October 29, 2026 Amanda Ciafone presented the paper “Speculative Aging Futures–Affordances of Retirement Finance Interfaces.” Jiwon Jenn Oh and Namita Gupta organized a series of three panels on “Technospeculation: From Predictive Tools to Imaginative Futurity.” Oh also presented two papers: “From Critical AI Literacy to Co-Liberation: Interfacing Community-Based Knowledge Work in AI Pedagogy” and “Drowning […]
October 20, 2026 Describe your areas of research interest. I study emerging technologies, data and quantification, and persuasion in strategic communication. My research follows two main lines: emerging technologies, focusing on generative AI (GenAI), especially AI-generated summaries, and it also examines the social impact of data and quantification, focusing on numbers in persuasion. My recent […]
September 30, 2026 About the Media Expert Shedding light on some of the most exciting new technologies is Christopher Ball, associate professor in the Department of Journalism with an appointment in the Institute of Communications Research. An AR and VR expert, Ball teaches courses including JOUR 430: Augmented and Virtual Reality, which examines the importance […]
September 4, 2026 The Institute of Communications Research is excited to announce their newest cohort! Please learn more about the students’ research interests below and join us in welcoming them to the University of Illinois College of Media community this fall. For more information, see full student profiles. Mark Burbridge’s primary research areas center around film criticism, media […]
August 19, 2026 Describe your areas of research interest. I’m especially interested in three questions. First, how do people make sense of AI in the first place—what do they believe a machine can genuinely experience, claim, do, or create? Second, what changes when AI moves from simply providing information to recommending, interpreting, and eventually acting […]
August 12, 2026 This year’s conference theme was “Jazz & Jambalaya: Nurturing Harmony and Health in Higher Education.” Presenters included faculty in the Institute of Communications Research, the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising, and the Department of Journalism; and graduate students in ICR’s PhD program and the MS advertising program. A Science Communication paper, “Exploring […]
June 25, 2026 This year’s conference theme addressed “Communication and Inequalities in Context.” College of Media presenters included faculty in the Institute of Communications Research and the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising; graduate students in the MS advertising program; and doctoral students in the Institute of Communications Research PhD program. College of Media research […]
April 22, 2026 Advertising faculty with appointments in the Institute of Communications Research, doctoral students in ICR, graduate students in advertising, and ICR alumni participated in the 2026 annual conference of the American Academy of Advertising, held March 26-29 in Austin, Texas. Through presentations and panels, they discussed research and ideas related to teaching AI and advertising, […]
April 14, 2026 | Jodi Heckel, University of Illinois News Bureau Julie Turnock, professor of media and cinema studies, was one of two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors to be awarded a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship. English professor Christopher Kempf also received the prestigious award. They are among 223 individuals working across 55 disciplines chosen through a rigorous peer-review process […]
March 16, 2026 Jillian M. Báez (PhD ’09, communications and media, ICR), Diana Leon-Boys (PhD ’20, communications and media, ICR), and Institute of Communications Research Professor Emerita Angharad N. Valdivia (PhD ’91, communications and media, ICR) edited a collection that draws on the expanding field of girlhood studies to examine the increasing visibility of the event and the figure of […]