University of Maryland, College Park

Practices and teaches narrative and feature journalism on race, Black history, and social issues, including reporting on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Works on media law, First Amendment protections, and press freedom, drawing on experience leading the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Studies the history and ethics of investigative and broadcast journalism, presidents and the press, leaks, and First Amendment issues through archival historical research.

Studies LGBTQ history and public memory as a queer rhetorical critic, analyzing archives, speeches, and commemorations such as the AIDS Quilt.

Studies Arab and Muslim media, online Islamic discourse, political blogging and citizen journalism in the Egyptian revolution, and Arab women's activism.

Studies how strategic communication supports organizational and community crisis readiness, including disaster, weather, and pandemic risk communication by government agencies.

Analyzes rhetorical practices of democratic citizenship and how gender, disability, religion, and the built environment shape them, using historical rhetorical criticism.

Studies global media coverage of conflict, terrorism, disasters, and human rights, and develops global media literacy education.

Studies the science of persuasion and attitude change, applying it to health messages, misinformation, and AI-generated persuasive content on issues like vaccination and cancer.

Practices and teaches investigative journalism on topics such as war crimes, global hunger, pandemics, climate change, and police use of force.

Studies how disinformation and propaganda travel through media systems and how media support or subvert democracy, comparing Russia, the United States, and the UK.

Studies rhetoric and politics, including presidential and war rhetoric and women in politics, through historical analysis of public speeches and archives.

Studies relationships among rhetoric, politics, law, and popular culture, such as Supreme Court confirmations and televised portrayals of the U.S. presidency.

Practices and teaches investigative national security journalism on the military and intelligence agencies, and advocates for jailed journalists worldwide.

Studies how social identities and intergroup dynamics shape responses to threat, and how organizations and communities communicate weather and public safety risks equitably.

Studies media ethics, feminist theory, and women's roles in journalism and the media workforce, including alternative media, citizen journalism, and suffrage press history.

Theorizes the history and culture of digital media, including influencer culture, social media economics, the history of emotion measurement, and philosophy of technology.

Studies corporate social responsibility and strategic communication across issues, publics, and cultures, including gender stereotyping in advertising in the UAE.

Studies journalism ethics, the role of master narratives and stereotypes in shaping news content, and media-military relations.

Develops computational journalism tools using data mining and NLP, including automated fact-checking and algorithms to reduce clickbait harms on social media.

Studies how intercultural narratives and intergroup communication foster empathy and stereotype change, and how communication skills and traits predict positive intercultural engagement, using social scientific methods.

Studies public understanding of and engagement with science, environmental, and risk issues on social media and designs persuasive messages to support informed decisions.

Studies corporate social responsibility and social advocacy messaging, including visual strategies, emotions, and public empowerment, and CSR effects in crisis contexts.

Studies emerging media for health, examining eHealth effects and developing mobile and VR/AR interventions for cancer, mental health, and occupational safety in underserved communities.

Studies intersections of rhetoric and digital media, from attention and deliberation in the early blogosphere to ancient rhetoric and the ethos of wearable computers.

Studies race, gender, and media, especially how Black women and Black communities use online technology for resistance and community, through critical and historical analysis.

Studies how platform design and Silicon Valley's frictionless ethos affect democracy, journalism, and social movements, using ethnography, critical qualitative analysis, and documentary.

Studies the history of business journalism, including trade reporters and the Kiplinger newsletter, through archival research, alongside data-driven reporting.

Studies the history of argumentation, debate, and memory, including women's debating and education in the US and UK, using archival rhetorical research.

Studies how people seek, select, and share digital information produced by humans or AI, and designs content strategies that capture and sustain audience attention.

Studies Black podcasts, digital Black feminism, and Black cultural production and representation through critical and cultural analysis of digital audio media.

Studies public perceptions of and engagement with emerging science and scientific uncertainty in new media environments using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods.

Examines how anti-brownness and South Asian American racialization are constructed in U.S. public discourse through archival racial rhetorical criticism of news, law, and film.

Studies political public relations, including politicians' image construction, impression management, and authenticity in governance, elections, and crises, using qualitative and critical methods.

Studies audience behavior and journalistic practice at the intersection of journalism and social media in the U.S. and China, using experiments, surveys, and computational methods.

Studies journalism history and weather and disaster journalism, including weathercasters' job satisfaction and the history of women in television meteorology in the U.S.

Examines hemispheric constructions of Latinidad, mestizaje, and anti-Blackness in Latin American popular culture and performance through feminist critical analysis.

Analyzes the embodied, intersectional rhetorical tactics of digital fat activism and marginalized groups' worldmaking amid COVID-era health discourses, using feminist and queer theory.

Studies public relations and risk and crisis communication from a personal social network perspective, including how AI reshapes professional identities and networks.

Studies how algorithmic curation, especially Google search, shapes news and political information, with interests in computational journalism and algorithmic accountability.

Studies Black British and Black diasporic communication practices on social media platforms, developing digital humanities methods such as scraping Black Twitter.

Studies health messaging on cancer prevention, crisis, and sexual health, examining risk perception, information seeking, and decision-making, including among Black women.