MFA in Design for Responsible Innovation (DRI), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, expected graduation 2027
MALS in American Studies, 2005, Georgetown University
BA in Psychology, 2001, Mount Holyoke College
Course Specialties
Sandage Project / Capstone Course
Digital Content and Social Media Management
AI and Advertising
Writing and Public Relations
Social Media and Personal Branding
Background
Marisa Peacock is the founder and chief strategist of The Strategic Peacock, helping organizations implement effective social media strategies. As a senior lecturer, she teaches the Sandage Project, digital content and social media management and AI and Advertising. She also leads the Social Media Lab, where advertising students gain hands-on experience, build portfolios, and connect with employers—benefiting both businesses and emerging talent.
Research and Creative Endeavor
Marisa is currently pursuing an MFA in Design for Responsible Innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where her research focuses on integrating inclusive design in advertising education by empowering faculty to foster digital inclusivity.
Marisa regularly presents at marketing and media conferences such as the Home Furnishings Association, Seattle Interactive, Illinois Web Con, and ConvergeSouth. Her presentations focus on social media, customer experience, and strategies for businesses of all sizes to enhance their online presence.
PhD, University of Amsterdam (Persuasive Communication)
MA, Jagiellonian University (Psychology)
Course Specialties
Computational Advertising
Consumer Insight
Persuasion
Background
Ewa holds a Ph.D. in Communication Science from the University of Amsterdam and an M.A. in Psychology from Jagiellonian University and completed postdoctoral research at Northwestern University. Ewa has been published in International Journal of Advertising, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Marketing Management, Decision Support Systems, and others.
Awards
Digital Communication Methods Lab (University of Amsterdam, Research Priority Area) research grant 2019. Project: Improving the measurement of consumers’ exposure to online content.
Marketing Science Institute research grant 2018. Project: The effects of trait-based personalization in social media.
Best Paper Award International Journal of Advertising 2017
Best Paper Award Journal of Marketing Management 2016
Top faculty paper award Communication and Technology Division AEJMC Conference 2015, San Francisco, CA
Best paper nominee ICORIA conference 2018, Valencia, Spain
Best paper nominee ICORIA conference 2017, Ghent, Belgium
Research and Creative Endeavor
Ewa’s research investigates how we interact with digital platforms, focusing on how communication design and personalization influence persuasion and platform (dis)engagement. Additionally, she analyzes the impact of deceptive content, such as fake reviews, on consumer decision-making. Using a multi-method approach, integrating experiments, psychophysiology, digital-trace data, and qualitative techniques, she aims to understand the psychological impact of digital communication and inform frameworks that protect user autonomy in an increasingly opaque media landscape.
Select Publications
Maslowska, E., Segijn, C. M., Vakeel, K. A., & Viswanathan, V. (2019). How consumers attend to online reviews: an eye-tracking and network analysis approach. International Journal of Advertising, 1-25.
Kim, S. J., Maslowska, E., & Tamaddoni, A. (2019). The paradox of (dis)trust in sponsorship disclosure: The characteristics and effects of sponsored online consumer reviews. Decision Support Systems, 116, 114-124.
Malthouse E.C., Maslowska, E., Franks, J. (2018). Understanding programmatic TV advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 37(5), 769-784
Viswanathan, V., Malthouse, E.C., Maslowska, E., Hoornaert, S., & van den Peol, D. (2018). Dynamics between Social Media Engagement, Firm-Generated Content, Live and Time-Shifted TV Viewing. Journal of Service Management, 29(3), 378-398
Maslowska, E., Malthouse, E.C., & Bernritter, S.F. (2017). Too good to be true: The role of online reviews’ features in probability to buy. International Journal of Advertising, 36(1), 142-163
Maslowska, E. Malthouse, E.C., & Viswanathan, V. (2017). Do customer reviews drive purchase decisions? The moderating roles of review exposure and price. Decision Support Systems, 98, 1–9
Maslowska, E., Malthouse, E. C., & Collinger, T. (2016). The Customer Engagement Ecosystem. Journal of Marketing Management, 32(5-6), 469-501
Maslowska, E. Smit, E.G., & van den Putte, B. (2016) It Is All in the Name: A Study of Consumers’ Responses to Personalized Communication. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 16(1), 74-85
Maslowska, E., Smit, E.G., & Van den Putte, B. (2013). Assessing the cross-cultural applicability of tailored advertising: A comparative study between the Netherlands and Poland. International Journal of Advertising, 32(4), 487-510.
