Research

The individual scholars of BGSU’s School of Media & Communication are well known for the scholarship they do on their own, or in collaborative relationships beyond school boundaries. For the research profile of individual faculty, see the Graduate Faculty page of the Website.

In addition, within the school, there is extensive collaboration among faculty that not only welcome, but depend on, the involvement and energetic commitment of SMC graduate and undergraduate students as well as students from other programs on campus.

While some of the research teams are easily matched to the SMC doctoral program’s emphases, others cut across those emphases or expand in marked and interesting directions.

Emerging Media Research

Environmental Journalism & Communication in Ohio and the Maghreb

Health Communication Interventions

Media and Communication in Directed Social Change

Mobile and Interactive News Research Group

Technologies of (Health) Care and Affective Labor/Service Work

 

Emerging Media Research

This research team explores various emerging media topics including courseware adoption in higher education, online news and mobile news use, social media, electronic word of mouth and online shopping, multi-platform media use and media diversity, and social media use and political efficacy.

Participants: SMC faculty: Drs. Louisa Ha, Mike Horning, Clayton Rosati and Gi Woong Yun; SMC Grad students: Mohammad Abuljadail, Jeanette Dillon, Ling Fang, Xiao Hu, Claire Joa, Jing Jiang, Weiwei Jiang, Yen-I Lee, Sanghee Park, Dinah Tetteh, Ying Xu, Fang Wang, Chen Yang, Liu Yang, Ding Zhao, Fan Zhang and Xiaoqun Zhang.

Contact: Dr. Louisa Ha at louisah@bgsu.edu.

Environmental Journalism & Communication in Ohio and the Maghreb

Working with colleagues and their students from Algeria and Tunisia, this research group has engaged in these activities: explored global coverage of environmental issues in credit-bearing workshops at BGSU; heard from Tunisian and Algerian experts on the environmental crises facing both countries; heard about the applied projects completed by students completing Tunisia’s new environmental master’s program; visited sites in Tunisia and Algeria where local NGOs, IGOs, and governmental efforts are underway to reverse the impacts of decades of development. The work was one of several grant projects funded by the U.S. Dept. of State. The funding for this program came from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs funded through Fulbright-Hayes Act of 1961, as amended

Participants: SMC faculty: Drs. Catherine Cassara, Lara Lengel, Nancy Brendlinger; SMC grad students: Anthony Frampton, Jae Kyoung Park, Xiaoqun Zhang, Christy Mesaros-Winckles (currently at Sienna Heights), Christian Vukasovich (currently at Oregon Institute of Technology); BGSU undergrads: Dan Lemle.

Contact: Dr. Catherine Cassara at ccasssar@bgsu.edu;

Health Communication Interventions

The team focuses on the development and testing of theory-driven communication interventions. All research projects employ applied research strategies and high engagement with local community groups (e.g., Wood County Committee on Aging). Current new and ongoing research projects include health implications of intergenerational and mediated communication. 

Participants: SMC faculty: Drs. Lisa Hanasono, Mike Horning, Kate Magsamen-Conrad; SMC grad students: Jeanette Dillon, Fan Zhang, Shrinkhala Upadhyaya, Yen-I Lee, Fang Wang, Zhao Ding, Hedieh Taraghi, Jing Jiang, Dinah Tetteh; BGSU undergrad students: China Billotte Verhoff (currently at UNM).

Contact: Dr. Kate Magsamen-Conrad at kmagsam@bgsu.edu

Media and Communication in Directed Social Change

This research team visualizes post-development as a phase in which researchers should also “strive for other potential principles for thinking about and reconstructing the world” (Escobar, 2000: 168). Newer communication strategies and actions hold great promise in empowering new actors, identities, voices, constituencies, and coalitions to not only meeting the new challenges but also for articulating new visions, principles, values and objectives for constructing alternative futures.

Participants: SMC faculty: Drs. Joshua Atkinson, Catherine Cassara, Radhika Gajjala, Ellen Gorsevski, Lara Lengel, Srinivas Melkote, Clayton Rosati; SMC grad students: Jae Kyoung Park, Shrinkhala Upadhyaya, Fang Wang, Arpan Yagnik.

Contact: Dr. Srinivas Melkote at Melkote@bgsu.edu

Mobile and Interactive News Research Group

This research group is focused on examining the ways that new advancements in mobile technology impact news consumption and distribution. The group uses a user-centered design approach to develop and test mobile news applications. In addition, it explores the various ways that citizen journalism and social media can be used to improve audience engagement. The current research is exploring how Quick Response (QR) codes could be used to distribute online news content.

Participants: SMC faculty: Drs. Mike Horning, Itay Gabay; SMC grad students: Liu Yang, Weiwei Jiang, Zhao Ding, Yen-I Lee, Dinah Teeteh, ShangHee Park

Contact: Dr. Mike Horning at mhornin@bgsu.edu

Technologies of (Health) Care and Affective Labor/Service Work

This group reads, writes and collaborates on projects that examine Technologies old and new through interdisciplinary critical theory lenses - Science Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, Queer Theory, Body Politics, Health Communication and Subaltern studies.

They engage the intersections of identity, affect, class, global care work and place in their discussions of the role of technology in society and culture. Technologies that individuals in the group explore include a range from computer gaming, medical care work to hand-crafting technologies.

Participants: SMC faculty: Drs. Lynda Dixon, Radhika Gajjala, Clayton Rosati; SMC Grad students: Deepti Bharthur, Anca Birzescu, Erika Marie, Dinah Tetteh, Fan Zhang; ACS Grad students:  Genesis Downey, Nicki Reamer, Debbie Ribera and Brock Webb.

Contact: Dr. Radhika Gajjala at gradhika2012@gmail.com

Updated: 04/23/2020 04:36PM