University of Utah

Studies collective memory, trauma, and mourning around the Korean War by critically analyzing memorials, media narratives, and rituals at memorial sites.

Studies political communication, news media, and public opinion, including presidential communication, religion in politics, and online incivility, mainly through content analysis.

Studies how communication technologies mediate relations with nature, analyzing visual rhetoric, image events, and environmental activism in the U.S. and China.

Studies the rhetoric of environmental and science controversies such as nuclear waste siting and energy transitions, centering Indigenous advocacy through participatory critical rhetoric.

Works in journalism studies and health communication, including digital and screen media and mental health contexts.

Studies strategic communication of health information to the public, especially cancer, designing and evaluating screening campaigns and interventions with public health departments.

Studies historical and contemporary rhetoric of health, science, sex, and gender, especially reproductive health, infertility, and sex education, through rhetorical and archival analysis.

Studies cancer genetic risk communication, health literacy, and informed consent, developing and testing digital health tools such as chatbots for patients.

Studies cancer and public health communication, including treatment misinformation, generative AI imagery, LLM-based interventions, and decision aids tested in randomized studies.

Studies cybersecurity discourse and the history of cyberwarfare, analyzing cyber-doom rhetoric, influence operations, and fears of technology out of control.

Studies community-engaged health communication, including sharing hereditary cancer risk information in African American communities and patient-centered outcomes research.

Studies rhetoric, argumentation, and public discourse in political advocacy and social movements, including homeless communities' democratic participation and academic freedom.

Studies representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation in print, film, and television, including Asian American media and immigration rhetoric, through critical analysis.

Studies cultural discourses of health, especially obesity, combining rhetorical, media, and cultural studies to critique health campaigns and neoliberal discourse.

Studies strategic science and risk communication, public opinion on STEM issues, and information seeking and processing, including AI, climate anxiety, and the deficit model.

Works in health and science communication, research methods and ethics, and rhetoric and communication theory, alongside environmental humanities leadership.

Studies the historical relationship between newspapers and communities in the American West, including Japanese American incarceration camp newspapers, through archival research.

Studies race, gender, and mediated culture through Black feminist critique and autoethnography, examining popular music, film, and gendered violence.

Studies advertising effectiveness, including native ads, social media ad personalization, sponsorship, and CSR messages, including eye-tracking research on ad perception.

Studies Latina/o/x/e health experiences and media representations of reproductive justice and gendered violence using Chicana feminist and qualitative approaches.

Studies rhetoric, affect theory, and media theory, examining ecological thinking, mobile and streaming media, and immersive VR storytelling through humanistic theorizing.

Studies health message processing and persuasion, including message framing, narrative persuasion, HPV and COVID-19 vaccination, and online peer support among cancer survivors.

Studies how persuasive strategic communication, including AI-generated content, virtual influencers, and brand advocacy, shapes trust, attitudes, and behavior, drawing on consumer psychology.

Studies misinformation, overconfidence, and public understanding of science and politics, including older adults' exposure to low-credibility online content and climate beliefs.

Studies the relationship between journalism and the public, including how journalists imagine audiences, audience engagement strategies, and transparency in news organizations.

Studies mass communication law, freedom of expression, media ethics, and journalism history.

Studies relationships among religion, media, race, and technoculture, using interviews, textual analysis, digital ethnography, and text mining.

Studies media use and effects in science and political communication, focusing on social media misinformation, public perceptions of science, AI, and open science.

Works in critical race, feminist, and cultural studies, rhetoric, and social movements, including reflections on critical pedagogy and classroom tension.

Studies global Indigeneities, kava, popular music, and eco/food justice through Indigenous relational ethics, community research, and critical cultural theory.

Studies Indigenous queer and feminist thought, Black-Indigenous relations, and speculative media and futurisms, analyzing Indigenous storytelling through rhetorical criticism.

Studies health and AI-mediated communication, including chatbots that correct contraceptive misinformation, computational modeling of short-video features, and trust in AI.