Maslowska, E., Van den Putte., B, & Smit, E. G. (2011). The effectiveness of personalized e-mail newsletters and the role of personal characteristics. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14, 765-770. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2011.0050.
PhD in Media and Information Studies, 2019, Michigan State University
Educational Technology Graduate Certificate, 2017, Michigan State University
Serious Game Design and Research Graduate Certificate, 2016, Michigan State University
MS in Applied Sociology, 2011, Clemson University
BA in Sociology, 2008, Augusta State University
Course Specialties
Interactive Media & You
Augmented and Virtual Reality
Research Methods in Journalism
Background
Christopher Ball is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His interdisciplinary background is rooted in sociology and media studies, with a focus on emerging and interactive media, particularly immersive media such as augmented and virtual reality.
Ball joined the University of Illinois in 2019 after completing his Ph.D. in Media and Information at Michigan State University. While at Michigan State, he also earned graduate certificates in serious games design and research and educational technology and contributed to a variety of interdisciplinary research projects examining the uses and effects of emerging technologies.
Research and Creative Endeavor
Ball’s research examines how people use, experience, and are affected by interactive and immersive technologies. His work focuses primarily on augmented and virtual reality, video games, and other emerging media, with particular interests in digital inequality and inclusion, media experiences and effects, and the use of interactive technologies for prosocial purposes.
Across this work, Ball examines both the opportunities created by new technologies and the individual and social factors that shape who can access, use, and benefit from them. His research has addressed topics ranging from virtual reality and presence to games and mental health, aging and technology, and immersive media for education.
His research has appeared in a wide range of interdisciplinary journals, including Information, Communication & Society; Telematics and Informatics; Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking; Games and Culture; and JMIR Mental Health.
M.S. Journalism, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
B.S. Journalism, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Course Specialties
Documentary Production
Writing
Video Production
Background
Alison Davis has been producing national documentaries for over two decades. Her programs have received numerous awards including seven regional Emmy Awards and over 20 Emmy nominations.
Davis produced documentaries for the Big Ten Network when she joined Illinois’ Division of Intercollegiate Athletics / Public Affairs in April of 2008. Before that she worked at WILL-TV (PBS) where she was the longtime producer and host of Prairie Fire, a cultural magazine series about the people and places of central Illinois.
Awards
Davis won a 2019 National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Mid-America Emmy award for Illinois Artists: Endalyn Taylor, produced for the Big Ten Network. She won a 2017 Mid-America Emmy award for writing The Game Changer, the story of disability rights pioneer Tim Nugent. In 2015 she won an Emmy for writing the documentary Carlos Montezuma: Changing Is not Vanishing. She was awarded her first regional Emmy in 1999 for her documentary, Walter Burley Griffin: In His Own Right about the talented, but overlooked Illinois architect.
Her documentary Against the Wind, the story of wheelchair athlete Jean Driscoll’s attempt to become the first athlete to win seven consecutive Boston Marathons, was named best Television Documentary in 1997 by American Women in Radio and Television. She was one of 20 producers selected to attend the 2001 WGBH Boston Producers Workshop, where she participated in extensive hands-on training with some of television’s most experienced content creators.
Davis’s other productions include the nationally distributed Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency and Gold Star Mothers: Pilgrimage of Remembrance. She was also nominated for an Emmy for writing Ten Sisters: A True Story.
Nerone is the author or co-author of four books and numerous articles, including “Violence Against the Press: Policing the Public Sphere in U.S. History” (Oxford University Press, 1994), “Last Rights: Revisiting Four Theories of the Press” (University of Illinois Press, 1995), and, with Kevin Barnhurst, “The Form of News: A History” (Guilford Press, 2001), which won the Suzanne Langer Award of the Media Ecology Association and the International Communication Association’s Book of the Year Award. He also co-edits (with Robert W. McChesney) a book series on the History of Communication. His service as a faculty member has included several terms on the faculty senate, membership on the General Education Board, a full range of committees in the College of Media, and service as head of the ICR’s Program Evaluation Committee and as Placement Officer. His areas of interest include the history of communications, historical research methods, American culture.
Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Communications)
Background
Christians is the former director of the Institute of Communications Research and chair of the doctoral program in communications, positions he held from 1987-2001 and from 2007-2009. He has been a visiting scholar in philosophical ethics at Princeton University, a research fellow in social ethics and also a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, and a PEW fellow in ethics at Oxford University. He has a Doctor of Letters D.Litt Honoris Causa Degree from Marquette University and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Emerson College. He was a Charles H. Sandage Distinguished Professor, has won six teaching awards, and is a faculty member in the Fulbright Specialist Program. His research is in the philosophy of technology, communication theory, and media ethics. A Festschrift Ethics and Evil in the Public Sphere has been published in his honor.
He is a founding member of the International Ethics Roundtables with venues in Stellenbosch, Dubai, Delhi, and Beijing. He has lectured or given papers or taught classes in thirty-five countries. He is listed in Whos Who in America, Whos Who in the World, International Whos Who in Education, and Outstanding Scholars of the 21st Century: Communication Ethics. The Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research offers annually the Clifford G. Christians Ethics Research Award. He has been given academic awards such as these: Ethics Scholar Award (Lambda Pi Eta Honor Society, Duquesne University; the AEJMC Presidential Award for distinguished service and AEJMCs Paul J. Deutschmann Award for Excellence in Research; James A. Jaksa Ethics Scholar in Residence; Ralph Crossman and FIRST Scholar awards (University of Colorado); Fellow at the University of Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study; Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism (University of Missouri); Best Edited Book of the Year (with Lee Wilkins, Handbook for Media Ethics); Kappa Tau Alpha Award for Normative Theories of the Media; Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association; James W. Carey Media Research Award; First Place Faculty Research Paper award (with Stephen Ward, from Media Ethics Division, AEJMC); Louis Forsdale Award as Outstanding Educator in the Field of Media Ecology; Charles Colson Award for Outstanding Contribution to Ethics, Media and Culture; and the Guido H. Stempel III Award for Journalism and Mass Communication Research.
Research and Creative Endeavor
He has published essays on professional ethics in Journalism Monographs, Journal of Broadcasting, Journalism History, Ethical Perspectives: Journal of the European Ethics Network, Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, Journal of Communication, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Media Development, Communication, Qualitative Inquiry, Media Ethics, Communication Research Trends, Equid Novi: African Journalism Studies, Qualitative Inquiry, Communications and Convergence Review, European Journal of Communication and the International Journal of Mass Communication Research. He has contributed the entries on media ethics or its equivalent to a dozen encyclopedias and handbooks. He serves on the Editorial Boards of two dozen academic journals, is the former editor of Critical Studies in Media Communication and of The Ellul Forum, and currently serves as the Executive Publisher of Media Ethics. His work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, Ukranian, Mandarin, and Korean.
He completed the third edition of Rivers and Schramm’s Responsibility in Mass Communication, has co authored Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays with Jay Van Hook, and has written Teaching Ethics in Journalism Education with Catherine Covert. His book by Oxford University Press was published in 1993, Good News: Social Ethics and the Press, co authored with John Ferre and Mark Fackler. His book with Michael Traber Communication Ethics and Universal Values was published by Sage, 1997. In 2002 he co-edited with Sharon Bracci, Moral Engagement in Public Life: Theorists for Contemporary Ethics. His book with colleagues Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White, Normative Theories of the Media (2009), and (with Linda Steiner) Key Concepts in Critical Cultural Studies (2010) were both published by the University of Illinois Press. His Handbook of Mass Media Ethics (with Lee Wilkins) was published by Routledge in 2009 (2nd ed, forthcoming). With John Merrill he edited Ethical Communication: Five Moral Stances in Human Dialogue, University of Missouri Press, 2009. Oxford University Press published his book with Mark Fackler and John Ferre, Ethics for Public Communication, in 2012. His sales-leader textbook, Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning with Mark Fackler, Kathy McKee, Peggy Kreshel, Robert Woods, is in its ninth edition (2011) with the 10th forthcoming. He co-edited (with Kaarle Nordenstreng), Communication Theories in a Multicultural World (Lang, 2014).
