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A conversation with Professor Gayle Jansen Brisbane, PhD

By: Emily Diaz, Nicolas Perez, Nicholas Masuda, Juan Maldonado

On Wednesday, April 12th we conducted a Zoom interview with Cal State Fullerton Communications Professor Gayle Jansen Brisbane as part of our term project for Professor Du’s Principles of Communications Research class (COMM 410). Professor Brisbane’s exemplary background in sports journalism and her experience with communications research made her an excellent candidate for this portion of the assignment. The bulk of our interview concerned questions we had about communications research related to her recent study “Side-by-Side Sports Reporters: A Between-Subjects Experiment of the Effect of Gender in Reporting on the NFL”.Our brief chat with her also provided us with invaluable information that will greatly help us with the final stage of this project, conducting our own research study. Some other topics covered in the interview were tips on pretesting methods, ways to minimize variables, and advice for beginning communications researchers. 

Read More…: A conversation with Professor Gayle Jansen Brisbane, PhD

Professor Brisbane’s CSUF staff bio summarizes her research background perfectly,

“Her research examines the progress of women in sports media as well as the intersection of religion, politics, and the media in our current politically divisive climate.”

This was extremely evident in the study that we interviewed her about (Side-by-Side Sports Reporters: A Between-Subjects Experiment of the Effect of Gender in Reporting on the NFL). The report helped us truly understand what is expected out of a Communications research experiment. The report also helped us realize what areas we still need some work on.  We are grateful for the opportunity to interview Professor Brisbane and share our experience here in this blog post. 

Interviewing Professor Brisbane clued us into the ins and outs of how to properly conduct an experiment and the many different variables that need to be accounted for in order for you to run a successful research survey as she conducted. When asked about advice she would give to newcomers who are looking to conduct their own research she mentions narrowing down your focus of study and making sure to not make it too general which in her words “makes your research more complicated”. Her second piece of advice is to conduct your research on things you are passionate about.

From rebounds to research: Former sports journalist Gayle Jansen brisbane pursues journalism Phd. College of Media, Communication and Information. (2019, January 23).

“If it’s something you are truly interested in it makes it just a more enjoyable process.”

These pieces of advice really summed up her ability to teach newcomers how to properly plan out their research before they even begin the experiment, and shows even though this was her first time conducting an experiment such as this survey, she was open to learning from those who were more experienced and was able to properly conduct her survey afterwards. As a group who is looking to join the media world, specifically sports media where she excelled for 20 years, this was the perfect advice that we needed in order to prepare ourselves for any obstacle or assignment that may be presented to us. She was very insightful when it came to answering our questions and even went more in depth about how and why she conducted this survey and the many different variables she accounted for before she even began the experiment. 

Interviewing Professor Brisbane clued us into the ins and outs of how to properly conduct an experiment and the many different variables that need to be accounted for in order for you to run a successful research survey as she conducted.

When asked about advice she would give to newcomers who are looking to conduct their own research?

She mentions narrowing down your focus of study and making sure to not make it too general which in her words “makes your research more complicated”. Her second piece of advice is to conduct your research on things you are passionate about. “If it’s something you are truly interested in it makes it just a more enjoyable process.” These pieces of advice really summed up her ability to teach newcomers how to properly plan out their research before they even begin the experiment, and shows even though this was her first time conducting an experiment such as this survey, she was open to learning from those who were more experienced and was able to properly conduct her survey afterwards. As a group who is looking to join the media world, specifically sports media where she excelled for 20 years, this was the perfect advice that we needed in order to prepare ourselves for any obstacle or assignment that may be presented to us. She was very insightful when it came to answering our questions and even went more in depth about how and why she conducted this survey and the many different variables she accounted for before she even began the experiment. 

Overall, It was amazing to be able to gain insight from a professor who conducted this study from a similar position, as a university student. She spoke about how student work truly does hold its ground in the industry. The specific topic being studied and how the question is asked is what helps make a study great. Along with the help and guidance of professionals in the attainment and execution of study, as stated before. Something else that she mentioned was how it was not important to weed out all the variables that could affect the study but it was important to account for them. This was one of the reasons why she believed that It was important to narrow down the study as much as one can. More complications typically arise with more variables involved, which develops a greater chance of missed or unaccounted variables. Another important factor that she informed us about including when conducting a study using survey format was to ask more question than needed. Professor Brisbane stated that it is

“Important to think about not only what you want to investigate but some additional things that wouldn’t take very long to ask and give you more options to break it down even further, by gender, by age, by socioeconomic background.”

All of the information she shared with us will help us tremendously when its comes to conducting our own survey because she gave us insight on the most valuable steps and keypoints of the study conducting process.

Interview with Dr. Robert Meeds on “Types of Fantasy Sports Users and Their Motivations”

By Libby Hussung, Tiffany Sanchez, and Xavier Mendoza

Robert Meeds, California State University, Fullerton

Our group had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Robert Meeds on his research study article, “Types of Fantasy Sports Users and their Motivations”, which aims to understand what type of people play fantasy sports and their reasons for doing so. In our interview with Dr. Meeds, we sat down to discuss his role in the study, the motivation behind the study, the methodology that was used, challenges that were faced, and what surprised him about the study.

