UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State faculty member Cory Barker, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Film Production and Media Studies, made the most of a three-day conference in Los Angeles.
The 2025 Media Educators Conference hosted by the Television Academy Foundation allowed Barker to make connections with educators from across the nation and strengthen his relationships in the entertainment industry.
Panels during the event focused on Hollywood’s experiments with artificial intelligence, emergent career opportunities in the creator economy and efforts to tell socially responsible yet entertaining stories about climate change. Featured speakers included Meg Marinis, showrunner of "Grey’s Anatomy," and Brian Flanagan and Jacob Moncrief, executives from leading internet-first studio Mythical. Conference participants also visited Netflix’s offices for a chat with comedy development executives and a set tour.
This fall, Barker is teaching a variety of courses, including film history, film theory, and media and democracy. His reality television course, running again next spring, teaches students about the history and significance of the genre by placing them into RTV-style challenges and scenarios. One of the conference’s panelists, a reality TV editor, is slated to visit with students to discuss how they shape hours of footage into compelling narratives.
Barker’s research focuses on media industry convergences, particularly legacy media institutions’ use of “new” technology in production, promotion and distribution strategies.
His book "Social TV: Multi-Screen Content and Ephemeral Culture" reveals how the U.S. television industry promised — and failed to deliver — a social media revolution in the 2010s. The book was honored with the Outstanding Book Award from the Media Industries Studies Interest Group at the 2023 Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference.
Prior to Penn State, Barker was a tenured faculty member in Bradley University’s Department of Communication. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Communication & Culture at Indiana University.