Research
The Department of Communication engages in research at the cutting edge of communication and related disciplines, conducting studies in many areas.
We encourage undergraduates and graduate students to explore faculty research areas and contact individual faculty members if interested in getting involved with research.

Culture & identity
Examine a culture’s language, symbols, meanings, activities and practices in everyday life from a variety of perspectives: global, national, community, group and individual.
Groups, organizations & networks
Study ways that communication processes and systems influence social structures and behaviors in a variety of settings.
Media studies
Study the practices, industries, meanings, mental processing and influences of media.
Policy & public engagement
Examine the communication challenge of designing and implementing policy, and the study of communication policy itself.
Science, health, risk & environment
Gain new theoretical insights and more robust communication practice across the areas of science, health, risk and environmental sustainability.
Social inequality
Examine how communication research, theory, practice, engagement and design explain and address social, economic, health and political disparities and outcomes that affect people, communities and society.
Technology & social media
Study the design, usage and implications of a range of communication technologies and examine how these technologies shape and are shaped by communication processes, social relationships, individual and collective behavior, online communities, and society.
Grants and Sponsored Research
Diane Bailey:
- National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Big Data on the Dairy Farm: Relational Transformations across Agricultural Occupations and Organizations with the Rise of Digital Technologies
Natalie Bazarova:
- Federal Formula Fund, Encouraging Bystander Interventions through Personal Responsibility, Empathy, and Social Media TestDrive Training
- National Science Foundation, Addressing Social Media-Related Cybersecurity and Privacy Risks with Experiential Learning Interventions
- College of Human Ecology, Common Sense Media
- Facebook, Empowering Under-Resourced Parents in Teens’ Social Media Privacy Education
- Google, Stakeholder Perspectives on Youth Experienced Digital Risks and Harms
Sahara Byrne:
- National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute, The E-Cigarette Population Paradox: Testing Effects of Youth-Targeted Population Warnings for E-Cigarettes among Two Key Populations
Brooke Duffy:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Gender Disparities and Other Inequities in Social Media Work.
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Algorithms, Big Data, and Inequality
- President's Council of Cornell Women, Invisible Labor in the Social Media Economy: General and Social Inequalities in an Emergency Workforce
Lee Humphreys:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Mobile Phone Use in Public
- National Science Foundation, Toward a Statewide Public Internet of Things (IoT) Network
Neil Lewis, Jr.:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Examining Gender Biases in Hiring
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, How Learning Environments Affect Student Mindsets and Performance
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Improving Vaccine Equity through Identity-Based Motivation
Drew Margolin:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Prosocial Behavior
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Assessing Impacts of Covid-19 on College Students' Lives through Reddit University Communities
- National Science Foundation, Deterring Objectionable Behavior and Fostering Emergent Norms in Social Media Conversations
J. Nathan Matias:
- John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Citizens and Technology Lab: Research and Engineering Growth
- New Venture Fund, Ethics of Internet-Related Research
- Ford Foundation, Core support for CAT Lab
- National Science Foundation, Collaborative Research, Privacy-Preserving Abuse Prevention for Encrypted Communications Platforms
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Growing and Protecting Civic Participation Online through Citizen Science
- Templeton World Charity Foundation Inc., Scaling Citizen Behavioral Science for Effective Online Dialogue and Knowledge Creation
Katherine McComas:
- Federal Formula Fund, Using Risk Communication to Reduce Exposure to Lead in Wild Game Consumption
- National Science Foundation, A Case Study of Enhanced Geothermal Systems: The Interaction of Imaginaries of Place and Energy for Renewable Energy Transitions
- New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Developing a Research-based Digital Media Campaign to Reduce the Risks of Chronic Wasting Disease
- Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, A Cross-National Comparison of U.S. and Swiss Attitudes toward Deep Geothermal Energy
Jeff Niederdeppe:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Effects of Prevalence Information in Framing Health Problems
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Supporting the Collaborative on Media and Messaging for Health and Social Policy
- Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Direct and Indirect Effects of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising
- Weill Cornell Medicine, Disparities in the Diffusion of Direct-Acting Antiviral Therapy for Hepatitis C among Baby Boomers: A Mixed-Methods Study
- Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Using Natural Language Processing and Crowdsourcing to Monitor and Evaluate Public Information and Communication Disparities about Colon Cancer Screening
- The University of Utah, Using Natural Language Processing and Crowdsourcing to Monitor and Evaluate Public Information and Communication Disparities about Colon Cancer Screening
- University of South Carolina, Evaluation of Cigarette Package Inserts for Enhanced Communication with Smokers
Jon Schuldt:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Understanding Perceptions of Climate through Food
- National Science Foundation, El Poder de la Familia: Understanding the Role of Familism on Latino Environmentalism
- Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Promoting Pro-Environmental Engagement among US Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups by Correcting Misperceived Environmental Norms
- Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, 2020 Symposium on the Social Psychology of Climate Change
- National Science Foundation's Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, American National Election Study: The 2022 Collaborative Midterm Survey
Katherine Sender:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Media and sexuality documentary and research projects
Andrea Stevenson Won:
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Social Interactions in Virtual Reality as an Intervention for Pain
- Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Mediated Social Interactions to Reduce Distress in Hospitalized Patients
- National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, A Training Tool to Help Teachers Recognize and Reduce Bias in Their Classroom Behaviors and Increase Interpersonal Competence
- National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Improving Collaboration in Remote Teams through Tools to Promote Mutual Understanding of Nonverbal Behavior
Y. Connie Yuan
- Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Community-Driven Air Quality Advocacy in Manhattan Chinatown
Outreach
The Department of Communication's outreach mission is to share knowledge and practices to help individuals, groups, organizations, and communities understand communication, communicate, and make use of information to effect positive social change.
Outreach is at the core of our activities
Most faculty members are involved with outreach in a variety of ways: through formal programs; by evaluating and improving outreach systems and programming; and by engaging with the media, the public and policymakers.
Applied research to improve outreach
Our applied research aims to solve real-world communication problems in the fields of health, agriculture, environment, risk and other areas of science. Working with at-risk youth, the elderly, scientists, policymakers, farmers, cancer patients, journalists and the public, we focus on specific issues to improve scientific and technological communication.
Training for Cornell, the community, state and world
We share our expertise with communities locally and globally in matters of media literacy, public speaking and debate, food security, recycling, and environmental risk. We are bringing our research to the streets via a mobile lab to ensure greater access to participants.
Outreach
Mobile Lab
Sahara Byrne and Jeff Niederdeppe’s mobile research lab is custom-designed, ADA accessible and outfitted with five research stations. The research team, including Senior Research Associate Amelia Greiner Safi, spent the past few years conducting NIH-funded eye-tracking experiments with youth and adult smokers examining the effect of cigarette packaging graphic warning labels. The mobile lab enables access to study participants who may be difficult to reach due to distance from a research institution or lack of local space to conduct a study. The mobile lab's manager is Lecturer Norman Porticella.

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Contact Us
450 Mann Library Building
phone: (607) 254-6278
email: communication [at] cornell.edu
We are located on the 4th floor of Mann Library, accessible only by the stairs/elevators within the library, which are just past the circulation desk.
Department Hours:
Monday - Thursday, 8am to 4:30pm
Friday, 8am to 3:30pm