Read More: Interview with Dr. Robert Meeds on “Types of Fantasy Sports Users and Their Motivations”

Dr. Robert Meeds is currently a professor at California State University, Fullerton in the department of communications. During the early 2000s, when this study was conducted, he was the director of the graduate program in mass communications at Kansas State University. The lead author of the study was Lee Farquhar, one of his master students at the time. Meeds explains that he was asked to be the thesis advisor for the study, therefore, also becoming the co-author of the research article.

At the beginning of the interview, when speaking on the motivation behind this research study, Meeds mentioned how this study started back in 2005. This is important to note because, at that time, fantasy sports was a developing online social activity. No one knew if it would be a “fad” or if it would stick. Now, almost 20 years later it’s clear to see it wasn’t just a fad, but it has grown immensely in popularity and variety. To explain, fantasy sports is a social game where people create imaginary, virtual teams that consist of real life players of an actual professional sport. These fictitious teams play against one another based on the real life players statistical performance in real life games. Back in 2005, this hobby was brand new, so much so that Farquhar was one of the first to study fantasy sports as a social media communication phenomenon. 

Picture taken from The San Diego Union-Tribune

In order to understand the different types of fantasy sports players and their motivation, the study’s participants were asked to sort through sixty statements and place them into three separate piles. The three piles were labeled as “Most characteristic of my viewpoint”, “Most uncharacteristic of my viewpoint” and “Neutral/Ambivalent”. After the piles were made, the participants were then asked to place the three statements they most agreed with into the far right column and the three statements they most disagreed with into the far left column. They were asked to continue this pattern until they had a remaining ten phrases in a middle, neutral column. The participants were also given an open-ended question that asked them to elaborate on their most agreed and most disagreed with statements as well as their overall opinion of fantasy sports. 

For this study, Meeds and Farquhar used a research method known as Q-methodology, which the article noted as an obscure methodology in most disciplines. When asked why Q-methodology was used in this study despite its obscurity, Meeds responded that the method is “a good quantitative means for setting up typologies of people with respect to how they orient around some topic”. He clarified that the difference between Q-methodology and other methods, such as R-methodology which is more commonly used in social science studies, is that it focuses on figuring out “how people correlate among variables”. In most R-methodology studies, it is the other way around, focusing instead on how variables change among people. As a result, Meeds still holds, to this day, that this is the ideal method for the purpose of this study. While he wouldn’t recommend using another method to conduct this study, he reflected that if they had more time he would have liked to have followed up with additional testing on the factors. He would have liked to have conducted either interviews, focus groups, or surveys. However, he stated that the q-methodology was a pretty good methodology for the distance they wanted to take this particular study.

Meeds admitted that one of the limitations of using Q-methodology in this study came when evaluating the results. It was difficult to measure exactly how much participants of the study actually resonated with or how much they opposed the statements. He explained that in order to get a normal distribution, the participants had to sort the statements in a way that is a bit artificial. The participants were essentially asked to say they’re neutral on a lot of statements, when in reality they might have agreed with the majority of them. However, this doesn’t matter too much, he explained, as long as all the participants in the sample follow the same procedure. Meeds added, with this methodology you might not know the degree to which the participants agree or disagree with the statements, but you know what the distribution is in terms of statements. With this being said, Meeds stated that a perk of using Q-methodology is that once a researcher finds participants and acquires the necessary data, the process is pretty smooth. As far as Meeds recalled, they did not run into any real challenges worth noting.

Something interesting Meeds mentioned in his interview, was that when a researcher uses Q-methodology, they approach the study without a hypothesis. So going into this study, they had no expectations and weren’t necessarily surprised with the results since they had no preconceived expectations. On the other hand because this type of research is exploratory, Meeds explained that it was all kind of surprising, because of the fact that they didn’t know the results they were going to get. When asked what surprised him the most while conducting this research study, Meeds mentioned he was surprised by which factors were most important, casual fantasy sports players being the biggest and most stable factor.

Mean z-scores for primary components on all factors taken from the article “Types of Fantasy Sports Users and Their Motivations”

Towards the end of the interview, we wanted to get Dr. Meeds thoughts on the current state and future of fantasy sports. We asked him how he thought the results might differ if the study were to be done today. He thought it would be interesting to do a study like this today, to take some of these principles and apply them into motivations for all kinds of online social gaming, whether it be role player games or typical fantasy sports, in which you have to set up teams and leagues. He mentioned that even his son plays in an MLB fantasy sports league, but for he himself, fantasy sports is not much of an interest anymore. So we probably won’t be seeing any more research from Dr. Meeds on the topic of fantasy sports in the future. However, we were thankful for this time where we were able to speak to him, discuss his research article further, and grow deeper in our understanding of research.

Zoom Interview with Dr. Robert Meeds

The Effects of Using Social Media Excessively in a Society

By: Danielle Cruz, Sasha Kamoku, Caitlin Luu & Kelsey Teague

Dr. Sophie Janicke-Bowles – Assistant Professor at Chapman University in the School of Communication with an expertise in media effects; happiness; positive media; psychology; social media; spirituality.

