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17th Annual Grunig Lecture

Dr. Krishnamurthy Sriramesh presents "Culture and Public Relations: A Global Program of Research"

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Introducing COMM Corner!

An exclusive space for COMM students NOW OPEN

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UMD COMM Department Members Shine at NCA 2024!

Members of the COMM Department presented research and were recognized with awards at NCA!

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2024 Mark and Heather Rosenker Lecture featuring Joe Mazza

Joe Mazza presents "Enduring Words" for the 2024 Rosenker Lecture

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How to strategically frame advocacy in a polarized landscape

Featured research from Associate Prof. Sun Young Lee & Ph.D. Alum Duli Shi

Communication

Author/Lead: Sun Young Lee
Dates:

"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. 


 

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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

Communication

Author/Lead: Ganga Dhanesh
Dates:

Harmful 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.

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Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal

New publication by the DISCO Network, "Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal"

Communication

Author/Lead: Catherine Knight Steele, Rianna Walcott
Dates:

Technoskepticism 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. 
 

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