mediated communication and technology | Department of Communication

News

Racial, political cues on social media shape TV audiences’ choices

2026-03-10

Professor Stewart Coles posing in front of a word cloud

Social media users are more likely to watch TV programs that are endorsed by members of their political party, a recent study suggests. However, individuals’ racial identity and their perceptions of racial and political ingroup norms and the demographics of a program’s intended audience also...

New book edited by LLS faculty examines how the contemporary reboot craze perpetuates inequality

2026-03-04

Isabel Molina-Guzmán and Angharad N. Valdivia.

From Ghostbusters to Charmed, reboots, remakes, and revivals of TV shows and movies have flooded Hollywood over the last decade. A new collection of essays examines how the contemporary reboot craze perpetuates systemic biases around race, gender, and sexuality. Rebooting...

Brilliant white male characters more believable, some viewers say in communication professor's study

2024-11-22

Mustafaj sits in front of a screen displaying films used in her study

Brilliant characters often play key roles in movies and TV shows. However, when these characters are played by women and people of color, some audience members dismiss them as unrealistic, even if they portray real people and events, a recent study found.University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign...

Travis Dixon named David L. Swanson Professor of Communication

2024-10-18

Dixon poses with department and university leadership after being honored

In a ceremony hosted by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, communication professor Travis Dixon was honored as the new David L. Swanson Professor of Communication.Dixon, whose research focuses on the prevalence and...

Will social media polls accurately predict the winner of the U.S. presidential election?

2024-07-30

Professor Yang leaning against marble columns

Communication professor JungHwan Yang, a co-principal investigator on a research project and a website that examine the informal polls about the U.S. presidential election posted on X, formerly Twitter. Yang spoke with News Bureau research editor Sharita Forrest about the project.

White people more likely to confront authors of racist online posts to set discussion rules

2024-02-12

White people surveyed in a recent study indicated they would be more likely to confront those who post racist content on social media if their objective were to defend the norms for political discussions rather than to change the person’s prejudiced beliefs. Communication professors...

Blast from the past

2023-01-08

Trinity mushroom cloud in black and white

Fewer than 120,000 U.S. World War II veterans are still alive in 2023. People who lived through the war are relatively few. Why then, in an age of shortening attention spans and character limits, would a three-hour-long biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer interest the modern audience? Although...

Barbenheimer: The Internet sensation that stole headlines and made its way into the classroom

2023-01-08

A pink-toned image of the word Barbie in a stylized font behind a pink mushroom cloud explosion

Barbenheimer, the portmanteau for Barbie: The Movie and Oppenheimer, captured headlines this summer. But how did two films that were seemingly polar opposites get grouped into a suggested double-header and become so inextricably linked? At face value, the only thing they share is a premiere date:...

The Bad Rap for Rap

Professor Travis Dixon studies how stereotypes influence and affect audiences of media content. In a recent collaborative project, Professor Dixon investigated the prevalence of stereotypes associated with rap music, such as substance abuse, misogyny, and violence. His project found that such...