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Research

Faculty members and graduate students in the Department pursue and produce research that spans a wide range of the Communication discipline. 

Research within the department is generally focused in three broad curriculum areas:

  • Communication Science & Social Cognition,
  • Public Relations & Strategic Communication, and
  • Rhetoric & Political Culture

The Department of Communication is also home to the Mark and Heather Rosenker Center for Political Communication & Civic Leadership and the Center for Health and Risk Communication

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Highlighting Heroes and Ignoring Villains: Visual Framing of Polio and Polio Vaccine in Newspapers

Overall, this study contributes to the fields of visual communication, health communication, and international communication, particularly related to the Global South.

Communication

Author/Lead: Taufiq Ahmad
Dates:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Online

Polio vaccine hesitancy remains high in Pakistan due to various socio-political, religious, and economic factors. To address this, the government of Pakistan and its international partners such as UNICEF have devised a multipronged communication strategy to counter resistance to polio vaccine in hard-to-reach areas of the country. In this strategy, mainstream news media has been identified as a key stakeholder, as they have the potential to reach a wide range of population and disseminate easy to understand messages including both visuals and text. However, less scholarly attention has been paid to how mainstream news media in Pakistan frame polio and polio vaccine in their visuals. This study aims to fill this gap. Using visual framing as a theoretical framework, we analyzed 115 images from three selected newspapers published from 2010 to 2022. Our results suggest that the newspapers depicted hard-to-reach areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province which were more affected by polio and highlighted the criminality and securitization of polio vaccine in the country. In addition, female polio healthcare workers, who are instrumental in eradicating the disease, have been given marginal coverage, reflecting the importance of gender sensitivity in the region. Overall, this study contributes to the fields of visual communication, health communication, and international communication, particularly related to the Global South.

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The Paradoxes of Modern Islamic Discourses and Socio-Religious Transformation in the Digital Age.

This critical essay tackles some of the significant transformations and paradoxes which the introduction of the internet invited in modern Muslim societies, with a special focus on two specific domains.

Communication

Author/Lead: Sahar Mohamed Khamis
Dates:
Publisher: MDPI

The introduction of the internet brought about many transformations in the political, social, cultural, and educational fields worldwide. This phenomenon of digital transformation introduced a myriad of positive, negative, and paradoxical impacts. This critical essay tackles some of the significant transformations and paradoxes which the introduction of the internet invited in modern Muslim societies, with a special focus on two specific domains. First, the realm of religious authority or obtaining authoritative religious knowledge in the age of the internet. Second, the realm of shifting gendered Islamic identities in the age of cyberspace. In exploring these complex and hybrid phenomena, special attention is paid to the tensions between the opposing forces of tradition and modernity, diversity and cohesion, hegemony and resistance, and globalization and localization in cyberspace, and their numerous and far-reaching effects.

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Building the new architecture of crisis management: Global experts' insights on best and worst practices for securing external funding

This study explores the best and worst practices for funded research through an expert consultation survey of 36 global communication scholars with track records of funding success.

Communication

Author/Lead: Brooke Fisher Liu
Contributor(s): Olivia Truban
Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

Yan Jin, Wenqing Zhao, Andreas Schwarz, Mathew Seeger

Dates:
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

External funding is an important yet understudied area of inquiry in crisis communication research. With external funding being a keystone of assessing and broadening research impact in both academia and industry, it is important for scholarship to examine effective practices for funding proposals. This study explores the best and worst practices for funded research through an expert consultation survey of 36 global communication scholars with track records of funding success. Findings reveal motivating factors for seeking, securing and managing funding, as well as institutional factors. Findings also inform best and worst practices for securing external funding, including bridging theory and practice and establishing strong research partnerships.

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Personalization as a Strategic Political Tool on Social Media: The Curious Case of VP Kamala Harris on Twitter

Social media have reinvigorated the shift of focus from a party-centered politics to a personality-based one.

