Conferences
Graduate student Julia Goolsby et al. presented “Cross-Park RAD Project: Insights for Responding to Ecological Transformation in the National Park Service” at the National Park Service North Coast & Cascades Science Days. This virtual lightning talk described the social challenges that shape wildfire management decisions in North Cascades National Park, drawing from interviews and focus groups from national park staff. The conference brought together public land managers working in the northwest of Washington state.
Professor Lee Humphreys and Maria Goula presented “Mapping Immigrants’ Preferences and Use of Public Space through Social Media toward an Inclusive Design and Management of the Urban Commons,” at the Migrations Workshop. During the event, the Cornell Migrations Global Grand Challenge brought together scholars across the university who received Migration funding. They presented their project on improving participatory methods for involving immigrant communities in the design of public space.
Assistant Professor Wunpini Mohammed et al. delivered “Framing Women in Politics: News Media Representations of a Vice-Presidential Candidate in Ghana’s 2020 Elections” at the Eastern Communication Association conference. This study examines the way that media framed discourses on the country’s first woman vice-presidential candidate of a major political party in the 2020 elections. The authors argue that although Ghana has established itself as one of Africa’s leading democracies, patriarchal dominance in newsrooms shapes the way women politicians like Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang are treated in public discourses and that in turn influences public opinion of them. The study is contextualized within the sociocultural context of Ghana while drawing attention to the need for a shift towards feminist journalism in media practice.
Events
Join us for COMMColloquium Monday, March 3, 3:00 pm, in 102 Mann Library Building. Professor Aswin Punathambekar will present our Distinguished Lecture. The colloquium is followed by a reception, located in The Hub of the Department of Communication.
Invited Lecture
Associate Professor Claire Wardle presented to the United Nations Senior Management Team, chaired by the Secretary General and attended by 45 heads of all UN agencies! During the lecture, “Understanding the Implications of Mis- and Disinformation for the United Nations,” Claire provided some key trends that the UN should be considering in terms of mis- and disinformation, particularly in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals. She focused on the challenges posed by defining these types of legal speech, the need to focus on harms rather than content, and the global leadership role the UN could take, particularly in this moment in history.
Lab News
There’s exciting news from the Collaborative on Media and Messaging for Health and Social Policy. This multi-institutional research collective includes Professor Jeff Niederdeppe, Associate Professor Neil Lewis, Jr., Research Associates Norman Porticella and Kari Waters, graduate students Emma Cox and Rebekah Wicke, and collaborators at Cornell’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, University of Minnesota, and Wesleyan University.
In January, Jeff, Norman, graduate student Teairah Taylor, and Neil co-published (with five collaborators) “Centering Historically Minoritized Populations to Design Effective Messages about an Evidence-Based Policy to Advance Social Equity” in PNAS Nexus. Advocates of efforts to address racial and ethnic disparities have circulated concerns that messages describing racial disparities in social outcomes can reduce or polarize support for public policies to address inequality. This article reports on research that tested the merit of these concerns. Using messages about Child Tax Credit expansion, a topic of current debates in multiple US states, the researchers found no evidence that centering information about racial or ethnic disparities in childhood poverty and racial equity-enhancing policy effectiveness causes backlash among White or Republican audiences. Their conclusion was that well-designed messages emphasizing policy efficacy can promote support for a redistributive tax policy across racial, ethnic, and political identities. This work was featured in the Cornell Chronicle article, “How to Craft Effective Policy Messages to Advance Equity.”
Neil and Jeff also contributed to a research report on partisan messaging in campaign advertising, “Attention to, Predictors of, and Potential Consequences of Racism and Counter-Messaging in Mainstream Media.” The research tracked attention to racism and counter-messaging from “anti-DEI” movements in US local television news since January 2020. The researchers identify abundant evidence for robust and growing counter-messaging aimed at eroding support for policies to combat structural racism and health equity.
Media Coverage
Professor Brooke Duffy is now a contributor for Forbes, with four articles already published in the last two months.
Professors Lee Humphreys and Jeff Niederdeppe were interviewed for the Cornell Sun’s Valentine’s Day article, “’Partners in Everything’: Married Communication Professors Share Love Story.” Learn how miscommunication brought these communicators together!
Publications
Graduate students Sohinee Bera, Amanda Vilchez, & Roxana Muenster, January 2025, “The Persistent Global Disparities in Environmental and Climate Communication Scholarship,” Frontiers in Communication.
To understand whether environmental and climate communication scholarship reflect the global nature of climate crises, the authors conducted a publication review of 505 articles published in the top-producing journals of climate communication between 2020 and 2022, along with an authorship survey and keyword network analysis. They found that the Global North dominates in authorship (93%) and research focus (67%), while the Global South affiliated authors make up a fraction of the sample (7%) and of the research focus (12%), revealing a gap in scholarship based in and about the Global South.
Aleshia Hayes, Graduate Student Kevin Martinez, Beth Karlin et al., December 2024, “Acting on Immersion: 360° Videos Viewed in VR Headsets Inspire Behavior Change,” International Journal on E-Learning.
This exploratory study tested a short climate change 360° video immersing users in Greenland on VR headsets and PCs with remote and local participants in the lab. In particular, the authors explored how modality (i.e., PC vs VR) influenced participant affect, behavioral intent, user experience (e.g., presence, agency, enjoyment), and learning outcomes. Most notably, they found that users in the VR condition reported higher intent to act to mitigate climate change compared to PC users (p = .038).
Aarum F. Youn-Heil and Assistant Professor Wunpini Mohammed, February 2025, “America Was Terrified … of an Orange”: Using Film to Subvert Hegemonic Narratives on Asian Identity,” Critical Studies in Media Communication.
This study investigates intertextual discourses in Daniel Cretton’s 2021 film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Using AsianCrit and critical discourse analysis, the study examines the role of intertextuality as a social practice that interacts with past and current socio-politics. The authors argue that not only does AsianCrit help us understand the representation of Asian identity in this film, the film also intentionally uses intertextuality drawn from historical propagandic portrayals of Asians in American media to challenge and subvert harmful narratives.
Professor Katherine Sender, January 2025, “The Queer Vanguard: How Television Streaming Platforms Promoted Intersectional LGBTQ+ Content to Establish their Brands,” Journal of Communication.
This paper proposes that streaming television services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime used intersectional LGBTQ+ content to appeal to subscribers in both national and international markets. However, once new markets are established, more recent programming suggests a return to more conservative content designed to appeal to mass audiences.
