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Michael Porter
Associate Professor
William T. Kemper Fellow for Excellence in Teaching
Director of Comm 4940 Internships
education: PhD, University of Iowa (1975)
email: PorterMJ@missouri.edu
office: 210B Switzler Hall
phone: 573-882-0525

Dr. Michael Porter's research interests focus within the realm of media literacy. He has explored the need to develop a common language so people can speak intelligently about television programming. His research has focused on the narrative structure of primetime television programs. He began by applying Christian Metz's Grande Syntagmatique to selected television programs (including "Lou Grant" and "Hill Street Blues") and has recently been interested in looking at the narrative structure of television's newest genre, reality narratives. He has also examined issues of representation—primarily representation of men in the media. This research focuses on use of self-disclosure of male sitcom characters. His research has been published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Southern Speech Communication Journal, Journal of Sex Roles, Journal of Popular Film and Television, and more.

Michael's contributions to the university and the discipline have been recognized by many awards, but it is for his outstanding teaching that Michael is best known. He was the first recipient of NCA's Outstanding Teaching Award from the Mass Communication Division (1998), and he has won MU's prestigious William T. Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997 and the ultra-prestigious Maxine Christopher Shutz Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2002.

Frequently Taught Courses
Com 2100   Media Communication in Society 
Com 4618 TV Program Analysis & Criticism
Com 8150 Seminar in TV Criticism

Research Interests
Media literacy
Narrative structure of television programs
Representation of men in television sitcoms

Selected Recent Publications
Porter, M. J. (2003). Teaching Television Criticism. In M. Murray & Roy L. Moore (Eds.), Mass Communication Education (pp. 323-334). Ames: Iowa State University Press.

Good, G. E., Porter, M. J., & Dillon, M. G. (2002). When men divulge: Portrayals of men's self-disclosure on prime-time situation comedies. Journal of Sex Roles, 46, 419-427.

Porter, M. J., Larson, D. L., Harthcock, A., & Berg Nellis, K. (2002). Re(de)fining narrative events: Examining television narrative structure. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 30, 23-30.

Porter, M. J. (1998). The structure of television narratives. In L. R. Vande Berg, L. A. Wenner, & B. E. Gronbeck (Eds.), Television Criticism (pp. 140-157). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Porter, M. J. (1994). The function of scenes in television narratives. Creative Screenwriting, 1, 74-116.