Nudo publishes creative nonfiction collection about Champaign-Urbana

Sal Nudo (MS ’16, journalism) recently published Far From Mars, which contains nine creative nonfiction articles about individuals who live and work in Champaign-Urbana. The pieces range from dog walkers who adore their Greyhounds to a cassette collector who hosts a local radio show and plays on-air music via the tapes he buys. Readers will also meet […]

Strategic Brand Communication master’s degree prepares professionals for career pivots and accelerates career paths

April 12, 2021 | Da Yeon Eom, Communications and Marketing Intern Traveling across eight time zones in nine countries didn’t stop Michelle Floyd from earning her master’s degree in strategic brand communication. While creating campaigns for class, she also competed at five Olympic-level softball tournaments and spent two professional softball seasons in Italy. Enrolling in […]

Maggie (Mengqing) Zhang

Email address: mz44@illinois.edu RESEARCH INTERESTS Maggie’s research is at the intersection of computational social science, HCI and social media, combining natural language processing and computer vision methods as well as experiments to look into the media effect on people’s opinions and behavior. Recent Publications/Presentations Zhang, M. and Ng, Y.M.M. (2023) #TrendingNow: How Twitter trending topics impact […]

Student’s multimedia project for class gets published in regional newspaper

For his final project in Associate Professor Charles “Stretch” Ledford’s JOUR 215: Multimedia Reporting course in Fall 2020, journalism student Owen Henderson created a piece on the Lory Theater in Highland, Illinois. Ledford helped his student submit it as a freelance piece to the Belleville News-Democrat. Henderson worked with the newspaper’s multimedia producer to get supplementary […]

Advertising and ICR faculty and students present, win awards at American Academy of Advertising annual conference

The Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising faculty members and Institute of Communications Research doctoral students participated as moderators, panelists, and research paper presenters at the American Academy of Advertising annual conference, March 18-20, 2021.  Their research topics included chatbot advertising, online ethical behaviors, advanced computational advertising research, the complexity of brands taking a stand, generational […]

Stephanie Pérez

Email: smg8@illinois.edu Research Interests Stephanie is a PhD Candidate in Communications & Media at the Institute of Communications Research, where her work broadly encompasses mediated Latine/x teen girlhoods, quinceañera ontologies, and streaming media and platform consolidation. Her current projects merge media studies, girlhood studies, Latine/x studies, and cultural studies with reconceptualizations of visibility, presence, resonance, nationhood, […]

Rik Ray

Email: rikray2@illinois.edu RESEARCH INTERESTS    I primarily study how audiences take shape on digital platforms and the ways in which platform logics influence audience behavior. My interest in research design and methodology has also led to collaborations across topical domains such as political communication, public opinion, journalism studies, etc. Recent Publications/Presentations Ray, R., Bhalla, S., & Taneja, […]

Esteemed journalists to discuss media leadership and innovation at virtual kick-off event for Frank Center at College of Media

March 4, 2021 Update April 5, 2021:  The recording of this event is now available to watch on YouTube: The College of Media will celebrate the Richard and Leslie Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media with a virtual kick-off event on Wednesday, March 31, at 7-8 p.m. (CT).  Leslie (Miller) Frank, an Emmy award-winning […]

Advertising alum creates two highest-rated ads for Super Bowl

March 4, 2021 | Marissa Plescia, Communications and Marketing Intern Patrick Burke doesn’t usually like waking up to a work text at 5 a.m. … unless it’s saying that his commercials got the #1 and #2 spots for the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter poll. “If I’m gonna get woken up to a work […]

Sar to serve as president-elect of American Academy of Advertising

Sela Sar, associate professor of advertising and director of the Institute of Communications Research, has been elected president-elect of the American Academy of Advertising. He joins the executive committee on March 19 at the AAA annual conference, and will become president of AAA in March 2022. Sar previously served as vice president of AAA in […]

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