Dr. Sophie H. Janicke-Bowles is an assistant Ptrofessor at the School of Communication and Communication Studies at Chapman University and is a positive media psychologist that looks into how new media promotes and affects the overall well-being of people along with other factors. Dr. Janicke-Bowles attended Eberhard-Karls University in Germany in 2009. The diploma in clinical and media psychology from Eberhard-Karls University, Tuebingen Dr. Janicke-Bowles earned in Germany is the equivalent to a Masters Degree. She then attended Florida State University where she graduated with a Ph.D. in mass communication in 2013. She, and her research team from Universities in Florida State and Penn State, received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation of $1.9M for 3 years. With this grant the research team was able to “explore how people use and are impacted by media content that elicits self-transcendent emotions such as awe, elevation, gratitude and compassion” according to her biography on Chapman University’s website. Her other research contains reasons why society enjoys media entertainment and how morality factors into it.

Social media has been notorious for negative effects, with issues such as cyber bullying and unrealistic body images as examples. Despite these assumptions, there is a likelihood that social media can actually create a positive effect on its users. A study in 2018 was conducted by the School of Communication at Chapman University professors: Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Ava Nayaran, and Anja Seng. The title of the study, “Social Media for Good? A Survey on Millennials ’ Inspirational Social Media Use”, focused on differentiating and comparing effects on individuals with time spent on social media versus content being consumed. 

“Social Media for Good?”

According to this study, inspiring social media not only has a pleasant and uplifting vibe, but it also gives people energy and promotes social good. While previous research has demonstrated the value of giving social media users the tools to control their usage and produce positive outcomes (e.g., refrain from social comparison and consume more image-based social media; see also Yang, 2016; Pittman & Reich, 2016), the focus of the current study is on the relevance of the content that is consumed and possibly marketed to the millennial generation. Fostering inspirational material could help social media companies and content producers engage the millennial population and improve their wellness. 

The study was conducted from a subject pool at a private university in the western U.S. with a total of 116 participants. The participants were students, with a mean average age of 19.95 years, who were offered extra credit in return for completing an online survey. The figure below from Business Insider displays a survey in 2018 that shows teens’ feelings regarding social media and its effects.

Bhardwaj, P. (n.d.). Half of the teens who think social media has a negative effect on people say it’s because of bullying, rumors, or harmed relationships. Business Insider. Retrieved April 13, 2023, from https://www.businessinsider.com/teens-social-media-effects-mostly-negative-pew-research-2018-6

In our interview with Professor Sophie Janicke-Bowles we discussed social media’s beneficial and detrimental attributes in society. 

Q: Social media has been notorious for having issues such as cyber bullying and creating unattainable beauty standards for young adolescent women. What are some inspirational materials you have seen in the media that outweigh the negative parts of social media? 

A: I have seen several influential individuals on various social media platforms use their voice to speak out on their mental health, weight, spiritual, religious, and professional journeys. Influencers having stories that their following can relate to is a powerful way of communicating the reality behind the posts. While there are influencers that use FaceTune and Photoshop, there are also many that ensure that their followers understand that social media posts do not define and fully capture a person fully. 

The figure below displays the results of Janicke-Bowles study done with a Likert scale showing the uses of social media for the student participants.

Social Media for good? A survey on millennials … – Chapman University. (n.d.). Retrieved April 14, 2023, from https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1057&context=comm_articles

Q: What are the pros and cons of utilizing social media as a means of forming human connection? How could this improve the wellness of others? 

A: Social media as a whole has the power to form human connection in either a beautiful or dangerous way. I would say a pro of social media would be the ability to interact and reach out to people with the touch of a few buttons. The accessibility of social media is incomparable and many people reunite with old friends on social media. People nowadays exchange each other’s handles to better acquaint themselves with each other and sometimes use these platforms to network. These platforms can improve people’s wellness by offering up a chance to build connections, resources, and help to those who are in need. The accessibility to just knowledge and understanding on the platforms is essential to our way of life today. 

Q: In your study, you and your colleagues noted that social media use can inspire individuals and result in self-transcendent emotions. What kind of posts have you or your peers mentally noted as inspirational? How and why does this post create a lasting effect on you?

A: Most of the posts I remember are of simple acts of kindness: such as someone giving a homeless individual food or, most recently, a TikTok influencer paying a street vendor in Anaheim to Disneyland. I also enjoy nature videos from different parts of the world. It really puts the world into perspective, and that most people have so much to see. In regards to why the posts created a lasting effect, it is common for people to remember posts that settle with them personally. Personally, I find acts of kindness to those in need memorable because I have known individuals who were in similar situations. Also, world nature videos resonate with me because it is a dream of mine to go absolutely everywhere I can before I die. One thing to note is that many people remember posts related to their location. I remember food and nature hiking spots that are close to my area because I want to one day experience what others have done near me. 

