November 12, 2025
Awards
Graduate student Rosie Nguyen placed first in the Student Paper Competition at the Global Fusion 2025 Conference, which celebrates outstanding scholarship in global media and international communication. Her winning paper was recognized for its originality and contribution to the discipline.
Conferences & Invited Lectures
On October 27, Professor Jon Schuldt presented a lecture titled “Climate Change and Social Misperceptions” at the Edna Anderson-Taylor Communication Institute, University of Utah. This talk summarized a decade of original public opinion surveys, demonstrating that the American public underestimates the climate concerns of groups that are most vulnerable to climate impacts. It featured new data on the effects of communicating about climate inequities on public concern about the issue.
Graduate student Amanda Vilchez presented “Vampire Bats and Maize: Exploring Traditional Agricultural Practices with Implications for Rabies Management” at the 2025 Rabies in the Americas Conference, where she earned 1st Place in the Conference Poster Presentation. Her poster highlighted the preliminary results of mapping the use of vampire bat guano for maize seed protection and fertilization in Peru. It also explored how the perceived economic benefits of this practice can ultimately support rabies disease surveillance in vampire bats. See the research video here.
Media Coverage
Professor danah boyd was quoted in a Wired article titled “The Republican Plan to Reform the Census Could Put Everyone’s Privacy at Risk.” This piece explores efforts to eliminate the algorithmic process known as “differential privacy,” which is used to anonymize census data, and argues that removing it could expose sensitive personal information and undermine public trust in the census.
The Citizens and Technology Lab reported “At CAT Lab Summit on New York State Tech Policy, a Call for Listening.” The report provides a detailed readout of CAT Lab’s October 9 Tech Policy Summit in New York City, where policymakers, researchers, and technologists gathered to discuss the future of responsible technology governance in New York State.
