Dr. Mark Poepsel
Associate Professor
Office Phone: (618) 650-2237
Email: mpoepse@siue.edu
Education
Ph.D. University of Missouri-Columbia
M.A. University of Arizona
B.A. University of Missouri-Columbia
About
Mark, along with wife, Gaby, and son, Sam, have lived in Edwardsville for more than a decade. SIUE promoted him to full professor in the summer of 2026. Mark teaches various media writing courses, Media Management (with an entrepreneurship focus), Sports Journalism, Cultural Studies, and occasionally Graduate Research Methods.
Mark grew up in Washington, Missouri. He graduated from St. Francis Borgia Regional High School in 1998. He earned a Journalism degree with a focus on broadcasting as well as a BA in English (Spanish minor) from Mizzou in 2002. Mark was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa, Kappa Tau Alpha, and Omicron Delta Kappa honorary societies.
Dr. Poepsel then worked as a television reporter in the Quad Cities (KWQC) and later in Tucson, Arizona (KOLD). He completed his master’s degree in Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona in 2007 before continuing on to earn his Ph.D. back at Mizzou in 2011.
Mark is a campus leader in developing open educational resources (OER) and helps to manage SIUE’s faculty OER incentive program. He has authored two OER textbooks in the field of Mass Communication and has contributed to a handful of other OER projects. One of the Mass Comm. textbooks authored by Dr. Poepsel is The OER Guide to Media Writing, which was funded by a generous grant from the Illinois SCOERs program, administered by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois.
Dr. Poepsel’s research focuses on the history of radio as well as engagement journalism. He has also published papers applying critical feminist theory to journalism praxis.
Research Interests
Participatory Journalism; Media Literacy; Transparency and Objectivity; Community Media; Journalism Innovation; News Credibility
Selected Research
Peer-Reviewed Journals
Brannock Cox, J., & Poepsel, M. A. (2020). Deep participation in underserved communities: A quantitative analysis of Hearken’s model for engagement journalism. Journalism Practice, 14(5), 537-555. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2020.1731321
Gerard, M., & Poepsel, M. (2019). Black Widow: Female Representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Polymath: An Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Journal, 8(2), 27-53.
Hellmueller, L., Vos, T. P., & Poepsel, M. A. (2013). Shifting journalistic capital? Transparency and objectivity in the twenty-first century. Journalism Studies, 14(3), 287-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2012.697686
Ashley, S., Poepsel, M., & Willis, E. (2010). Media literacy and news credibility: Does knowledge of media ownership increase skepticism in news consumers?. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 2(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.23860/jmle-2-1-3
Open Access Books
Poepsel, M. (2018). Media, society, culture and you: An introductory mass communication text. Rebus Community.