Interview with Dr. Miya Williams-Fayne

by Kayla Saunders, Kendall Stier, Yareth Vega, and Hannah Antonopoulos

Biography Photo of Miya Williams-Fayne Ph.D. from http://visionariesimageco.com/meet-the-team/

Introduction:

Dr. Miya Williams-Fayne started her career in Communications as a writer and editor at a magazine company. As time passed, she realized that she wanted to become a professor. She earned her PH.D. in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University. While undergoing her doctorate program, Dr. Fayne realized that she could do research that is of interest to her. She has centered her research on the digital black press evolution and in doing so has become an expert in her field. In her paper The Great Digital Migration Exploring What Constitutes the Black Press Online, Dr. Fayne attempts to define the black press in the digital era. Those who have previously or currently worked at a black news outlet were interviewed. This led her to the  conclusion that black media outlets are not required to be black owned and that entertainment news has a large presence in the black press (Fayne 2020). In this interview she talks about the research process behind the paper and goes in depth of how the interviews were conducted.  

Read more: Interview with Dr. Miya Williams-Fayne
Interview:

Q. How did you choose the black news outlets

  • Dr. Fayne began her research with an outlet called Journa-lisms where they had published a list of the top black press sites. Using this as a base for her study, she then used her colleges for recommendations and was able to receive outreach from there. She used snowball sampling by asking other journalists who she should speak to next. She also comments on how she intentionally added a few legacy outlets to her research that went along with her digital outlets. Dr. Faye makes note that some of her outreach was not received, and she had to move on and find other outlets, but at the same time, she was able to have some reach out to her. 

Q. How did you organize your data 

  • Dr. Faye explains that she was able to organize her data using the software MAXQDA, which allowed her to input all of her findings and then code. Her method of coding, she says, was as she went along. From this, there were times she would have to recode her data over again. She found more nuance as she was identifying her data, which would require her to recode. This was helpful to her once she began analyzing her data because it helped to single out the nuances. For the coding specifically, she said that she went by topics that she wanted to write about in her paper, making a note of each one. She gives helpful advice as she explains how she tends to overcode her data, rather than undercoding which would be too broad – making it harder to find answers in the data. 

Q. Why did you do interviews instead of surveys?  

  • “With anything that is qualitative, you can’t get to the why.” With qualitative research you can get an idea of the cause but not the reason behind the cause. She wanted to secure those perspectives, interviews give much more information and context. With an interview, you can ask follow up questions, get deeper responses that help you contextualize what people are saying.

Q. Did you have a time period that defined the traditional black press?

  • For Dr. Faye states that she did not use a specific time period for her research. Instead, she made sure to use ones that originated in print, meaning the ones that were not a digital-first outlet. Ones that were not digital first outlets, what are considered, “Legacy” or “Traditional”.

Journalists at the headquarters of the Baltimore Afro-American Getty Images 2018 from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/critical-role-black-press-civil-rights-movement-has-not-received-ncna859701

Q. Did your previous research indicate that black news outlets were more likely to produce larger amounts of entertainment news or was that new?

  • No, it was already her perception which is why she wanted to do this study because it was different and no one was talking about it. She went into it already having that perception which was supported by her lived experiences – not surprising her at all. When she interviewed the legacy outlets, she found it interesting to learn how they perceived that, which made sense but caught her by surprise when they were more critical of the entertainment content than she expected. There was a clear difference in ideologies between the digital first outlets and the legacy outlets.

Q. Is there anything you would warn us not to do in our research? 

  • Dr. Faye explains how it is important to always get permission to record a conversation before it starts. Even though there are different approaches, she feels it’s safer to let the interviewee know that everything is on the record to avoid confusion. She advises to keep contact to a limit of three emails, with a week in between, to avoid coming off as stalkerish. One thing she notes that is good to do, is ask, “Do you have anything else to add to the conversation?”, at the end of the interview. This gives the interviewee space to share any details they feel are important to add that they might not have gotten the chance to do previously. 

Conclusion:

Through the process of database searching, emailing, reaching out to colleges and snowball sampling, Dr. Fayne’s ability to get multiple perspectives on the current state of the black press. Conducting interviews gave her possible reasons as to why entertainment has a large presence in black journalism. While she was not surprised by the dominant presence of entertainment news in black journalism, she was intrigued by the amount of criticism some black journalists gave towards those media outlets. When asked for advice on how one could conduct their own research she states to always ask for permission to record, never let the interviewee speak off the record, only email someone three times with a one-week gap in between. Lastly, she states that it is a good idea to ask the interviewee if there’s anything else they would like to add as they might provide more insight to the research. 

​​References:

Getty Images. (2018). Journalists at the headquarters of the Baltimore Afro-American . The critical role of the black press in the civil rights movement has not received the attention it deserves. photograph, Baltimore, Maryland; THINK. Retrieved April 13, 2023, from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/critical-role-black-press-civil-rights-movement-has-not-received-ncna859701. 

Visionaries Image Company. (n.d.). Biography Photo of Miya Williams-Fayne Ph.D.  photograph. From http://visionariesimageco.com/meet-the-team/

Williams-Fayne, M. (2020). The Great Digital Migration: Exploring what constitutes the Black Press Online. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 97(3), 704–720. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020906492 

Dr. Ricardo Valencia

By: Jordan Ayala, Kevin Garcia, Nathan Torres


Dr. Ricardo Valencia is a Communications professor at Cal State University Fullerton. More specifically he is an Assistant Professor for the Public Relation emphasis. He has been teaching since 2018 and aspires to change his Assistant Professor title to Associate Professor within this year. He received his doctorate degree from the University of Oregon in 2018. Before that between 2010 and 2014 he was the head of communication section at the Embassy of El Salvador to the United States. He also notably had a background as a reporter and covered international and domestic politics. He now teaches a variety of different classes in Communications Department one of them being Mass Media and Diversity. A class that focuses on the representations of marginalized groups in mass media and pop culture.

