Dr. Dana Chinn

Biography

Dana Chinn has pioneered interdisciplinary analytic approaches throughout her varied career in the media industry and academia, and enjoys making math and data accessible for numbers-phobic students and journalists. Chinn's work explores how data can be used to hold people and institutions accountable, with a focus on data journalism courses examining fatal shootings by law enforcement officers using the Washington Post Fatal Force database. Chinn is dedicated to improving the accuracy and accessibility of government datasets, advocating for better practices in open data measurement, especially within Los Angeles County. As the director of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project, she has led grant-funded media metrics research projects and has consulted for news organizations and nonprofits on the application of e-commerce metrics in media. She has developed several interdisciplinary programs at USC, including the Mobile News Incubator, and has mentored many students as the faculty adviser for the USC student chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. Chinn has a background in management consulting and holds an undergraduate degree in journalism and an MBA from USC.

Research Interests

Courses