News from Rutgers, School of Communication and Information, August 2021 Newsletter

August 2021

Welcome to the fall semester!

Dean's note

SC&I buildings are back to life. After more than a year of being something of a ghost town, the school has a palpable buzz. While work never ceased, more offices are occupied, people are engaged in conversations in the corridor, and in-person meetings are taking off. With the student move-in, College Avenue and The Yard are bustling. While we are not at normality, and the new normal will probably be different from the old one, it is exciting. It feels alive and full of optimism. It will not be long before we move from looking at empty and unused space to asking where we can put everyone. With more telecommuting and online teaching than ever before, will we have to think differently about space usage? I imagine so.

In the wake of President Jonathan Holloway's arrival, you will have noted continuing change in New Brunswick leadership. Provost Francine Conway has become Chancellor-Provost Francine Conway, and she has appointed a new group of associate provosts. The New Brunswick Council of deans meets face-to-face now, and President Holloway regularly attends, which is a significant change.

Rutgers had initiated a major exercise to generate an Academic Master Plan (AMP) for New Brunswick. Schools have been asked to nominate an academic representative for the AMP, and I am delighted that Jennifer Theiss is willing to take on this important role. In addition to being part of the overall steering committee, the AMP will have several subcommittees, including one focused on academic priorities and communication. These areas hold potential for new thinking around scholarly communication, metrics, and the exploitation of different media forms. If you have ideas and views about this, do send me an email to help inform my work on the AMP.

After a year of seeing square boxes on a screen, I look forward to meeting many of you

in-person over the following months.

Jonathan Potter, Dean

Check out Dean Potter's fall video welcome message.

News Briefs

Keeping Romantic Relationships Healthy During COVID-19

Vanessa Kitzie MLIS '11, Ph.D.'16 Researches the Information Practices of LGBTQIA+ Populations

Philanthropists Tom Mattia RC ’70 and Marti Mattia Help Support Rutgers Students

Read Now

Defne Ildiz COM ’16 Puts Global Spin on Lessons Learned at SC&I

Susan Keith Named AEJMC 2021-2022 President

Susan Keith was installed as 2021–2022 AEJMC president during the virtual 104th Annual Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference held in August. Keith also received the National Communication Association's Visual Communication Division’s Janis Edwards Article of the Year Award for “Night and Day: A Visual Diptych of Hate and Horror in Charlottesville,” co-authored with Leslie-Jean Thornton.

Research News

Melissa Aronczyk received a grant from the Climate Social Science Network for her project, “The Business of Influence: Networks, Narratives and Strategies of Action and Non-action Around Climate Change, 1973 – 2021.” This two-year grant will enable her to examine the networks of American organizations (mainly promotional organizations) that shape the climate change debate, looking at both internal and public-facing (external) strategies of influence.
Mark Beal surveyed more than 200 Gen Zers, ages 13-24, across the U.S. between June 1-15 to gauge their interest in the Olympics.
Doctoral candidate Allyson Bontempo’s paper, “The Need for a Standardized Conceptual Term to Describe Invalidation of Patient Symptoms,” was published by the Journal of Health Psychology.
In his study, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Covid!”: Anti-Lockdown Protests as Necropopulist Downsurgency,” Jack Bratich coined the word “necropopulism.”
Richard Dool led a large national research project to assess whether the “employee voice” is valued and leveraged as an asset in organizations.
Lauren Feldman co-authored a research article, “Advocacy messages about climate and health are more effective when they include information about risks, solutions, and a normative appeal: Evidence from a conjoint experiment” published in The Journal of Climate Change and Health; her book, "A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice" (co-authored with Caty Borum Chattoo), was recognized with an "Outstanding Book Award–Honorary Mention" from the Activism, Communication & Social Justice Interest Group of the International Communication Association.
Doctoral student Taylor Goulbourne, along with Charles Senteio, Kathryn Greene, and Itzhak Yanovitzky wrote a chapter in the third edition of the “The Routledge Handbook of Health Communication,” which provides communication-related and community-based strategies to help improve health outcomes for diverse groups and communities.
Doctoral student Amana Kaskazi published “The crises of 2020: the effects of intersectionality and virality on marginalized youth in the U.S.” in the Journal of Children and Media.
Dafna Lemish and her colleague, Nelly Elias, conducted a cooperative qualitative study in the U.S. and Israel evaluating mobile phone use on parent-children interactions in public places. Their most recent publication of the five that came out of this four-year study, “Food for Thought: Parent-Child Face-to-Face Communication and Mobile Phone Use in Eateries,” written with Galit Rovner-Lev, was published in the Journal of Family Communication. Diana Floegel, Ph.D. ’21 and Dan Delmonaco MI ’19 assisted.
Katherine Ognyanova co-authored a new survey that found Facebook news consumers are less likely than the average American to have been vaccinated.
Caitlin Petre’s book, “All the News That’s Fit to Click: How Metrics Are Transforming the Work of Journalists,” will be released on September 21, 2021.
A research article by Marie Radford and doctoral students Laura Costello and Kaitlin Montague , “Surging Virtual Reference Services: COVID-19 a Game Changer,” was published in College & Research Libraries News.
Yonaira Rivera and Megan Threats recently received highly competitive NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs) awards.
Read more faculty publications here.