Read more: Dr. Ricardo Valencia

Description of Dr. Valencia’s study: In Dr. Valencia’s and Moscato (Co-author) study they utilized theories of framing and mediated public diplomacy to as means to influencing the perceptions of nations within public diplomacy. Using a social media content analysis to examine twitter activity; the study assesses the growing role of public audiences and their participation in “Twiplomacy”.

Twiplomacy

Stock image from Pexels


“What was your inspiration for your study?”

“This paper started when I was a PHD student in Oregon. I wanted to find with my co-author how history shapes the perception of people on Twitter. We tend to think that with the transformations of media and with the perceptions and representations of media, it changes rapididly. But I believe it could be one aspect. But at the same time, representations of media, especially about other countries, remain pretty stable throughout the years. We wanted to know how people in Cuba or people close to the Cuban government, and even people close to the Obama government perceive the opening of relations between Cuba and the United States. What we found is that those historical themes are pretty much similar or based on what happened during the Cold War.”

“What was the research method you used to conduct this study? Was it qualitative or quantitative? Both? How did you decide?”

“I use qualitative and historical methods. In that particular paper, the quantitative method to measuring the type of people who were speaking on Twitter, is mainly descriptive. In a lot of ways, it’s like a census. We were seeing who are the people that are discussing the issues on Twitter. Based on that view, we see a more qualitative approach on the topics that we’re discussing. In this case, it was pretty much quantitative, and we mention that there. But what I tend to do in my other papers is have a quantitative approach just to have an idea and see the phenomenon “

Chart from Dr Valencia’s twitter Research on #ObamainCuba

“What was one major strength and one major weakness of the way you conducted research for this project?”

“I think one of the main things that I was trying with my co-author, who’s Canadian, and I’m Salvadorean, is to see the divide between the United States, beyond just good and bad, and see the historical backgrounds. To see where all the media representation comes from in history. I think that was a strength. Perhaps one of the things I could have improved was understanding how history shaped Obama’s visit to Cuba and understanding how media and public opinion helped make this visit possible. I think a historical analysis with a mixture of media analysis would have been more powerful to have in the article. I think I could have done it. But maybe it would have been a different paper.”


What’s Next?

“In today’s media Landscape, what platform would be interesting in conducting research on?”

“I think I would still use Twitter because it’s the main political arena. I don’t think people really care, but there are some power actors who are always on Twitter. I might go to perhaps to TikTok. That is another powerful platform. But we have been focused, as scholars of strategic communication, is that instead of understanding the general population, I am more focused on powerful actors. I want to see where and understand and especially on TikTok, to see how some elites are shaping. I would be more focused on elites, institutions, and Politicians to see how the messages have been transferred. I would include TikTok in that because I believe on TikTok, you are able to see a lot of content that you aren’t able to see on Twitter. It is also more accessible as well. We are also able to see different types of influencers as well that we didn’t see in our research who are younger. The young people who are talking about this as well who we don’t see on Twitter. It would have been interesting to see influencers from Cuba and get their perspective on the matter. We were interested in Bilingual research as well and we were very interested in seeing how language defined this trip. It’s interesting how what we refer to as social media, is only a small fraction of the media landscape. A type of media I would or should include in the future is personal messaging, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger. These are all platforms we didn’t analyze and in a lot of ways these platforms became more powerful with the election of Donald Trump and the election in Brazil. What we didn’t realize is that a lot of media and politics in Latin America are consumed through WhatsApp.

Conclusion

Dr. Ricardo Valencia, spoke on the inspiration for his study on public diplomacy and how the media transforms, he wanted to study the perception of the United States and other countries through social media. Dr. Valencia also explained his methodology for the study, and how he used both qualitative and quantitative methods for his study. Dr. Valencia also explains the strengths and weaknesses from this study and also how he would conduct research in 2023.

Conversation with Dr. Cynthia King on Research

By Francesca Cruz, Carissa Harris, Delilah Perez, and Louise Vegas

We had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Cynthia King on her research and study on the “Effects of Humorous Heroes and Villains in Violent Action Films.” Dr. King is a Professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. King teaches courses in communication theory and effects, research methods, entertainment and tourism, and public relations.

During the interview, King gave us insights on her research as well as advice on how to approach research and research challenges we might face along the way.  

Read more: Conversation with Dr. Cynthia King on Research

Q1: What are the main challenges you’ve faced in your research area of media effects?

What was most challenging for Dr.King was executing the experiment of comparing violence and humor in violent films and creating material for the experiment. Dr.King had to create and replicate data for each group in the study while making sure that there was a different effect for each group to determine whether or not humor and violence were correlated. Popular action comedy movies such as “Natural Born Killers” and “Pulp Fiction” were coming out during the time of Dr.King’s experiment which were the perfect types of films for this type of experiment.

