Events
On February 6, the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures (RJEF) will present a faculty panel, “The Purpose and Practice of Care: Sustaining Resilience to Preserve and Transform Communities,” the opening event in their Black History Month series exploring self and community care through the lens of Black radical tradition. Three visionary scholars (Cornell Professors Anthony Burrow and Samantha Sheppard, and Ithaca College Professor Nia Nunn) will participate in the panel, moderated by RJEF Associate Director and Associate Professor Neil Lewis, Jr. Inspired by seminal thinkers in the Black Radical Tradition (Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Ella Baker), Racial Justice Student Fellows chose the thematic focus on care: self, community, collective. A series of events throughout the month will build on this theme. This is a necessary and crucial time to think about the role of care in the context of struggle. The event is open to the public; no registration is required. It takes place on February 6, 2025, 5:00 pm, in 135 Baker Hall, followed by dinner in the Baker Portico.
Join us for COMMColloquium Monday, February 10, 3:00 pm, in 102 Mann Library Building. Professor Katherine Sender will present “Queer Eye Across Continents: Or, What I Did on My Sabbatical.” The colloquium is followed by a reception, located in The Hub of the Department of Communication.
Invited Lecture
On January 27, Professor Jon Schuldt presented “Climate Change, Social Inequality, and Public Misperceptions” at University of Southern California’s Psychology & Public Policy talk series. In his talk, Jon addressed the problem of climate change often being portrayed as a universal threat (a “great equalizer”) while disproportionately impacting socially and economically disadvantaged communities across the globe. He traced the implications of this reality in a decade of original, national-level public opinion surveys. His findings show how the U.S. public systematically underestimates the climate and environmental concerns of vulnerable groups, how different groups may conceptualize environmental issues in fundamentally different ways, and how most Americans report believing that climate change affects all groups about equally—despite evidence to the contrary.
Associate Professor Claire Wardle delivered the keynote address “Using Collaboration to Meet Community Information Needs” at the Tompkins County Whole Health Annual Retreat. Her lecture for the 150-person Whole Health team inspired a series of small workshops. The event took January 29 at Cinemapolis.
Media Coverage
Graduate Student Sohinee Bera was quoted in the Cornell Chronicle article “Communicating with Cotton: CROPPS Research in Arizona.” The article links to a video exploring CROPPS’ work with drought in agriculture, which includes a segment presented by Sohinee (starting at 16:36): “How a Giant Robot & Red Light Can Save Plants from Climate Change.”
Publications
Graduate student Emma Cox et al., January 2025, “A Narrative Persuasion Approach to Promoting COVID-19-Related Policy Support,” Journal of Health Communication.
Using an experiment, the authors examined how a protagonist’s level of personal responsibility for COVID-19 prevention influences participants’ levels of empathy and perceived similarity. They found that a highly responsible protagonist elicited more empathy (for everyone) and more perceived similarity (for liberals), and that these forms of affective engagement heightened support for COVID-19 prevention policies.
Research Associate Sarah Gilbert, January 2025, “Three Reasons Meta Will Struggle with Community Fact-Checking,” MIT Technology Review.
Sarah’s op-ed draws from research on community moderation to outline what Meta would need for community-fact checking to work and why it is likely to fail at keeping users safe.
Professors Poppy McLeod and Jon Schuldt, Ph.D. alum Hwanseok Song, Rhiannon Crain, Janis Dickinson, January 2025, “Does Terminology Matter? Effects of the Citizen Science Label on Participation in a Wildlife Conservation Online Platform,” Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.
Motivated by recent concerns over the term “citizen science,” the authors tested the effects of that term on users’ engagement with an online platform that enabled them to report on environmentally relevant practices around their homes. They found no evidence that the “citizen science” label deterred participation. Rather, participation was more linked to people’s perceptions of the project activities.
