mediated communication and technology

 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-...

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...

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 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...

 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 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:...

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...