Q2:  What inspired you to research this topic?

Dr. King mentioned that what inspired her to research this topic was a conversation she had over dinner with her major professor and peers when she was attending the University of Alabama. She reflected back to that time when she was attending the University of Alabama where she had decided already to write her dissertation on health campaigns. What inspired her to change her dissertation from health campaigns to the effects of Humor and violence within films was her interest in humor and violence within films. Dr. King’s professor thought that it was a great idea for her research so King switched her dissertation. At the time, many good films were coming out and inspired Dr. King to make the switch, ones such as “Natural Born Killers” and “Pulp Fiction”. 

Photos from IMDb

Q3: Going back to all the problems and challenges that you’ve faced along the way within your research what would you say is the biggest thing that you learned from it?

When speaking with Dr. King, she explained that the biggest lesson she learned was that if things don’t come out the way you planned them to, you can always go back and explain the logic up front rather than to explain the logic at the end of the research which in her point of view would be more complicated. She states, “oftentimes maybe you’re not sure what you’re going to find and theories might predict certain things but it can be kind of lazy to just be like ‘oh we’ll see what happens’ versus dialing it in and being more specific”. She gave us advice on what questions to ask ourselves when conducting research like what are we going to find, why we’re going to find it, and how it’s going to work. Dr. King notes that the first initial idea will always change, she states that her first thesis idea was no where near the comparison between humor and violence. It wasn’t until she seeked guidance from her Professor at the time who told her that it was a good idea. She states that it’s okay to change your idea until you feel like it’s the right one for you.

Q4: So, you mentioned that the way you collected data was through surveys and then you inputted it into SPSS. How did you narrow down what subjects to research when it came to characters and then the humor and hostility subjects?

Dr. King proposed a question “what is the relevant research for your topic?”, and then further elaborates that in her study she was looking at two different kinds of topics, humor and violence, which compounded the amount of research she had. She noted that she looked at each subject individually, then both together. It also helped that she had her Professor to lean on for advice and some of his thinking overlapped with hers. She points out, “I came from a tradition of thought you know? It’s like when you work in academia there are different like families right of researchers that kind of have different traditions”, so she worked within that framework by looking at existing studies finding the most similar one to what she was researching on. She said it was key to find overlapping ideas in similar studies to find out which theories worked and what didn’t. What she noticed was that a lot of these humor theories still have a lot of hostile elements that are not so friendly. Dr. King mentions that within her research she saw that there was a pattern of “winners and losers and a bunch of jokes” and it becomes a weapon. One takeaway was a metaphor that Dr. King used, “you start with your idea and you kind of like trace it out kind of like a wheel in terms of all these spokes and then you go from there”.

Photo from Dr. Cynthia King’s Research

Q5: If you were starting your project again today, what would you do differently?

What Dr.King would do differently in this study is view different types of humor and violence and see how that affects people while viewing movies. There are many different types of humor, such as slapstick or more physical comedy. Another thing that Dr.King would take into account is how certain genders view movies as comedic because one thing that really differed in her data was that men and women thought that different things were more or less humorous. Examples of differences in how other people view movies and comedy were that men were more likely to find trash-talking funny but women saw it as more annoying. Humor is very subjective but getting into the details of humor would deepen the research and results.

Q6: What advice would you give to new researchers?

Keep it simple.

– Dr. Cynthia King

A seasoned researcher such as Dr. King emphasized that when conducting research there’s no need to overcomplicate it. King mentioned how people can easily get overwhelmed by research and in turn end up fearing it. King made it known that it’s something to try out and once we try it out, we will realize that we are capable of conducting this type of research. Keeping her words in mind will help us apply all of these learned research strategies and have faith in ourselves that if we stick to the basics we will be successful.

Zoom interview with Dr. Cynthia King.

Milleniage Advertising: Reconceptualizing Advertising and Its Role in Forming Social Identities.

by: Farah Kaissi and Erwin Amouzou Ametodji

Dr. Jess Vega-Centeno

Ph.D., and Professor in Advertising at the California State University of Fullerton.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Vega regarding her recently released article: “Milleniage Advertising: Reconceptualizing Advertising and Its Role in Forming Social Identities.” This article emphasizes the fact that advertising plays a huge role when it comes to identity. Dr.Vega breaks down each component within the article that goes hand in hand when speaking to a diverse audience. Advertising today tries to reach different facets of the targeted audience through different types of media. 

We started off the interview by asking her as to why she decided to research about race, gender, class, and sexuality. She stated when she was a PhD student she would think about things that she is most passionate about allowing her to see through a different lens as a woman of color, queer and Latina. She also has experience from both sides of the table in the industry; the advertising side and marketing side. This allowed her to gain more knowledge and experience in order to conduct her research. We spoke about the relationship between advertising and the consumer and the adaptation to ads. She stated “that’s an evil cycle” she goes on to explain how it’s truly both parties that have involvement within this cycle of progression. Advertising entities that want to advertise pay attention to what the consumer is doing and what they want and vice versa. They go hand in hand with one another due to advertising being nothing without consumers because it builds that communication between the both, allowing the marketplace to live and breathe. Continue reading “Milleniage Advertising: Reconceptualizing Advertising and Its Role in Forming Social Identities.”

