Information and Media Ph.D. Program at Michigan State University

11/25/2025

Our ComArtSci graduate students are facing real financial challenges, especially during the summer months when support is limited. We’re launching a crowdfunding effort to build an emergency fund that can provide fast help when students need it most.

If you’d like to make a difference, learn more and give here: https://givingto.msu.edu/causes-to-support/crowdpower/comartsci-grad-student-emergency-fund

Thank you for supporting our students and helping them stay focused on their work and well-being.

University Advancement 535 Chestnut Road, Room 300 East Lansing, MI 48824 *Make check payable to Michigan State University and write “Appeal ” in the note section.

07/23/2025

📣 Dissertation Defense Announcement

Join us in supporting Gisele Neuls as she defends her dissertation: The Answer is Us: Framing and Communication Strategies in the Brazilian Amazon Indigenous Movement (A Resposta Somos Nós: Estratégias e Enquadramento de Comunicação do Movimento Indígena da Amazônia Brasileira)

🗓 Monday, August 4, 2025
🕐 3:00PM EST
💻 Zoom: https://msu.zoom.us/j/91448653643
📍 The first part of the defense is open to the public.

Abstract:
This dissertation investigates how the Indigenous movement in the Brazilian Amazon constructs and performs collective action frames through its institutional communication practices, with a focus on the Joint Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB). Drawing on framing theory, social movement studies, and Indigenous epistemologies, this study was co-designed with Indigenous researchers and uses decolonial, reciprocal, and participatory methodologies. Fieldwork consisted of twelve months of participant observation, both in-person and online, as well as interviews and collaborative data analysis. The research identifies territory as a master frame for Indigenous movements, articulated with environmental justice and Indigenous agency. These frames anchor the movement’s campaign “The Answer is Us,” launched to influence international climate negotiations ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil in November 2025. The dissertation argues that COIAB’s communication strategy foregrounds territory as an existential and political category, inseparable from Indigenous agency and representational sovereignty, and articulates it as a collective reclaiming of the power to participate in global climate negotiations. The analysis also reveals how COIAB navigates the constraints of digital infrastructure and colonial legacies while leveraging a grassroots communication network that spans 64 ethnoregions. This study contributes to the fields of Indigenous communication, and social movement theory by offering an empirically grounded, theoretically informed account of how Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon are reshaping global discourses on climate justice.

📸 See flyer below for more details!

07/22/2025

📣 Dissertation Defense Announcement

Join us in supporting Barikisu Issaka as she defends her dissertation: Exploring Culturally-Centered ICTs for Mental Health Support: Understanding the Role of Islamic Culture and Religiosity in Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Muslims in the U.S.

🗓 Monday, July 28, 2025
🕐 1:00PM EST
📍In Person: CAS 191
or
💻 Zoom (passcode 610102): https://msu.zoom.us/j/94074932448
📍 The first part of the defense is open to the public.

Abstract:
Mental health disparities persist among racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in the United States, with Muslims living in the U.S. (MLUS) facing unique challenges shaped by intersecting factors such as Islamophobia, discrimination, and acculturation stress. Despite a high prevalence of mental health concerns, MLUS underutilize professional psychological services, a pattern influenced by cultural stigma, religious beliefs, and systemic barriers including lack of culturally competent care, financial constraints, and institutional mistrust.
Guided by the Culture Centered Approach (CCA), this dissertation amplifies the voices of MLUS to explore how Islamic culture and religiosity shape perceptions of mental health, help-seeking behaviors, and engagement with information and communication technologies (ICTs) as potential support tools. Using a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological design, the study draws on semi structured interviews with 22 Muslim adults in Michigan from diverse backgrounds.
Key findings reveal that participants distinguish between cultural stigma and Islamic teachings, with stigma primarily rooted in ethnic or national cultures rather than religion. Islamic beliefs and practices serve as both protective coping mechanisms and frameworks for meaning making yet can also create feelings of guilt or inadequacy when religious coping alone is insufficient. Structural barriers, such as affordability, language, lack of culturally or religiously matched providers, and concerns about confidentiality further complicate both help-seeking and care.
Participants demonstrate agency by seeking faith-aligned mental health content, utilizing digital tools for privacy and validation, and proposing culturally resonant solutions. ICTs, including teletherapy, mental health apps, and social media, are valued for their privacy, accessibility, and ability to provide judgment-free support, but concerns about data security and the lack of human connection remain. Participants advocate for faith-integrated digital interventions, mosque based mental health services, culturally competent providers, and leveraging community resources like zakat for mental health support.

