Jelle Mast

Jelle Mast holds a PhD in Communication Sciences (University of Antwerp, 2011) and works as an Assistant Professor of Journalism (Studies) in the Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies. He is Chair of the Brussels Institute for Journalism Studies (BIJU) and teaches introductory courses to Journalism Studies, Documentary Studies, and Media Structures.

His research is typically located at the intersection of visual communication, journalism practice, and professional ethics. Current research interests include visual gatekeeping and user-generated imagery in mainstream news media; journalism and terrorism; metajournalistic discourse; and genre hybridization in journalism and screen documentary.

Jelle Mast has presented his work, amongst others, at the (bi-)annual conferences of the International Communication Association (ICA), the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), the Association for the Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), Visible Evidence, and the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA). He has published, as author or co-author, in various international peer-reviewed journals including Media, Culture & Society, International Journal of Communication, Digital Journalism, Journalism Practice, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Communication Gazette, and Sociology Compass, and co-edited special issues of Journalism and Discourse, Context and Media.

Jelle Mast is currently Chair of the Visual Communication Studies Division of the International Communication Association (ICA), the largest organization in the discipline. Previously, he served as the VCS Division's secretary (2010-2012) and Vice-Chair (2017-2019). In 2015, he stayed at the School of Journalism of the University of Arizona in Tucson, US, as a visiting (research) scholar in the US Department of State’s Exchange Visitor Program. He is also still an affiliate member of the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi) at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, where he obtained his PhD in 2011 with a doctoral dissertation entitled Reality TV as Popular Hybrid Documentary: Questions of Genre Hybridization, Documentary Values and Ethics.