By Amanda Weber -

Julia Hsu is in Seattle on a mission. She is a Fulbright Senior Scholar award recipient, which has allowed her to come to the U.S. for one year to further her research on trauma in journalism. Hsu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radio and TV at National Cheng Chi University, Taipei, Taiwan.

This year, she is based in the UW Department of Communication, researching the teachings of The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and compiling information on the topic for a book she’s writing. She hopes to learn how to better prepare journalists in covering traumatic events.

Hsu’s passion for this subject stems from her time working as a TV journalist for China Television Company. “During that time I always covered traumatic events, such as air crashes, typhoons, earthquakes,” she said. “I needed to interview the victims, which is the last thing I would like to do because it really hurts their feelings.” To be better prepared for her work, Hsu said she began doing research on the topic, getting information from The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

The Dart Center is a global network of journalists, journalism educators and health professionals dedicated to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict and tragedy. The Center’s office at the University of Washington directs academic programs and West Coast activities. The organization also has a regional hub dedicated to the Asia Pacific, from which Hsu began retrieving her research.

During her experience as a TV journalist, Hsu witnessed many times journalists conducting interviews improperly during traumatic events, the outcomes of which would be insulted victims and confused journalists. “If we want to protect victims and help journalists to deal with the information, we need to make them alert of the situation that will be happening in trauma events,” she said.

Hsu says that although a journalist needs to get as much information as they can, they need to understand how to go about it in these situations. “Journalists from other institutes, they were so mean to the victims. They would ask them, “Do you feel bad that several of your family members are dying?” something like that. So, as soon as I became a scholar, I think, I need to help them. I don’t think they try to be mean to them on purpose. They just don’t know how they should behave when they are interviewing the victims.”

It was the Managing Director of Dart Center Asia Pacific, Cait McMahon, with whom Hsu began her research. They began talking at Dart conferences and workshops. Hsu also worked with McMahon on creating Chinese translations of Dart material. In the summer of 2010, Hsu decided she wanted to do more research on the topic overseas. She chose the University of Washington’s Department of Communication as her home base for her plans.

“I choose UW because of Dart West, which is responsible for the curriculums and pedagogies,” Hsu said. “Also, there’s a very deep foundation of research and studies of trauma in journalism here.” Meg Spratt, Associate Director of Academic Programs for Dart, was Hsu’s main contact here while she made her plans from Taiwan. She now serves as Hsu’s sponsor during her Fulbright fellowship.

“She’s such a self-starter and is already far along in her work in journalism in trauma,” Spratt said. Hsu has spent some of her time sitting in on the undergraduate class on advanced reporting taught by Professor Randy Beam. Beam was teaching a reporting suicide module. Next quarter, Hsu will observe Beam’s trauma training course.

Along with her class observations, Hsu also has been busy traveling. Recently, she and Spratt were in Baltimore attending the 27th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

“What we’re doing in Baltimore this week is really getting to know what Dart Center does, and how we do our training, with the goal of what she may be able to take back with her to Taiwan for both her teaching and her professional journalism training,” Spratt said. Hsu will also be in New York to talk to the Dart staff at Columbia University, and in late November, she will take a trip to Australia for more conferences.

With the information she collects, Hsu intends to come away from this fellowship with a clear plan on how to teach journalists in Taiwan how to best work with victims of trauma, and how to best deal with the trauma themselves “without being influenced by those victims, because you sometimes get emotional, upset, or even worse, post-traumatic stress disorder.” Her book on trauma in journalism, which she plans to complete soon after finishing her fellowship, will detail the research she’s done.

She also hopes to have plans on how to educate first-responders and volunteers on informing victims on the role the media will play in traumatic events as those groups are generally the first people to have contact with victims. “They have a close relationship with victims. So if I can teach this idea to first respondents then they will help the victims and tell the victim in advance when they are going to be interviewed by the press,” Hsu said. “So it goes full circle for them. If all of them have the conception of trauma in journalism, no one will get hurt easily.”

Additionally, Hsu is looking at how to focus on disaster management, a development from her original studies. “Nowadays, I’m also looking for how communication research contributes to disasters in interdisciplinary studies.” Using hazard maps as an example, Hsu points out that while they are useful for telling people where to go in the case of a disaster, they are often difficult to understand because of their small size and unclear information. “As a communication scholar it is totally unacceptable, because if we care about people’s cognition, and the message itself and the technology it delivers, we would make a better hazard map for residents and their community,” she said.

As Hsu’s office mate and the person who helped make her goals in coming to the UW a reality, Spratt has confidence that Hsu will get all that she set out for. “I have no doubt that she will be successful in taking some of the things that the Dart Center has developed over the past 12 years and applying them to the journalism and teaching culture in Taiwan,” Spratt said. “I think it’s fascinating to have this collaboration and share experiences from two different cultures, and talk about positive ways to change journalism in entirely different parts of the world.”