University of Connecticut

Studies the adoption, use, and regulation of new communication technologies, telecommunications policy, and television audiences.

Studies communication in close relationships, including sexual communication and couples facing cancer, and its links to health, using biosocial approaches.

Studies social influence across marketing and persuasion, including message production, language intensity effects, source credibility, chronemics, and national culture in marketing content.

Studies crisis, emergency, and risk communication, including media dependency during disasters, community risk mitigation, and cognitive processing of emergency messages.

Studies persuasive communication in advertising, PR, health, and environmental risk, building games and mobile apps for risk prevention and measuring biometric responses to messages.

Studies how mediated technologies such as avatars and social media shape person perception, identity, persuasion, and learning, evaluating system design for communication goals.

Studies media images of STEM professionals and their effects on adolescent girls' STEM interest and identity, including women in STEM on TikTok, to broaden STEM participation.

Studies the psychological and physiological effects of interactive media and health technologies, using psychophysiological measures (ECG, EDA, EEG) and theory building.

Studies social dynamics between humans and artificial intelligence, including algorithm aversion, identity threat, and AI anxiety, drawing on social psychology.

Studies how Black women communicate with close others and in groups to manage marginalization, developing the Strong Black Woman Collective theory with quantitative and qualitative methods.

Studies psychological effects of mass media, especially violent video games and aggression, sex on television, and children's media use, using media effects experiments.

Studies how people navigate difficult conversations about stigmatized and poorly understood health conditions in families and relationships, using qualitative and feminist approaches.

Studies organizational communication training and development, entrepreneurial and leadership communication skills, and perceptions of online source credibility.

Studies how people share information and build community on social media, focusing on algorithmic literacy on apps like TikTok and Instagram, misinformation, and well-being.

Studies public relations and crisis perception through moral foundations theory, historical work on PR's moral roots, computational analysis of PR scholarship, and stakeholder theory.

Studies mass media and intercultural communication processes through Chicana/o-Latina/o studies, ethnicity, race, and gender perspectives.

Studies how everyday family and relational communication shapes relationship quality and health, especially in dementia caregiving and aging, often using qualitative methods.

Studies health message design and effects, including narrative persuasion, defensive responses to risk information, health misinformation correction, and AI chatbots for health communication.

Studies how cross-platform, multimodal communication shapes misinformation, activism, and polarization for marginalized groups, using NLP, network analysis, computer vision, and surveys.