Diploma, Chicago Counseling and Psychotherapy Center (Client-Directed Clinical Therapy)
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Communications Research)
M.S., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Journalism)
B.A., Morehouse College (English)
Course Specialties
Advertising and Public Relations Management
Crisis Communication
Global Representations of Race and Ethnicity In Advertising
Public Policy for New Media Technologies
Background
Berry’s research and teaching focus is on strategic managerial communication, digital communication technologies and information access in less advanced countries, and advertising and mediated communication practices in the Dominican Republic and Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
Prior to joining the Illinois faculty, Berry worked for 10 years in the telecommunications industry with the AT&T/Illinois Bell organization and the successor Ameritech/Illinois corporation, where he held senior management positions in corporate communications, advertising, strategic planning and customer relations. Specific assignments and responsibilities included: director-external affairs; district manager-corporate issues and corporate public policy; senior manager-advertising; and director-corporate information.
Previously he worked for six years in journalism as an Associated Press reporter in New York City, and as senior staff editor and managing editor with Johnson Publishing Co. (Ebony, Jet, WJPC-AM, etc.) in Chicago. In addition, while on the faculty at Illinois, Berry has served as editorial consultant and writing coach for Morningstar FundInvestor magazine, a publication within the Morningstar mutual funds organization. He has published in both consumer and scholarly media, and he has presented his research at national and international conferences.
He was a Charles E. Merrill Scholar at Durham University and received a diploma from the Chicago Counseling and Psychotherapy Center after completing both the academic and clinical practicum in Client-Centered therapy. Berry is a two-time recipient of the highly competitive Fulbright Fellowship. During academic year 1999-2000, he received the Fulbright Senior Scholar award and lectured and conducted research in the Dominican Republic at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in Santiago, and was Visiting Scholar in Residence at the International Education Resource Center at Universidad APEC in Santo Domingo. He received a second Fulbright award to return to the Dominican Republic for four weeks during January 2007 and May/June 2007 to conduct curriculum review and assessment of the journalism and marketing undergraduate and graduate programs, and to organize faculty professional development seminars at PUCMM. At Illinois, he has received a campuswide award for undergraduate teaching.
He teaches courses in global consumerism, advertising practices in emerging economic nation-states, strategic public relations, and racialized representations in the media.
Recent presentations and publications include, “Putting Crisis Communication Theory Into Action: Untangling Public Information Politics, Policies and Practices to Reach Underprivileged Communities During Katrina-esque Diasters” (2008); “Images and Representation of Middle Class Latinos In Advertisements” (2006); “Mi CAFTA es su CAFTA: Advertising and Communicating the Caribbean American Free Trade Agreement in the Dominican Republic Via the Internet” (2006); “La Presensa Dominicana y la Construcion y Representacion de Identidad African: Photographic Framings of Haitians, Africans, and African Americans in Daily Newspapers in the Dominican Republic” (2005); “Con cellular hay mas orpotunidad: New Communication Technologies and the Democratization of Access to Information and Economic Opportunity in the Dominican Republic and Beyond” (2005); “Communication Policy History In International Perspective” (2004); “Miranda Rights and Cyberspace Realities: Risks to the Right to Remain Silent” (2003).
In addition to his Illinois responsibilities, Berry is a member of the Board of Directors of the Provena Health Corporation, a health system that includes six hospitals, 16 long-term care and senior residential facilities, 28 clinics, five home health agencies and other health-related activities operating in Illinois and Indiana.
I came to the College of Media in 2013 after spending 9 years at the Missouri School of Journalism, where I co-founded and co-directed the PRIME Lab and taught in the School’s Strategic Communication sequence.
Research and Creative Endeavor
My research explores the psychology underlying interactive media use. In other words, how do different attributes of medium, message, person, and situation influence the processes and outcomes of media use? I primarily address this question through experiments that measure physiological and self-report indicators of cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Current/Prospective Students: Collaborating with students on research is one of my great joys. Please feel free to email me anytime if you’re interested in learning more about research and/or working in a media research lab.
If you’re not currently at the University of Illinois but interested in coming here, please feel free to email me about student assistantship opportunities.
