Bethune-Cookman University Professor Writes Chapter in Major Media Ethics Book

B-CU Professor Dr. Salvador R. Victor is a contributing author to the Routledge Handbook of Mass Media Ethics that was published in April 2020 by Routledge.

The popular handbook provides an exploration of thinking on media ethics, including the ethics of news sources, social media, the roots of law in ethics, and documentary film. It is considered to be the leading media ethics academic publication worldwide for mass communications graduate and undergraduate students and their professors. It also is used as a resource tool for advertising, journalism, and mass media professionals.

Dr. Victor wrote one of the 33 chapters in the 534-page Second Edition and is the only scholar from an HBCU. The other contributors include faculty from Florida State University, Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, University of Colorado, University of Illinois-Urbana, University of Maryland, University of Pennsylvania, University of South Florida, University of Texas-Austin and University of Virginia.

Dr. Victor’s chapter, titled “Exploring Latin American Advertising Ethics: Legislation and Self-Regulation”, analyzes the development of media and advertising in Latin America. Twenty countries in the region are examined in respect to their compliance with the universal moral values of human dignity and social responsibility. He interrogates the complex and varied political, economic, cultural, and social discourses that define the nation-states in the face of media platforms that transcend, obviate and obliterate concepts of borders and boundaries.

In addition to teaching in the Department of Mass Communications, Dr. Salvador R. Victor serves both as Program Director for the concentration in Public Relations and Advertising and advisor to the student organization VISION, an affiliate of the Volusia/Flagler Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association of which he is a member of the board of directors. He also directs the department’s Mass and Social Media Research Lab and through that entity has mentored students to present their scholarship at the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference for several years.

“Dr. Victor is a leading, influential scholar of ethical issues and challenges for the advertising field and has been at the forefront of creating new knowledge as well as updating traditional approaches,” said Dr. Elsie Wanjohi, chair of the Department of Mass Communications. “His research presents important theoretical and philosophical insights that not only are important in the classroom but also to industry practitioners.

“Importantly, Dr. Victor brings a global perspective to his scholarship that takes into account how new and emerging technologies and platforms, including social media, are creating unprecedented opportunities and dilemmas for public relations and advertising students, professors and professionals,” she said.

“Everything from tweets to blogs to chatbots are disrupting and upending traditional ideas and assumptions and his important essay in the Handbook helps to sharpen our focus and understanding of this dynamic terrain that we are moving through,” Dr. Wanjohi added. “Dr. Victor’s work reminds us that we are all perpetual students with a commitment to lifelong learning.”

Dr. Victor joined the B-CU faculty in 2012 after receiving his PhD in communications and media at the University of Illinois where he taught courses in public relations and advertising and co-taught for 10 years the Advertising in Emerging Markets study abroad course. He also earned an M.S. in Advertising and the M.S. in International Business. Previously, taught marketing at the Pontificia Universidad in the Dominican Republic, following a professional career as marketing director for a pharmaceutical company and an account executive with the Leo Burnett advertising agency.