Interview with Dr. Brisbane on How Women Are Perceived in Sports Media. 

by: Janel Murray, Karen Angulo, Leslie Pineda, Lauren Jefferies

Gayle Jansen Brisbane | Cal State Fullerton – Department of Communications | CSUF. 

We had the chance to speak with Dr. Brisbane about her recent research study published in 2023 called “Side-by-Side Sports Reporters: A Between-Subjects Experiment of the Effect of Gender in Reporting on the NFL.”  

Dr. Brisbane was a broadcast sports journalist for 20 years before earning her Ph.D. in Media Research and Practice in 2019. Throughout her doctoral program, she conducted research studies on topics such as the intersection of religion, politics, and how audiences perceive women in television sports media. She has been able to present her research at the International Communication Association (ICA), Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC), and Broadcast Educators Association (BEA). Dr. Brisbane is currently a professor at Cal State Fullerton who teaches multiple journalism classes on campus, including COMM 325 Multimedia Journalism and JRNL 3804 Sports, Media, and Society.  

Continue reading “Interview with Dr. Brisbane on How Women Are Perceived in Sports Media. “

Dr. Liesel Sharabi: The Enduring Effect of Internet Dating, Meeting Online and the Road to Marriage

By Mia Quezada and Angela Vargas

Introduction

We had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Liesel Sharabi via Zoom on her studies regarding the effect online dating has on long term relationships, specifically marriage. Her research, “The Enduring Effect of Internet Dating: Meeting Online and the Road to Marriage,” focuses on qualitative data from 50 individuals who were engaged or married to someone they met through the internet or online dating applications. 

Dr. Sharabi is an assistant professor and director of Relationships and Technology Lab at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on interpersonal relationships and how they intersect with communications technology. She received her Masters at the University of New Mexico and her PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

The effects of internet dating on long term relationships sought to answer two questions; “What stages characterize the development of online relationships to marriage,” and “What are the long-term outcomes of the stages of development in online dating for relationships?” 

During our discussion, we were able to ask Dr. Sharabi about her research methods and limitations by asking the following questions:

Read more: Dr. Liesel Sharabi: The Enduring Effect of Internet Dating, Meeting Online and the Road to Marriage

What made you interested in conducting a study on this topic?

Dr. Sharabi describes her college years, as a millennial she experienced Myspace and Facebook as the dominating social media platforms. “Everything we did was very much shaped by this emerging social media ecosystem.” At the time, there was a lot of stigma regarding online dating and it was during her graduate years, she saw many of her friends turn to online dating applications. Considering her friends, Dr. Sharabi understood that online dating wasn’t a result of social incompetence but rather a tool used to navigate the social networks within their reach. 

Were there any related ideas that just didn’t pan out?

Dr. Sharabi describes how while doing her thesis for her Masters, she was interested in how people can go from talking online to eventually meeting in person in the context of social media. She distinguishes those who use social media and the internet as a tool to make friends, from those who use it to go on dates and get to know people in a romantic sense. She claims how, “originally a lot of my research centered around social media and eventually pivoted to focus more specifically on online dating.” While both social media and online dating are similar topics, Sharabi ultimately decided there wasn’t enough research on the effects of online dating as a whole—and wanted to change that.

How did you prepare for your research study?

As a social scientist, Dr. Liesel Sharabi focuses on quantitative data for her research. She states, “I collect large samples and use statistics to draw inferences that I hope generalize to bigger populations.” Much of her research is a result of an interest in wanting to predict people’s behavior, and the research of John Gottman who researched marriage, using conversations between couples on conflict topics to predict divorce with 90% accuracy. To make these types of predictions, Sharabi utilizes quantitative data research and depending on the questions being asked, qualitative methods.

What was the most shocking or interesting thing to come out of your research in your opinion?

While studying those in long-term relationships who met via online dating, Dr. Sharabi was very surprised about how many said they don’t tell people how they met despite being in a serious relationship and even engaged or married. She explains how by studying it for so long, she forgot about the “stigma” that can surround these dating apps—being seen as just for hook-ups—when in reality some people meet their life long partner via online dating.

If we conducted a study on this topic, would you recommend us following your method of collecting data?

Dr. Sharabi recommends before conducting further research, to consider the question being asked. While Dr. Sharabi mainly focuses on quantitative research, the question regarding the effects of online dating on longterm relationships seeks a different type of answer. In her research she asked 50 individuals questions with qualitative answers via phone call, with this method she was then able to analyze her date to reach her conclusion. Mainly, Dr. Sharabi encourages us to use the question of  your study to guide you to the research method needed to answer.

What problems or limitations did you encounter in your study?

One big challenge Dr. Sharabi faced throughout her longitudinal research on first dates that came out of dating apps was, “finding people who met on a dating app then went on to meet a new person.” While dating apps are good to get to know someone else, there are hundreds if not thousands of other people using these apps as well so the chances of people talking once and deciding to go on a date without the distraction of anyone else was difficult to come around enough to notice a pattern.

If you could redo this study again, what would you change?

