Megan Stoker

From College of Fine Arts and Communications

Megan Stoker is a Masters of Mass Communications student at BYU. She received her BA in Public Relations from BYU in 2007.

Stoker has interned with BYU, LDS Medcare, and AMC Communications. While completing her undergraduate work, she was able to present her paper, “A Reconciliation in Loyalty: Personal vs. Private Loyalties in Public Relations” at the 2006 International Public Relations Research Conference in Miami Florida.

In 2008, she was awarded an Oscarson Discovery Grant which enabled her to relocate to New Delhi, India and study the effects of the Indian Right to Information Act, in conjunction with New Delhi University. Stoker was invited to present her research at the International Association of Media and Cultural Research 2008 conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

When the opportunity to spend the summer in India presented itself, Stoker snatched it up without a second thought. She saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to delve into research that could only be conducted in the faraway country. Her efforts focused on the Indian Right to Information Act which passed in 2005. The act is similar to American sunshine laws, or the laws that make government records publicly accessible.

Obtaining useful information was not easy, but a meeting with the chief information commissioner of India opened doors. Stoker also obtained a week-long pass to the Indian equivalent of the U.S. Library of Congress, the Nehru Place Library.

“I really hope someone working with the act will read the paper and maybe it can help them fix the weaknesses in the act,” Stoker said. “The act is really great in theory, but the government has provided no infrastructure and very little funding so it can’t accomplish what it set out to do.”