Texas A&M University

Develops social constructionist theory of leadership, appreciative practice in organizational change, and dialogue practices that help communities deliberate polarizing issues.

Studies how messages shape health, prejudice, and well-being, using social-psychological experiments, psychological measurement, and immersive virtual reality health messaging.

Studies how Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities negotiate digital and mobile media, applying a social shaping of technology approach to digital religion.

Studies rhetoric, power, and democratic practice across historical moments, using pragmatist and continental philosophy to analyze propaganda, social movements, and climate rhetoric.

Analyzes how US presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Obama use myth and symbolic rhetoric to construct American identity and advance policy agendas.

Studies clinician-patient communication, the pathways linking communication to health outcomes, and strategies to increase patient involvement in care.

Studies the history of American political rhetoric, including citizenship, presidential heroism, demagoguery, and propaganda, through historically informed rhetorical criticism.

Studies visual political messaging, wartime and terrorist media strategies, and state digital journalism as soft power, with a focus on Middle Eastern media.

Critiques popular and news discourse on women's health, motherhood, and first ladies through feminist rhetorical analysis at the intersection of health and politics.

Studies Black life, hip-hop, and African diaspora cultural politics in Brazil through critical ethnography and cultural studies.

Studies the media history of newsroom technology and the analog-to-digital transition in US journalism, along with comparative newsroom history and the First Amendment.

Studies journalists' production practices and professional identities under extreme power imbalances, notably authoritarian journalism in post-conflict Rwanda.

Studies how a rural Northeast Brazilian community engages media and new technologies through long-term ethnography, plus textual analysis of media representations of minorities.

Examines the rhetorical circulation of sex, gender, and race in US social movement rhetoric and public memory of resistance through feminist rhetorical criticism.

Studies how communities of color use communication, organizing, media, and expressive culture for place-based advocacy and social change in cities, via engaged critical research.

Studies rhetoric, race, and Latinx social movements, crafting critical rhetorical histories such as of the New York Young Lords to build decolonial theory.

Studies how collective and stigmatized identities are constituted and contested in organizations and communities, and how dialogue bridges divides, through community-engaged research.

Studies how message features, audience traits, emotions, and social norms shape health persuasion and risk perceptions around tobacco, alcohol, and infectious disease.

Studies how war journalism and media representation sanction violence, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with conflict reporters and critical media theory.

Studies media selection and information diffusion through communication networks using computational modeling.

Studies education controversies and culture wars, and teaching through controversial issue discussions, using historical, rhetorical, and qualitative methods.

Studies transnational media flows and platformized popular culture in Latin American and Caribbean diasporas, especially Cuban digital comedy, using qualitative and humanistic methods.

Studies everyday news engagement, digital journalistic norms, and disinformation among diasporic and marginalized audiences using qualitative, interpretive fieldwork.

Studies the communicative, affective, and organizational dimensions of social movements, theorizing caste as a system of power in labor, hierarchy, and stigma.

Studies the multilevel complexity of media effects on social and cognitive phenomena, with attention to misinformation and social inequity.

Studies how right-wing media, political actors, and online networks shape US political information and disinformation, using quantitative and computational analysis of large datasets.