UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A dissertation by a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism earned this year’s Penn State Davis Ethics Award, which annually recognizes the best ethics-related dissertation successfully defended each year in the fields of communication and media.

Joseph Jones, now a visiting assistant professor at West Virginia University’s Reed College of Media, won the award for the dissertation titled, “If It Feeds, It Leads: Eating, Media, Identity, and Ecofeminist Food Journalism.” His project provides an analysis of the meaning-making work of food journalists in the United States, arguing that, at least with the three key food journalism outlets studied, they are the products of a long history of “American liberalism, racism, commercialized media, journalistic ideals, and consumerism.”

Jones draws on discourse analysis, as well as feminist and care ethics to interrogate, literally and figuratively, “what is the media feeding us” and whether food journalism, once it establishes legitimacy, “engender[s] care for those vital systems that nourish and connect us.” Jones offers a normative theory of food journalism, describing what he outlines as an “ecofeminist food journalism” for the future.

“Dr. Jones’ dissertation is a wonderfully written example of making ethics theory integral to any study of the discursive, sociological and consumerist role of media practice,” said Patrick Plaisance, the Don Davis Professor of Ethics at Penn State, who leads the Davis Ethics Award effort.

This is the fourth year for the Davis Award. Previous recipients were Rhema Zlaten of Colorado State University, Philip Todd of Oklahoma University, and Anita Varma of Stanford University. The Davis Award provides a $1,000 honorarium and a fully supported future guest-lecture visit to the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. Jones also will be invited to give a virtual presentation based on his dissertation by the Media Ethics Division at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in August.