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07/17/2025

📣 Dissertation Defense Announcement

Join us in supporting Marialina Antolini as she defends her dissertation: Doing Activism while being a young woman of color in Brazilian Favelas: Negotiating layers of intersectionality and hegemonic structures of power in social media platforms' storytelling process

🗓 Tuesday, July 22, 2025
🕐 2:00PM EST
💻 Zoom: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94074932448
📍 The first part of the defense is open to the public.

Abstract:
This study examines how young women of color from Brazilian peripheries, or favelas, utilize social media platforms to engage in activism. Drawing on Gramsci's understanding of hegemonic power, this research examines four power structures—colonialism, race, gender, and media—to understand how these layers of intersectionality influence and are influenced by both the participants and the collective actions in which they are involved. Based on a set of qualitative methods, the research is composed of three studies: the first involves in-person ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews; the second consists of online ethnography, focusing on the analysis of social media profiles and usage by the participants and their groups; and the third includes interviews with young women engaged in two types of collective action - grassroots movements and top-down organizations. The findings reveal that social media platforms are a central part of the lives of these young women of color, as well as the groups they participate in, becoming the primary space for existence and activism. As a result, the boundaries between online and offline environments are increasingly blurred. The study also shows that these platforms play a crucial educational role, particularly in relation to race and gender, where networks of support and care emerge despite the barriers present in these spaces. Finally, a significant distinction is identified in the approaches adopted by the groups: while grassroots movements operate with a collective and community-based focus, top-down organizations tend to prioritize individual growth, professional development, and the self-esteem of the girls involved.

📸 See flyer below for more details!

07/02/2025

📣 Dissertation Defense Announcement

Join us in supporting Caitlin Geir as she defends her dissertation:
Creating Space for Women and Q***r Folk in Video Game Communities: Culture Circles as a Participatory Methodology for Community Empowerment

🗓 Thursday, July 10, 2025
🕐 2:00PM EST
💻 Zoom: https://msu.zoom.us/my/geierac
📍 The first part of the defense is open to the public.

Abstract:
Women and q***r folk are frequently marginalized in gaming communities: this is a much-studied phenomenon. Far fewer studies have focused on interventions which empower marginalized players to make safer, more supportive communities for themselves. To that end, this dissertation presents a methodology based on Freirean culture circles: participant-led discussion groups which focus on critical discourse as a means of emancipation (Freire, 1968). The culture circles in this study were a blended, qualitative approach which drew from feminist and q***r research practices, methods for community-based online research, the concept of participatory culture drawn from fandom studies, and an ethics of care. This allowed the culture circles in this study to be adapted to a specific population (women and q***r folk) with a specific interest (video games) and in a specific place (Discord). The design of Discord server where the study took place and the structure of the culture circles was informed by background ethnographic research and interviews with participants and iterated upon using a participatory process in collaboration with participants.
The two culture circles in this study met weekly on Discord from September to December 2024. During circle meetings, participants engaged in critical dialogue around the topics of gender and gaming. Through this process, participants were able to better understand their own experiences and produce knowledge which allowed them to find space to make meaningful and positive change in their lives. Two examples of circle outcomes are discussed in the dissertation. First, participants shared and developed q***rgaming practices: means of engaging with games and gaming culture which are alternative to normative structures and which make space for q***r bodies and q***r modes of play. These findings extend Edmond Chang’s (2017) initial q***rgaming framework by showing that q***rgaming practices are built atop a critical praxis and was deeply participatory in nature. Second, participants used critical narrative analysis within the circles to examine the effects of societal narratives on media and on their own lives. In doing so, participants developed new narratives which matched their own values and through those narratives, found space to make meaningful change. I also used critical narrative analysis to interpret the narratives and practices participants developed in the circles, and in doing so, extended Souto-Manning’s (2014) conception of the critical narrative analysis tool to include media narratives as an important object of analysis.
This study contributes to the fields of games studies and to computer supportive cooperative work (CSCW) by showing the value of an interventionalist approach in online research which focuses on community well-being. This dissertation also provides a blueprint for adapting culture circles to a unique context through close consideration of the place, demographics, and interests of the people the circles are intending to impact and through collaboration with participants. Ultimately, this dissertation is a call for interventionalist research which materially improves the lives of participants in the process.

References
Chang, E. Y. (2017). Q***rgaming. In B. Ruberg & A. Shaw (Eds.), Q***r Game Studies (pp. 15–24). University of Minnesota Press.
Freire, P. (with Macedo, D. P., & Shor, I.). (1968). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.; 50th anniversary edition). Bloomsbury Academic.
Souto-Manning, M. (2014). Critical narrative analysis: The interplay of critical discourse and narrative analyses. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27(2), 159–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2012.737046

📸 See flyer below for more details!

