Editor-in-Chief
100 Days in Appalachia
Dana Coester is a professor at the WVU College of Creative Arts and Media and creative director for the College’s Media Innovation Center. She is the founder of the Edward R. Murrow award winning digital media outlet 100 Days in Appalachia and the Rural Digital Resilience Project, which advances public understanding of the unique risks America’s rural community members face online.
Coester’s work has long focused on technology and community media with special interests in audience building and digital infrastructure for sustaining local journalism. Her research and creative work have included experiments in immersive documentary storytelling, and she recently produced the film Raised by Wolves, a documentary on the risks to young people in social media and online gaming. Her research and educational programming cultivates digital entrepreneurship and opportunity for rural youth, while strengthening resources for mitigating harms including AI and digital safety and security and countering susceptibility to manipulation, exploitation and exposure to violence and other harmful content online.
Coester is a co-recipient of the 2021-22 WVU Benedum Distinguished Scholar in the humanities and the arts and is a member of the Poynter Institute Advisory Board, Civic Collaboratory of Citizens University, the Rural Youth Catalyst working group, among others. Coester earned her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Hard-Won Lessons: Global Reporters on Journalism Under Autocracy
Monday, March 30, 2026
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM CT