Around the School

Doctoral student Veronica Amour was appointed as an expert panelist for the 2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report, Teaching® and Learning Edition.
Kiran Garimella and Shagun Jhaver will join the Library and Information Science Department as assistant professors in the academic year 2021-22.
SC&I presented at the ICA conference. Chenjerai Kumanyika was a conference theme committee co-chair. Jonathan Potter participated in the book launch for “Discursive Psychology and Embodiment: Beyond Subject-Object Binaries,” edited by Sally Wiggins and Cromdal Osavaldsson. The book includes a chapter by Alexa Hepburn: “Managing Embodied Misconduct: Burping and Spitting in Family Mealtime Interactions.”
SC&I participated in the NJLA conference. Marc Aronson, Marie Radford, and Kay Ann Cassell led a book talk session, “A Place for All of Us: Three New Books from RU Faculty on Libraries and Communities.”
David Greenberg received support for his research through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Cullman Fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library; Greenberg’s forthcoming book, “John Lewis: A Life in Politics” will be published by Simon & Schuster.
Vikki Katz and Vicky Rideout’s op-ed, “As schools reopen, we need to hope for the best but prepare for remote learning,” based on the findings from their recent survey of 1,000 lower-income parents about digital inequality, was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.
David Love’s opinion piece, “Residential schools were a key tool in America’s long history of Native genocide: Why we need to grapple with these past atrocities,” was published in The Washington Post.
Students in the DCIM program shared their Spring 2021 capstone research projects.
SC&I welcomes Indra Danti as the Senior Program Coordinator and Jennilee Joost as the Coordinator of Student Services. Danielle Lopez, who previously served as Coordinator, is now a Student Counselor.
Broadcast journalist and MCM student Carlos Ferreira has begun producing “NYPALC TV Magazine,” a digital magazine for the New York Portuguese American Leadership Conference.
Doctoral student Omar Hammad has been named a 2021 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow by The Institute for Citizens & Scholars.
MI students Deborah Popowski and Victoria Sun are recipients of the American Library Association’s 2021-2022 Spectrum Scholarships.
Leo Sacks received an award for writing excellence from the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists for his essay, "My Father, My Son.”
Charles Senteio published an opinion piece, “How sharing what we don’t know can build trust in medical research, for the COVID-19 vaccines and well beyond,” on the MIT Sloan website.
Jorge Reina Schement and co-author John B. Horrigan published an opinion piece, “Competition won’t solve the digital divide—communities will” in The Hill.
Khadijah Costley White was a consultant to producer Ken Burns and co-producers Sarah Burns and David McMahon on “The Greatest,” a documentary exploring the life of Muhammad Ali that premieres on PBS on September 19, 2021.