06/27/2025

📣 Dissertation Defense Announcement

Join us in supporting Ava Francesca Battocchio as they defend their dissertation:

Place, Identity, and Hybridity Matters: An Ethnographic-Computational Study of Critical Information Ecosystems in Remote Communities in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

🗓 Tuesday, July 1, 2025
🕐 10:00AM EST
💻 Zoom: https://msu.zoom.us/my/afbat
📍 The first part of the defense is open to the public.

Abstract:
Rural communities face unique information challenges, yet current theories largely remove the contextual elements that are essential for understanding how place-based information systems actually operate. Furthermore, existing scholarship often treats rural as monolithic rather than recognizing diverse experiences, while depicting rural information environments as reactionary systems responding to local news loss and technological disconnect. This contributes to deficit framings that overlook the reality: rural information systems are often diverse, vibrant, and long-established networks that communities have intentionally developed over generations. One way to better understand the diversity of these environments is through Communication Infrastructure Theory (CIT) which identifies storytelling networks that facilitate information flow. However, CIT cannot account for the place-based identity processes that systematically determine who gains access to these networks.
This dissertation argues that place, identity, and hybridity matter for understanding these sophisticated rural information ecosystems in ways current scholarship overlooks. To address the gap in Communication Infrastructure Theory—how identity creates gatekeeping and uneven access to storytelling networks—I develop Informational Belonging, a framework extending Abdelal et al.’s (2006) operationalization of identity to place-based contexts. The framework centers four dimensions of place-based identity assessment: constitutive norms (who we are because of where we are), social purposes (what we do here to care for our own), relational comparisons (where you fit in our social map), and cognitive models (how you understand how things work here).
Using convergent mixed methods, I explored how these information ecosystems and identity dimensions work together in practice. Computational analysis of 253,392 Facebook posts from 1,793 organizations across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula revealed a 9.4:1 ratio of non-news to news organizations – demonstrating that what appears as information deserts actually represents vibrant hybrid ecosystems where non-news actors play central roles. Historical geospatial visualization spanning 1867-2023 suggests that the importance of non-news actors emerges from long-established patterns in remote communities that have always been light on traditional news coverage, making non-news actors central by necessity and design over generations rather than as recent responses to media decline. However, when attempting to identify critical information content to understand how non-news actors may play such a critical informational role, the ensemble classification model combining RoBERTa and CardiffNLP transformers systematically struggled with place-specific cultural references that speak to identity dimensions (macro F1 = 0.348, Cohen’s κ = 0.296), revealing systematic boundaries in algorithmic approaches to understanding what constitutes critical information in place-based contexts.
These computational boundaries elevated the importance of ethnographic investigation to understand how identity dimensions determine network access. Fieldwork conducted over 24 months in “Huronia," a pseudonymized remote community, demonstrates how accessing networks requires demonstrating competence across all four dimensions through linguistically-mediated constitutive norms. Communities assess participants across complex insider-outsider distinctions extending beyond resident-tourist categories to include nested place identities. During crises, a "values override" mechanism demonstrates the framework’s dynamic integration: social purposes centered on community care can temporarily supersede the other three dimensions—constitutive norms, relational comparisons, and cognitive models—allowing communities to simultaneously maintain protective boundaries while enabling collective care through personal relationships rather than institutional channels.
This research addresses limitations by developing a framework that emphasizes place-based context, recognizes the rural continuum, and documents community infrastructure established over generations. This work provides tools for identifying what is present rather than focusing on perceived deficiencies.
Understanding how place, identity, and hybridity influence information access can help differentiate between interventions that enhance existing community assets and those that inadvertently undermine established practices. Rather than assuming communities lack sophisticated information systems, this framework lays the groundwork for recognizing and supporting the networks that fulfill critical community needs.

📸 See flyer below for more details!

06/26/2025

📣 Dissertation Defense Announcement

Join us in supporting Chaeyun Lim as she defends her dissertation:
Understanding Virtual Meeting Engagement in the Professional Environment: Conceptualization, Development, Validation, and Application of Virtual Meeting Engagement

🗓 Thursday, July 10, 2025
🕐 1:00PM EST
💻 Zoom: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94976981061
📍 The first part of the defense is open to the public.

