April 22, 2026
Awards
Graduate Field Administrator Joanna Alario received the Casey Moore Impact Award from the Cornell Graduate School. This award is given to a member of the administrative community who contributes to the advancement of access, equal opportunity, and success in graduate education. Recipients demonstrate this by going above and beyond in mentoring and supporting the success of Cornell graduate and professional degree students, especially as it relates to enhancing their sense of belonging, overall well-being, progression, and achievement.
Assistant Professor Wunpini Mohammed received the Recognition for Elevating African Media Narratives on the Global Stage from the Northern Movie Awards (Ghana). On April 4, she was honored for her pioneering research on media, decolonization, and African knowledge systems by the community at the center of her recent book, Media, Culture, and Decolonization: Re-righting the Subaltern Histories of Ghana. The organization commended her for her commitment to amplifying the voices and cultural expressions of Northern Ghana.
Graduate student Amanda Vilchez received the Antoniya Hubancheva Award from Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation, a $5,000 scholarship that supports student-led research advancing bat conservation and public understanding of bats’ ecological value. Her project investigates the traditional use of vampire bat guano in maize farming in Peru’s Sacred Valley, evaluating its effectiveness as a natural pest protectant and fertilizer while helping to shift negative perceptions of vampire bats.
Events
REMINDER: Please join us for a special COMMColloquium Monday, April 27, 3:00 pm, where graduate students will preview their talks for the upcoming International Communication Association Annual Conference and undergraduate students will discuss their honors theses. The event takes place in 102 Mann Library Building and is followed by a reception, located in The Hub of the Department of Communication.
Grants
Professor Natalie Bazarova (with J. Kleinberg, C. Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, et al.) received the Laude Institute Moonshots Award for the project “Rebuilding Trust in Civic Discourse: An Auditable AI-Mediated Infrastructure.” The award provides a $250,000 seed grant and the opportunity to compete for up to $10 million in funding to support ambitious, high-impact research initiatives. The project aims to use artificial intelligence to establish a new foundation for trustworthy AI-mediated communication across online platforms.
Lectures
Professor Lee Humphreys was interviewed on the Center for Transformative Media podcast in an episode titled “Mobile Phones, Public Space, and the Politics of Everyday Media.” In the episode, she discusses the history of mobile phones, their relationship to public space, and the politics of everyday media, reflecting on both early-adoption challenges and current trends in mobile communication. She also argues that the academic field of mobile communication has long been global in scope, a strength rooted in the international development of mobile telecommunication.
On April 17, Associate Professor Neil Lewis, Jr., delivered a talk at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia. In his talk “Meaning Making in a Fragmented Democracy,” Neil examined how the United States functions as what political scientists call a “fragmented democracy,” where unequal social systems shape the opportunities available to different groups across multiple domains of life. How do people make meaning of their everyday experiences in such a society, and what are the individual and collective consequences of such meaning-making processes? Neil also shared findings from his program of research that has been exploring these questions over the past decade. He then discussed the implications of these findings for social scientific theories and their practical applications.
On April 13, Assistant Professor Wunpini Mohammed gave an invited book talk at Cornell’s Telluride House. In her talk, “Media, Culture, and Decolonization: Re-righting the Subaltern Histories of Ghana,” Wunpini engaged with undergraduate and graduate students across various disciplines on the topic of culture and decolonization.
Publications
Professor danah boyd, April 2026, “Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media,” Social Media + Society.
When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post—and the content they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, danah argues that the very essence of social media has changed.
H. Gan, Postdoctoral Associate Han Li, J. Zhan & R. Zhang, April 2026, “Navigating Uncertainty in Human-AI Relationships: An Investigation of Communal Uncertainty Reduction Strategies,” New Media & Society.
This study extends uncertainty reduction theory by introducing communal uncertainty reduction strategies in human-AI communication. Through the content analysis of more ca. 1770 “interactive community challenges” and associated comments, through which users navigate uncertainties towards AI companions in online communities, the findings illustrate that uncertainty reduction is a triadic process involving users, AI, and communities.
T. Song, B. Sun, J. Li, Postdoctoral Associate Han Li, et al., April 2026, “Understanding Older Adults’ Experiences of Support, Concerns, and Risks from Kinship-Role AI-Generated Influencers,” CHI ’26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
This study examines the design strategies of AI-generated virtual influencers that adopt kinship-based roles (e.g., AI grandchildren), as well as older adults’ experiences of support, concerns, and risks from such virtual kinship roles. The authors highlight the complex relationship between virtual personas and real family ties, shaped by broader social and cultural norms.
S.G. Guo, N. Kwon, J. Li, Associate Professor Andrea Stevenson Won, G. Leshed & K.E. Green, April 2026, “Co-Designing Environment-Based Strategies with Neurodivergent Individuals for Sensory-Inclusive Dental Visit Experiences,” CHI ’26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Through co-design sessions with neurodiverse individuals, the authors identified five core design goals for inclusive dental environments for individuals with sensory processing disorder: experience transformation, distraction, exposure management, restoration, and social facilitation. This paper received an Honorable Mention for the Best Paper Award.
J. Collins, S.Y. Lin, T. Liu, Associate Professor Andrea Stevenson Won & S. Azenkot, April 2026, “Understanding the Use of a Large Language Model-Powered Guide to Make Virtual Reality Accessible for Blind and Low Vision People,” CHI ’26: Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Researchers have proposed an AI “sighted guide” to help users navigate VR and answer their questions, but it has not been studied with users. To address this gap, the authors developed a large language model-powered guide and studied its use with 16 BLV participants in virtual environments with confederates posing as other users. They found that when alone, participants treated the guide as a tool, but treated it companionably around others, giving it nicknames, rationalizing its mistakes with its appearance, and encouraging confederate-guide interaction. Their work furthers understanding of guides as a versatile method for VR accessibility and presents design recommendations for future guides.
