University of Maryland Communication Home
Explore Communication at UMD
Undergraduate Students
Interested in our undergraduate program?
The Department of Communication at the University of Maryland offers a B.A. in communication, a rhetoric minor and an oral communication program. Communication is a Top Ten major at the University of Maryland and has been for ten years.
Graduate Students
Faculty and Staff Information
Faculty and Staff Information
Search our directory to learn about our faculty and staff, or access resources relevant to faculty and staff.
Centers
Recent ResearchView All
How to strategically frame advocacy in a polarized landscape
Featured research from Associate Prof. Sun Young Lee & Ph.D. Alum Duli Shi
Author/Lead: Sun Young Lee"How to strategically frame advocacy in a polarized landscape" by Duli Shi, New Mexico State University, Feifei Chen, College of Charleston, and Sun Young Lee, University of Maryland, was featured on The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication blog. Dr. Sun Young Lee is an Associate Professor in Communication and Dr. Duli Shi is a Ph.D. Alum of our program.
Their research seeks to answer the question of how businesses can engage meaningfully on sociopolitical issues while navigating an increasingly polarized landscape.
Read More about How to strategically frame advocacy in a polarized landscape
Gender representations and user engagement in social media posts of companies: Dream crazier or keep walking?
Study on gender and social media published in Business Horizons
Author/Lead: Ganga DhaneshHarmful gender stereotypes perpetuated and reinforced via gendered corporate communication can have deeply adverse consequences—particularly for women. Although a rich body of work has examined gender representation and its effects on advertising, there are hardly any insights into corporate social media communication. It is important to examine this as social media is a critical channel for stakeholder engagement, especially when leveraging its visual affordances. Hence, we conducted a visual social semiotic content analysis of 543 Instagram posts of international B2C companies to see how companies represented gender on social media and how various aspects of gender representation are related to user engagement. We found both diverse and inclusive gender portrayals and the sticky persistence of stereotypes. While women were depicted more as individual, central figures compared to men—allowing women to gain more visibility—women were more often associated with female gender-stereotypical topics than men. While no differences were found between gender representations and user engagement, user engagement differed between visuals showing men and women when considering their ethnicity. As such, we offer five evidence-based recommendations on how companies can contribute to gender equity by addressing gendered communication on social media.
Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal
New publication by the DISCO Network, "Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal"
Author/Lead: Catherine Knight Steele, Rianna WalcottTechnoskepticism explores possibility and refusal in relation to new technologies, covering a wide range of pressing topics from Munchausen syndrome by TikTok to wellness apps to online communities to AI. This book was co-written by an intergenerational group of 14 scholars in the DISCO Network, a consortium of investigators working to envision a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future. Technoskepticism features scholarship by COMM Associate Professor and Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab Director Dr. Catherine Knight Steele, and COMM Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the BCaT Lab Dr. Rianna Walcott.
Read More about Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal