University of Texas at Austin

Studies international and online journalism and the struggle for press freedom in Latin America, drawing on long professional practice and journalist training.

Studies chronemics, how time and pace of life shape communication in organizations, leadership, and health care, through engaged applied research.

Studies Latina/o and mixed-race representation, media making, and diversity in US television and film industries through critical and historical analysis.

Studies Latino images in US film and the history and poetics of Mexican cinema through film history and narratology.

Studies visual communication and the sociology of photographic practice in journalism, including citizen journalism, representation, and word-image rhetoric.

Analyzes the rhetoric of sport and its ties to democracy, national identity, militarism, and public memory through rhetorical criticism.

Studies agenda setting, race, visual communication, and journalism ethics, often with experiments on how images shape ethical reasoning and news framing.

Studies marketing, advertising, and consumer research, and serves as an expert witness in advertising-related legal cases.

Studies communication in families and dating relationships, including partner support for weight loss and on-again/off-again romantic relationships.

Examines practical interpersonal communication skills, advocacy, and influence that help people succeed in personal and professional relationships.

Studies interpersonal health communication: how patients, families, and providers handle bad news, social support, coping, and uncertainty in illness.

Studies advertising and marketing with a focus on ethics, leadership, corporate social responsibility, and countering persistent unethical behavior.

Studies consumer behavior and information processing from a social cognitive view, including technology adoption, privacy, virtual reality, and AI engagement.

Studies American film, radio, and television history and audience reception through archival research on early cinema and radio comedy.

Examines how people use signs and symbols to negotiate the ineffable in music, religion, and affect, drawing on rhetorical criticism and psychoanalytic theory.

Studies film history, including classical Hollywood, Weimar cinema, émigrés in Hollywood, and independent cinema, through historical and biographical work.

Studies political language, labels, and persuasion in American politics, including conservative media and how journalism treats electoral participation.

Studies media use and credibility in US election campaigns, including selective exposure, social media, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.

Studies health and environmental risk communication, especially information seeking and avoidance about cancer, nanotechnology, and carbon capture.

Develops evidence-based health communication strategies for audiences with low health literacy on issues like tobacco cessation and opioid overdose.

Studies race and news media, racial discourse, and collective memory, including obituaries, sports media, food journalism, and newsroom ethics.

Studies the role of language in persuasion, social influence, and deception, including word choice in health messages, stereotyping, and online incivility.

Studies the social cognitive mechanisms of message production and processing, including goals, gender identity, cyberbullying, and fact-checking inferences.

Studies how film, TV, and digital media workers respond to streaming-era change in Hollywood and Texas, including the impact of film incentives.

Studies news audiences, news engagement, and news literacy, including Gen Z and social media, and diversity in news coverage.

Studies the disruption of American journalism and local news through newsroom ethnography, along with the history and sociology of news and deliberation.

Studies organizational communication with a focus on anonymity, identity, and identification in hidden organizations that conceal aspects of themselves.

Studies environmental, intercultural, and gender communication and rhetoric in Indonesia, Latin America, and the US, including environmental organizations.

Studies organizational communication technology, mobile technologies, and AI in crisis, disaster, infrastructure, and health communication contexts.

Studies embodied, multimodal face-to-face interaction such as gesture, gaze, and touch using video-based micro-ethnographic methods.

Studies rhetoric, philosophy, and culture through American pragmatism, Kant, and Ambedkar, with work on comparative rhetoric and communication ethics.

Studies news media's role in democracy, including partisan selective exposure, news engagement, and social media effects in US elections.

Studies telecommunications policy, rural broadband and the digital divide, and AI and social media disinformation such as Russian Facebook ads.

Studies public relations, stewardship, participatory culture, and communities.

Studies the links between communication and emotion in close personal and family relationships, including hurt feelings.

Studies the ethical and social implications of AI, including bias and disparate impacts in health AI and youth interactions with digital assistants.

Studies alcohol advertising effects, branding, and social media marketing, using unstructured data analysis and marketing mix modeling.

Studies how message components shape environmental attitudes and behaviors, including carbon capture acceptance, AR/VR science messaging, and climate resilience.

Studies consumer behavior in social media feeds and new technologies, focusing on digital wellbeing, data analytics, and consumer privacy.

Studies public relations and strategic communication for advocacy and activism with marginalized publics, using critical theory and qualitative methods.

Practices and teaches documentary photojournalism on Latin America, including youth affected by gang violence.

Studies crisis communication and digital media in sport, examining how social media empowers stakeholders during sports-related crises.

Studies scientists' public engagement, science communication training, and how news and entertainment media represent science and the environment.

Studies Indian and world cinemas, film theory, feminist film theory, and experimental film and video in India.

Studies the rhetoric of expertise and digital rhetoric, analyzing how experts and laypeople construct knowledge in public and online discourse.

Studies persuasive health and charity campaigns, such as disgust-evoking images, drawing on emotion and behavioral economics to address substance misuse.

Studies strategic communication and public relations, including CSR, corporate social advocacy, diversity in PR, reputation, and crisis management.

Studies globalization, nationalism, and television in India and South Asia, and global communication more broadly.

Studies the persuasive capabilities of mass and digital media for prosocial goals such as public health.

Studies race and ethnicity in US media industries, Asian Americans and media, and Indian immigrant online cultures and transnational identity.

Studies how digital spaces connect and divide people, focusing on online incivility, engagement with news and politicians, news trust, and polarization.

Studies how interfaces, affordances, and algorithms shape cognitive and emotional processing of persuasive messages, using experiments.

Studies prosocial advertising and consumer well-being, applying persuasion, emotion, and identity theories to giving, sustainability, health, and AI ads.

Studies fan cultures, convergence and participatory culture, and transmedia storytelling, with attention to gender and the marginalization of female fans.

Studies the global history of computer technologies and video game aesthetics and their impact on cultures of labor and media.

Studies how AI-driven media systems and algorithmic curation shape news consumption, affective polarization, and democratic engagement using mixed methods.

Studies poverty, class, and digital inequality in targeted ads, government interactions, and digital health, using mobile data, NLP, and field experiments.

Studies family communication and support among Latinx immigrant families and language brokers using longitudinal surveys, focus groups, and interviews.

Studies online political discussion and designs spaces for cross-partisan interaction, combining large-scale computational methods with qualitative interviews.

Studies visual persuasion, visual politics, and AI-generated multimodal messages using computational methods, multimodal LLMs, and experiments.

Practices and teaches photojournalism and documentary photography.

Studies media ethics and solidarity journalism, including humanizing techniques in coverage of homelessness, using case study research.

Studies online privacy decisions, dataveillance, and digital inequality, testing message-based interventions against privacy helplessness.

Studies workplace bullying, harassment, and AI-mediated communication in organizations using surveys, computational text analysis, and agent-based modeling.

Studies communication and relationships in teams and organizations, including flexible work, using statistical, computational, and social network methods.