Tavares, T. (2026, August 5-8). “It’s only my job to sell the product”: Practitioner ethics across controversial product categories [Conference Presentation]. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, New Orleans, LA, United States.
This study examines how advertising professionals navigate ethical challenges, particularly when promoting controversial products like alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. Drawing on Drumwright and Murphy’s concepts of Moral Myopia, Moral Muteness, and Moral Imagination, it explores how the nature of the product being advertised may shape practitioners’ ethical awareness and identifies patterns in how professionals perceive and practice ethics across industries.
How online support communities navigate and counteract gambling advertisements
Tavares, T. (2025, August 7-10). “Sad to say I have a problem”: How online support communities navigate and counteract gambling advertisements [Conference Presentation]. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA, United States.
* Top Student Paper Award, Advertising Division
Gambling advertisements are hard to miss, targeting users with promises of winning big and turning their lives around. However, what happens when these ads reach individuals grappling with gambling addiction? This study sheds light on the harm caused by gambling ads through the voices of those most affected. By analyzing discussions on Reddit—a platform known for its anonymity and peer-driven support—this research delves into the lived experiences of individuals in the subreddits r/ProblemGambling and r/GamblingAddiction and explores how they perceive, respond to, and cope with exposure to gambling ads. Guided by Optimal Matching Theory, the study examines how social support within these communities meets users' emotional and informational needs, helping them resist advertising triggers and maintain their commitment to recovery.
Tavares, T., Hackett, E., Jochims, A., & Perreault, G. P. (2025). The Problem of Pain: How Journalism Turns to Altruism to Manage Suffering. Journalism and Media, 6(3), 140.
Journalists are on the front lines in managing the most difficult experiences of this world: loss and loneliness, sorrow and sadness. As part of their professional practice in the field, journalists often take on their share of that pain. How do they manage this pain? As a conceptual article, this manuscript draws from theoretical frameworks and synthesizes scholarship to explore how altruism helps journalists manage pain in their profession. We argue that suffering is an essential part of the human experience and journalists—by virtue of their profession—perhaps experience more of it than many professions. That said, journalism works at its best when journalists manifest altruism out of that suffering, offering a cluster of joyful expressions from this pain. When journalists do, this altruism works in a two-fold manner: it eases the suffering of others and helps journalists manage their own.
Ficara, G., Smith, G., Hackett, E., Tavares, T., Hwang, J. Y., Jochims, A., Crawford, M., Kananovich, V., & Perreault, G. P. (2025). Appalachia Strong: Joy in Reporting Appalachian Recovery from Hurricane Helene. Journalism Practice, 1–22.
This study examines how journalists capture joy in their community during the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in 2024. Building on the framework of joy as a news value (Parks, 2021) through a novel three-step interpretive methodology: a visual analysis of photos (n = 37), long-form interviews and photo elicitation with nine Appalachian journalists, participants found joy within the communities they work through direct witness and participation of the community shown during tragedy by locals affected.
Hackett, E., Tavares, T., & Perreault, G. P. (2025). Memorializing women journalists: Obituaries on women journalists' role performance. Journalism Research, 8(2), 207–226.
Obituaries, though seemingly straightforward, hold deep reflections on the role of women journalists. Through the lens of metajournalistic discourse, this study explores obituaries of women journalists (n=1064) from the United States. The analysis finds that the memorialization of women journalists reflects on their role as advocates in and outside of the newsroom. In doing so, they not only redefine their profession but also work to champion societal advancement and gender equality.