Abstract:
With the growing need for remote work and collaboration, virtual meetings—synchronous interactions facilitated by technology-mediated communication—have become increasingly common across various professional settings, including workplaces and classrooms. Scholars and practitioners alike recognize that effective virtual meeting practices and tools are essential for mitigating negative outcomes (e.g., Zoom fatigue) while fostering positive experiences such as meeting engagement. Understanding virtual meeting engagement is also critical from an equity perspective, particularly in examining how technology use and communication behaviors intersect with personal characteristics such as health conditions and status characteristics (e.g., gender, race, job level) to shape individual engagement. Chapter 1 introduces the significance of virtual meeting engagement and its relationships with other factors and behaviors in virtual meeting environments. Chapter 2 explores professionals’ lived experiences with virtual meetings and their perceptions of engagement through qualitative interviews with individuals who regularly participate in virtual meetings for professional purposes. Building on these insights, Chapter 3 conceptualizes, develops, and validates a Virtual Meeting Engagement (VME) scale. Informed by the qualitative findings and the validated scale, Chapter 4 investigates the relationship between social interaction anxiety and virtual meeting fatigue and engagement. This chapter draws on the Hyperpersonal Model and impression management theory to examine how virtual meeting technologies may help alleviate anxiety-related barriers to engagement. Chapter 5 focuses on how individual status characteristics (e.g., gender, racial identities, job levels) influence virtual meeting fatigue and engagement, further exploring whether specific virtual meeting features (e.g., camera control, avatars, filters) can mitigate these effects by supporting impression management and reducing fatigue. Building upon the literature about virtual work, social presence, and social facilitation, Chapter 6 examines the role of social presence in shaping virtual meeting engagement, analyzing how meeting features and modalities are associated with social presence and engagement. This dissertation project integrates perspectives from media psychology, computer-mediated communication, and organizational communication, offering theoretical contributions to the understanding of engagement, fatigue, impression management, mental health, and social presence in virtual meeting contexts. Ultimately, this project advances knowledge of how virtual meeting engagement contributes to effective computer-mediated group communication, promoting employee well-being, collaboration, and a sustainable virtual workplace culture.

📸 See flyer below for more details!

06/16/2025

📣 Dissertation Defense Announcement

Join us in supporting Leilane Rodrigues as she defends her dissertation:

From Control to Liberation: A Genealogy of Images Depicting Racialized Violence in Brazilian Media

🗓 Monday, June 30, 2025
🕐 1:00PM EST
💻 Zoom: https://msu.zoom.us/j/4191372290
📍 The first part of the defense is open to the public.

Abstract:
This study examines how Brazil’s hegemonic media perpetuates racial violence by producing and naturalizing stereotypical imagery of Blackness and violence. Through a historical comparison of Black and mainstream media from the 19th to the 21st century, the study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to interrogate media representations across key periods. It pursues two central objectives: (a) to demonstrate how hegemonic media have systematically normalized anti-Black violence through recurrent dehumanizing archetypes, and (b) to illuminate counter-narratives of resistance forged by Black media as acts of communal self-defense. This study concludes by proposing frameworks for engaging with Black media through the lens of Critical Race Media Literacy (CRML). It outlines actionable pathways for CRML initiatives to center Black media consumption as both a form of self-defense and a strategy for harm reduction.

📸 See flyer below for more details!

05/02/2025

Yesterday, we celebrated our Ph.D. graduates as a college—and later today, we’ll proudly cheer them on as they cross the stage and are hooded at commencement!

To the Class of 2025 in Information and Media: Your four-year jourMichigan State University College of Communication Arts & Sciences, and meaningful mentorship. You’ve pushed boundaries, asked bold questions, and contributed to shaping the future of our field.

As you step into this next chapter, know that you’ll always have a home here in the MSU College of Communication Arts & Sciences. We are incredibly proud of everything you’ve accomplished and can’t wait to see the continued impact you’ll make on the world.

Congratulations, Doctors!

03/17/2025

🚨 Exciting News! 🚨

The MSU Information and Media PhD Program is proud to be a sponsor of the Meaningful XR Summit 2025! 🎉 This incredible event brings together scholars, creators, and industry leaders to explore the power of Extended Reality (XR) in shaping our world.

At MSU, we’re dedicated to advancing research in media, technology, and communication, and we’re thrilled to support a space where innovation meets impact. If you're passionate about XR and its role in storytelling, education, and society, this is an event you won’t want to miss!

📅 Learn more about the summit: https://www.meaningfulxr.org/home

Submissions are under review! 🎉🎉🎉 We received 60 submissions from 137 unique authors. Reviews are underway. We hope to announce decisions by April 1 and the hotel block shortly thereafter.

02/13/2025

Congratulations Moldir on a great story about your teaching journey!

https://www.facebook.com/100004109856157/posts/3049068781906754/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

Michigan State University is fortunate to have passionate educators who are committed to enhancing the experience of their students and who help to provide the best education possible.The Graduate School is featuring some of these educators – graduate and postdoc educators – every month to share...

12/07/2024

Tonight we celebrated the end of the semester with a fun event with students and faculty! Doctorate of Decoration: PhD Gingerbread House Showdown!