human characteristics to nonhuman technologies. Their research explored how AI tools were portrayed in news coverage, considered the ethical implications of these patterns, and offered normative suggestions for future journalistic discourse involving AI to avoid misrepresenting it as something it is not: human.

The collaboration grew out of Dr. Feng’s journalism ethics capstone course. Last fall, Lynch took the class, which includes a long-standing final project asking students to analyze an ethical issue in journalism through a case study selected from a regularly updated list of contemporary cases. Lynch’s final paper was more than a strong assignment; it demonstrated a clear comfort with research and an insightful analysis of a complicated issue. Recognizing his research potential, Dr. Feng reached out to see if he is interested in trying out a research project. That conversation turned into this collaboration.

It is not common to see undergraduate-led research at this national conference, making the project an especially meaningful accomplishment for Lynch. He is also a prolific student journalist at The Crest, our student-run news organization, where he will serve as Managing Editor next year. Throughout the project, Lynch brought the same curiosity, care, and willingness to ask difficult questions that characterize strong and responsible journalism. The project reflects how classroom discussions about journalism ethics can grow into collaborative research, and both Feng and Lynch look forward to bringing the work into conversation with scholars and journalists from across the country at the conference later this summer.