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, […]
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 […]
March 6, 2026 Mukhopadhyaym will join six other graduate students and seven faculty members who will meet at the Humanities Research Institute throughout the year to address how they are rethinking research paradigms. The theme for this year’s Fellowship is “Up Against Erasure,” which invites researchers to persuade others of the stakes of identifying processes of erasure, of […]
February 19, 2025 These sporting events create shared viewing rituals that bring millions of people together to experience the games in real time. And while audiences continue to reach historic highs, even as media habits fragment, it’s worth examining how these events shape identity, fandom, community, and the way people connect with one another. To […]
January 28, 2026 | Kelly Youngblood As a CAS Associate, Ng will take time off from teaching in Fall 2026 to advance her research on “platform migration,” focusing on how regulatory bans, algorithmic shifts, and geopolitical tensions drive user migration between social media platforms. She argues that these shifts are fueling digital nationalism and reshaping […]
December 15, 2025 Ken Burns’s new PBS series The American Revolution is more than a sweeping historical documentary—it illustrates the ways in which journalism helped ignite and sustain the fight for independence. Melita Garza, associate professor and Tom and June Netzel Sleeman Scholar in Business Journalism, and winner of Journalism History’s 2024 essay contest, shares […]