The Media, Technology, and Society emphasis in the Department of Communication offers a diverse, interdisciplinary approach to the study of how communication technologies and cultural processes shape identities, communities, relationships, and subjectivities. Faculty research focuses on science & medicine, Internet & new media studies, and critical pedagogy, paying close attention to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in society. The MT&S area works closely with health communication and rhetoric, allowing graduate students to develop unique plans of study in fields such as health communication technology, rhetoric and cultural studies, or rhetoric of science and technology. The MT&S faculty offers graduate students a broad array of methodological perspectives, including qualitative and quantitative methods, discourse and conversation analysis, and critical cultural studies, preparing students to become academic leaders in emerging lines of communication studies

Faculty

Katherine Hendrix, PhD, Professor
Dr. Hendrix is currently editing a special issue of New Directions in Teaching and Learning which investigates the experiences of non-native English speaking international graduate teaching assistants and professors who teach courses in the Communication discipline where they are required to assess the oral performance of their U.S. American students. The issue explores the communicative strategies these educators use to build and maintain their credibility in the classroom as teachers with English as a Second Language. Some of her recent publications include:

Hendrix, K. G. (2011). The growth stages and maturation of an outsider-within: Developing a critical gaze and earning the right to speak. Qualitative Inquiry, 17, 315-324.

Hendrix, K. G. (2011). Home as respite for the working-class academic. In A. Gonzalez, M. Houston, & Chen, V. (Eds.). Our voices: Essays in culture, ethnicity, and communication (5th ed.) (pp. 240-246). New York: Oxford University Press.

Marina Levina, PhD, Assistant Professor
Dr. Levina conducts research in the fields of critical cultural studies of science, technology and medicine, visual culture, and media studies. She published work on health information technology, personal genomics, biocitizenship, networks and globalization, and visual culture’s engagement with scientific and medical research. Her representative publications:

Post-Global Network and Everyday Life (first editor, co-edited with Grant Kien), Digital Formations series, Ed. Steve Jones. Peter Lang Publications, 2010.

“Googling Your Genes: Personal Genomics and the Discourse of Citizen Bioscience in the Network Age” in Journal of Science Communication, 9(1), 2010

Kris Markman, PhD, Assistant Professor
Dr. Markman’s current research is focused in two main areas: language and discourse in computer-mediated contexts, and new media and participatory culture. In the first area she is currently working on several projects examining the structural features of instant messaging interactions. Her second research area is represented by an ongoing study of the motivations and activities of independent podcasters. Her recent publications include:

Riordan, M. A., Markman, K. M., & Stewart, C. O. (in press). Communication accommodation in instant messaging: An examination of temporal convergence. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32.

Markman, K. M. (in press). Conversational coherence in small group chat. In S. Herring, D. Stein, and T. Virtanen (Eds.), Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication (pp. 531-556). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Craig Stewart, PhD, Assistant Professor
Most of Dr. Stewart’s research investigates socioscientific controversies, as well as other aspects of media discourse. He is currently comparing how climate change is represented in science -versus policy-focused news discourse. He is also working with a former graduate student on investigating the role of gender and verbal aggressiveness on perceptions of political speakers. His recent publications include:

Stewart, C. O. (in press). Strategies of verbal irony in visual satire: Reading The New Yorker’s “Politics of Fear” cover. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research.

Stewart, C. O., Pitts, M. J., & Osborne, H. (2011). Mediated intergroup conflict: The discursive construction of "illegal immigrants" in a regional U.S. newspaper. Journal of Language & Social Psychology, 30, 8-27.