University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Studies how actors compete to define journalism, its boundaries and norms, developing concepts like journalistic authority, metajournalistic discourse, and boundary work.

Studies health communication and multilevel community interventions to reduce health and cancer disparities through community-engaged research.

Studies how institutions regulate debate, discussion, and persuasion to shape democratic decision making, using rhetorical, argumentation, and cultural theory.

Studies interpersonal and intercultural communication in health care, including interpreter-mediated medical interactions, cultural frameworks of health, and bioethics.

Studies advertising effects and its role in society, including computational and AI advertising, influencer marketing, consumer trust, and DTC pharmaceutical advertising.

Studies supportive communication, nonverbal behavior, and mindfulness in emotion regulation using lab experiments with recorded and coded conversations.

Studies family and marital communication and the cognitive bases of relationships, including relational schemas, message production, and persuasion.

Studies First Amendment law, free speech online, Section 230, anonymous and false speech, and cybersecurity law through legal and historical analysis.

Studies public relations, health communication, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, including culture as a social determinant of health and journalistic norms around race.

Studies effects of routine exposure to conflicting and controversial health information in the media, and health equity, including population-based survey research.

Studies how popular media such as reality TV, lifestyle media, and influencers govern bodies, subjectivities, and citizenship, using critical cultural and historical analysis.

Studies how public relations and public diplomacy contribute to social change and relationship building in developing, crisis-prone, and post-conflict societies, including network approaches.

Studies news representations of gender, postfeminism, political women, and the links between media and militarism through feminist and political-economic critique.

Studies how people respond to health, science, and political information online, especially correcting misinformation on social media, using experiments, surveys, content analysis, and interviews.

Studies how people use health information in behavioral decisions, focusing on mental health communication and message design grounded in reasoned action theory.

Studies mobile communication, infrastructures, platforms, and digital economies as systems that organize social and political life, drawing on media history and political economy.

Studies journalism's role in democracy during political change, especially the press, civil rights, and white supremacy in the US South, using historical archival research.

Studies how media management and journalism shape innovation, labor, and well-being in newsrooms, using qualitative and hybrid methods.

Examines how rhetoric shapes public perceptions of secrecy, transparency, surveillance, and AI in U.S. political culture through rhetorical criticism and critical theory.

Studies how violence and communication relate, especially organizational responses to sexual assault and Title IX, using feminist, intersectional, and qualitative methods.

Tests health messages and packaging features to prevent youth uptake of tobacco, nicotine, and THC products, drawing on construal level and reactance theory.

Studies feminist, institutional, and congressional rhetoric, immigration and citizenship, and democratic governance through rhetorical and historical analysis of policy discourse.

Studies corporate social responsibility communication and stakeholder expectations of corporations, including a multi-year ethnography of Minnesota mining companies.

Studies critical media and cultural studies, popular culture, communication technologies, and the politics of race, including the history of race and copyright in the US.

Studies how individuals, groups, and organizations such as NGOs and agencies form and use communication networks, using network analysis of primary relational data.

Studies intended and unintended effects of digital advertising, including media multitasking, synced and personalized ads, privacy concerns, and visual attention measured through eye tracking.

Studies media law and regulation, including media ownership, political advertising rules, copyright and fair use, internet and broadband policy, through legal and regulatory analysis.

Studies news audiences, news avoidance, trust in news, political engagement, and the role of opinion polls in coverage of American politics, including multi-country research.

Studies the rhetoric of health and medicine, especially reproductive health, abortion, and infectious disease, using archival rhetorical history, feminist and affect theory.

Studies strategic communication with an emphasis on persuasion theory, inoculation and resistance to influence, and consumer processing of media messages.

Studies how AI is changing journalism and public information, including AI design, governance, and newsroom adoption, using computational methods and tool building.

Studies trust and consumer-brand relationships in emergent media and computational advertising, including influencer marketing and social listening data.

Studies journalism and identity, ethics, and practice from historical and contemporary lenses, with attention to gender, race, and sports journalism.

Studies identity uncertainty and information management in nontraditional families, such as adoptees seeking genetic family health history, and intercultural identity.

Studies how generative AI reshapes advantages among messages, organizations, and publics in strategic communication, using computational methods and causal inference.