Communication

Author/Lead: Nana Osei Fordjour
Dates:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Social media have reinvigorated the shift of focus from a party-centered politics to a personality-based one. This has made how politicians personalize on social media, especially in government, consequential for them and their administration. Vice presidents across the globe, especially in the United States, play crucial constitutional roles central to the country’s political discourse. Though they are ignored in the extant literature, their rhetoric has ramifications for contemporary democracy. Using a multimodal rhetorical approach, I analyze Vice President Kamala Harris’s tweets (n = 357) in her first year of office to understand how she constructs her public image through personalization. Results indicated that she displayed strong family bonds, reflected on her education and its influence, her historical accomplishments, as well as her emotional moments. I discuss the implications of the image she constructs in this present study.

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Effective Countering Islamophobia Strategies in the Digital Age: Three Approaches

This article sheds light on three important strategies which have been successfully deployed by modern Muslims to resist Islamophobia in the digital age.

Communication

Author/Lead: Sahar Mohamed Khamis
Dates:
Publisher: Pluto Journals

One of the most serious challenges which is still threatening Muslims globally is the surge in Islamophobia, or negative attitudes and excessive fear towards Islam and Muslims. The digital age became a double-edged sword when it comes to the threat of Islamophobia. On one hand, it opened the door for anti-Muslim campaigns to spread widely and quickly online. On the other hand, it provided modern Muslims with much-needed opportunities to resist such hateful campaigns using the very same digital tools. This article sheds light on three important strategies which have been successfully deployed by modern Muslims to resist Islamophobia in the digital age. The first is the effective utilization of humor to resist some of the most hateful anti-Muslim campaigns and misrepresentations in cyberspace and present successful counter-narratives. The second is putting faith in action, through Muslim philanthropy and communal giving, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been done by using digital tools to spread and amplify these good deeds, while resisting Islamophobia simultaneously by correcting some of the false images and skewed misrepresentations about Islam and Muslims and replacing them with positive ones. And the third is boosting the visibility of Muslim women’s identities and amplifying their voices, which shatters the negative stereotypes about Muslim women as silent and helpless beings and counters their misrepresentation and marginalization, while countering Islamophobia in parallel. In discussing each of these strategies, the appropriate context is explained and relevant examples are provided to illustrate the arguments made throughout this paper.

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Hillary Clinton's Career in Speeches

The Promises and Perils of Women's Rhetorical Adaptivity

Communication

Author/Lead: Shawn J. Parry-Giles
Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

David S. Kaufer (Mellon Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Carnegie Mellon University), Xizhen Cia (Assistant Professor, Williams College)

Dates:
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Book cover

"In examining Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric, the authors find a full-bodied politician, not the caricature so often offered up by the media. Using highly novel analytical procedures, the authors point up Clinton’s complexity and dynamism and juxtapose them with the very real prejudices women still face in U.S. politics. This book will rankle the reader. And it should."
Roderick P. Hart, author of American Eloquence: Language and Leadership in the Twentieth Century

Women candidates are under more pressure to communicate competence and likability than men. When women balance these rhetorical pressures, charges of inauthenticity creep in, suggesting the structural and strategic anti-woman backlash at play in presidential politics. Hillary Clinton demonstrated considerable ability to adapt her rhetoric across roles, contexts, genres, and audiences. Comparisons between Clinton’s campaign speeches and those of her presidential opponents (Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump) show that her rhetorical range exceeded theirs. Comparisons with Democratic women candidates of 2020 suggest they too exhibited a rhetorical range and faced a backlash similar to Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s Career in Speeches combines statistical text-mining methods with close reading to analyze the rhetorical highs and lows of one of the most successful political women in U.S. history. Drawing on Clinton’s oratory across governing and campaigning, the authors debunk the stereotype that she was a wooden and insufferably wonkish speaker. They marshal evidence for the argument that the sexist tactics in American politics function to turn women’s rhetorical strengths into political liabilities. 