There is always room for improvement, through each research study, you go through the trial and error of your methods, often rethinking different ways to collect data and which mediums. It is through Dr. Sharabi’s experience, that she gained an awareness of things she could have done better, but this only helped her redesign future research studies. She informs that she is “constantly changing” the ways she conducts her research as a result of any recent study she has completed. 

Dr. Liesel Sharabi closed off with advice to help us further our own studies while in undergraduate school.

Ultimately, Dr Sharabi was able to uncover throughout her research that while online dating relationships develop similarly to one’s met face to face, they do not progress the same. With online dating you are able to seek information on potential partners before initiating contact, while diminishing distance barriers as opposed to meeting someone knowing little to nothing about them previously. In the end, online dating created a downstream effect on participants’ relationships allowing for a stronger foundation of intimacy, no shared past or network, and overall better mate choices. We thank her for being so kind as to sharing the ins and outs of her research so openly with us and doing our interview on a short notice.

Graph illustrating some online dating statistics (2021/2022) via Sasi George

Interview with Dr. Liesel Sharabi via Zoom

Perpetuating Stereotypes In News Media

Elise Anguizola Assaf, CSUF

Our group had the opportunity to interview Dr. Assaf, an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at California State University Fullerton. She is an award-winning public relations practitioner that has worked with clients in the fields of healthcare and lifestyle. Our interview is focused on her research paper, Perpetuating Stereotypes: Newspaper headlines covering stories of individuals with mental health diagnoses. Assaf’s conference paper analyzes mental health diagnosis topics in online news headlines, as well as uncovers news agendas and misrepresentations of health topics in media. During the interview, we discussed general conceptual and practical ideas about the research.

Assaf focused on the news publication, The LA Times. Her findings revealed the stereotypes of mental health in the media. One might ask themselves if the publication that was analyzed had any political bias and that’s why the mental health stigma was present. Assaf mentioned she has an understanding of the publication in terms of their stance on politics and does not think the LA Times has a political leaning bias or, has at least not publicly come out and claimed so. Assaf’s research consisted of the usage of content analysis. With her enjoyment of content analysis, selecting this research tool was an easy choice. Assaf believes content analysis aligns with characteristics such as language, stories, and word choice. According to Kerlinger’s definition of content analysis, it is a systematic, objective, and quantitative research method. However, many people consider it a mixed-method approach because it tells a story. If analyzed under this lens, Assaf’s research consisted of both qualitative and quantitative methods which were required by the specific research question. Qualitative can evolve and result in a change of questions throughout the study whereas quantitative sticks to one topic for the entirety of the research. The benefit of a mix-method approach is the high chance of obtaining information from both research methods. Assaf does not like quantitative research and believes the numbers she gathered do not equate to quantitative research and are more qualitative. 

When looking at Assaf’s research we saw she focused on one publication for her research and not multiple posts to see similar aspects. She concluded that she did not look at other publications of multiple online newspapers due to the time and manner of the study. Since it was a college research study, she had limited time to conduct a research process and successfully look at other perspectives and compare her results to multiple online newspapers looking at mental health. Assaf explained that the scope of the project was limited and was not intended to become a research study. We also saw the study had a high sample size and considered if any sample errors would have evolved in her study when she was conducting her research. Assaf explained since it was a public publication that there were no sample errors when doing her research. However, if there was a sample error they would not be able to see it if it was to show later. She explained that when working with online publications take it at face value. This is because there are no face-to-face interactions therefore, it can cause some skewing to happen in her research study. We have concluded that doing a research study on an online source for research is to take it with a grain of salt. This is because sample sizes and results can change over time due to the publication taking it down later and not having accurate results. Therefore it is better to do face-to-face evaluations with your research to get the best results for your study. 

As a group, we enjoyed reading Assaf’s research and found it really telling how the media depicts mental health. Looking towards the future we asked Assaf if we were to use her study to make our own, what would she like to see be further researched. Assaf alluded to the fact that the study can be easily replicated. Just replicating her study can show so much more information because news articles may have changed from 2017 and replicating it can show these changes. Since we are college students with limited resources, Assaf also mentions perhaps looking at more accessible publications such as The Daily Titan or other local publications and looking at the whole publication and the photos that make evoke emotional responses as opposed to just one article. 

When asked about further research on why mental health diagnoses headlines were not published in the health sections, Assaf responded that there are many methods for addressing this issue. Further steps include extensive interviews with writers and editors asking the whys of the story. A question asked may be discussing why there was no health reporter when producing these stories. An additional question we asked Assaf discusses the general topic of mental health and its relation to the knowledge and power theory and news media. Assaf has an understanding of the topic and explains that as people become more aware of mental health, they will have more power in terms of knowledge. However, it all depends on the gatekeepers, such as the editors and producers, to make these decisions. Assaf concludes with her hope that news media will change, but only time will tell. 

All in all Assaf’s research shows a clear understanding of research methods like content analysis. Using content analysis can show a story through the analysis process and reveal hidden agendas or themes, as Assaf’s study does. Her methods showed that mental health needs a better representation and voice in the media. If studies were to be conducted in the future on this topic it would be interesting to see if anything has changed since Assaf’s 2017 study. 

Interview with Dr. Assaf