School of Media and Communication

Rick Busselle, Ph.D.

Rick Busselle’s research and teaching focuses on how mediated stories influence our perceptions and understandings of social issues related to poverty, crime, addiction, and mental illness. His research focuses specifically on engagement with narratives, perceived realism of stories, and the social construction of reality through media.

His work has been published in Communication Theory, Communication Research, and The Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, among other scholarly journals and academic proceedings.  

He has served on the editorial boards of The Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Media Psychology, and The Journal of Media Psychology. He is currently a Co-Editor of Media Psychology.  

Courses Taught:
Diversity Issues in Journalism
Journalism in Democracy
Media Effects
Quantitative Research Methods
Narrative Processing & Engagement

Representative works:

Busselle, R. & Bilandzic, H. (Forthcoming). Narrative Persuasion. In J. Dillard & L. Shen, (Eds.), The Persuasion Handbook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Busselle, R. & Bilandzic, H. (2012). Cultivation and the Perceived Realism of Stories.  In M. Shanahan, M. Morgan, & N. Signorielli, (Eds.), The Cultivation Differential, New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

Busselle, R. & Bilandzic, H. (2011). The Role of Images in Readers’ Construction of News Narratives.  In S. Ross & P. M. Lester (Eds.) Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media, 3rd Edition, ABC-CLIO: Santa Barbara, CA.

Bilandzic H. & Busselle, R. (2011). Enjoyment of Films as a Function of Narrative Experience, Perceived Realism and Transportability.  Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 36(1), 29-50.

Busselle, R. & Bilandzic, H. (2009).  Measuring Narrative Engagement, Media Psychology, 12(4), 321-347.

Crandall, H. M. & Busselle, R. (2009). A Quantitative Research Methods Introductory Exercise, Communication Teacher, 23(3), 121-125.

Bilandzic, H. & Busselle, R. (2008). Transportation and Transportability in the Cultivation of Genre-Consistent Attitudes and Estimates.  Journal of Communication, 53, 508-529.