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‘Our pain prioritized for once’: Survivor-centred Black podcasts reckoning with Surviving R. Kelly

Calls to cancel singer R. Kelly have been around for decades, but they intensified with the twin debuts of the #MeToo and #MuteRKelly movements in 2017.

Communication

Author/Lead: Briana Barner
Dates:

The Surviving R. Kelly documentary, which premiered in 2019, chronicled the decades of abuse at the hands of Kelly, with appearances from survivors, their supporters and those closest to Kelly. Although what was presented in Surviving R. Kelly is not necessarily new information, the cultural shift that stemmed from #MuteRKelly and #MeToo helped to catapult the experiences of the primarily Black women and girls into mainstream media and ultimately led to Kelly being convicted of the crimes. Days after the documentary initially premiered in 2019, several Black podcasts reviewed the series – Tea with Queen and J, The Clubhouse with Mouse Jones and Marsha’s Plate. This article will provide a textual analysis of these episodes, as the episodes present a reflection on Black media, community and accountability. This article will explore how podcasts grappled with Black media’s complicity in the tangled web of abuse, while also providing survivor-centred content. Why are podcasts important spaces to grapple with difficult conversations among Black communities? What can podcast episodes show us about survivor-centred content and accountability?

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Understanding transnational decontextualization-recontextualization through Shingeki no Kyojin: The perils and possibilities surrounding Japanese manga and anime

We examine how the transnational process of decontextualization-recontextualization can shift the messages of popular culture texts as situated in differing collective memories.

Communication

Author/Lead: Fielding Montgomery, Meg Itoh
Dates:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Online

Japanese anime has continued to gain recognition as one of the strongest cultural influences in a globalized world. We examine how the transnational process of decontextualization-recontextualization can shift the messages of popular culture texts as situated in differing collective memories. To highlight this process, we analyze Shingeki no Kyojin (known to English-speaking audiences as Attack on Titan). Shingeki no Kyojin provides insightful grounds for analysis given its tremendous popularity in both Japan and beyond, its message of resistance against U.S. militarism, and its recontextualized uptake by the American alt-right, even including an Arizona congressman. Our analysis reveals the importance of understanding popular culture alongside context and the impact of decontextualized-recontextualized transformations of meaning on transnational processes of collective memory discourse.

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Humanizing History, Complicating Memory: A Trip into the Past

Carolyn Robbins, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Communication, University of Maryland; recipient of a Marshall T. Meyer Research Travel Grant.

Communication

Author/Lead: Carolyn Robbins
Dates:

Carolyn Robbins, Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland, received a Marshall T. Meyer Research Travel Grant and traveled to Duke University to conduct archival research. Carolyn visited the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library's Human Rights Archive to research the Attica Prison Riot of 1971, a case study for her dissertation. Learn more about Carolyn's experience here! 

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Doing Black Digital Humanities with Radical Intentionality

Based on the auto-ethnographic work of a team who developed the first Black Digital Humanities program at a research institution, this book details how to centralize Black feminist praxes of care, ethics, & Black studies in the digital humanities.

Communication

Author/Lead: Catherine Knight Steele
Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

Jessica H. Lu and Kevin C. Winstead

Dates:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
book

In this important and timely collection, the authors Catherine Knight Steele, Jessica H. Lu, and Kevin C. Winstead―of the first team of the African American Digital Humanities Initiative―center Black scholars, Black thought, and Black studies in creating digital research and programming. Providing insight into acquiring funding, building and maintaining community, developing curricula, and establishing a national network in the field, this book moves Black persons and Black thought from the margins to the center with a set of best practices and guiding questions for scholars, students, and practitioners developing programming, creating work agreements, building radically intentional pedagogy and establishing an ethical future for Black DH.

This is essential reading for researchers, students, scholars, and practitioners working in the fields of DH and Black studies, as well as graduate students, faculty, and administrators working in humanities disciplines who are interested in forming centers, courses, and/or research programs in Black digital studies.

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