Research and Creative Endeavor 4 | DEV College of Media

Institute of Communications Research to present Distinguished Speaker Series this spring

December 11, 2023

The Institute of Communications Research will present a Distinguished Speaker Series this spring, showcasing some of the most renowned scholars in the fields of communication and media studies.

“This is our chance to engage with and glean insights from the thought leaders in our field,” said Mike Yao, director of the Institute of Communications Research and professor of digital media in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising.

Researchers with a variety of expertise will participate in the enriching series, which offers an opportunity to interact with speakers, a keynote talk, followed by a light reception.

Yao encourages others to attend the series to connect, engage, and be inspired by the guest speakers.

PRESENTERS

“Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls, or, Navigating the Streams of Communication and Technology”
February 22: Steve Jones (MS ’84, journalism; PhD ’87, ICR), Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois Chicago; current editor of New Media & Society and co-editor of Mobile Media & Communication. Jones’s books have earned him critical acclaim and interviews in national and international media. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and the Tides Foundation.

“Marketers’ Cultivation of Digital Resignation in an AI Media Era”
March 28: Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Media Systems & Industries at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Turow is an elected Fellow of the International Communication Association and was presented with a Distinguished Scholar Award by the National Communication Association. He has authored 12 books, edited five, and written more than 160 articles on mass media industries. This talk is co-sponsored by the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising.

“Media-Induced Self-Transcendence: Evidence and New Directions”
April 4: Mary Beth Oliver, Donald P. Bellisario Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Film/Video & Media Studies at Penn State and Fellow and immediate past president of the International Communication Association. She is former co-editor of Media Psychology and associate editor of the Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, and Journal of Media Psychology. Her recent publications have appeared in numerous communication journals. This talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Communication.

“The Other Side of the Smart Phone: MEMS Sensors and the Tiny Matters of Mediation”
April 10: Lisa Parks, Distinguished Professor of Film and Media Studies and director of the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab at University of California, Santa Barbara. Parks is a media scholar with a research focus on satellite technologies and media globalization; critical studies of media infrastructures; media, militarization, and surveillance; and environmental media. She is a 2018 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. This talk is co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Institute.

“Reflecting Identity, Signaling Attention, Shaping Language: Examining Digital Social Practices”
April 25: Nicole Ellison, Karl E. Weick Collegiate Professor of Information and Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan, and current chief editor of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Ellison’s research interests include computer-mediated communication, mediated interpersonal interaction, self-presentation, use of social media in organizations, relationship initiation and maintenance in online contexts, virtual communities, social network sites, online dating sites, educational uses of new technologies, and college access and social media. This talk is co-sponsored by the School of Information Sciences.

Ham chosen as second Sandage Scholar in Advertising Research

October 31, 2023

Chang-Dae Ham, associate professor of advertising and associate head of graduate studies, was selected to become the next Charles H. Sandage Scholar in Advertising Research.

Ham was chosen based on his research proposal, “Reflexive Persuasion Game between Human Intelligence (HI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Marketplace: Exploring Consumers’ AI Literacy and Coping Mechanism with AI as Persuasion Agents.”

The Charles H. Sandage Scholar in Advertising Research was established in 2021 to honor outstanding associate professors in the department who are accomplished researchers in the field of advertising, media, or communication research with the potential for continued achievement. The Sandage Scholar designation is for two years, with recipients receiving $12,000 per year in discretionary funding for research.

In line with the fund’s guidelines, full professors in the department provided evaluations on the research proposals. Based on the positive feedback received, Ham was selected as the Sandage Scholar recipient for the next two-year term (2023-2025).

Media, FAA faculty’s collaborative film-poem ‘Factories at Sea’ selected for multiple film festivals

October 30, 2023 | Kelly Youngblood

Victor Font and Cristobal Bianchi — Victor Font, lecturer of media and cinema studies, and Cristobal Bianchi, assistant professor of studio art, created the three-minute film-poem Factories at Sea. The Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies screened the film followed by a Q&A during a welcome event. (Photo by Isabella Pennebaker, photography intern.)

An interdisciplinary collaboration between two College of Media and College of Fine & Applied Arts faculty members has led to an award-winning visual poem that’s been selected to be screened at five film festivals worldwide.

Victor Font, lecturer of media and cinema studies, and Cristobal Bianchi, assistant professor of studio art, worked together to create a three-minute film-poem titled Factories at Sea.

Described as “a beautiful accomplishment” and an “interesting reflection on our relationship with nature and violence,” Factories at Sea has been accepted in the official programs of the International Festival of Films on Art (Montreal), the London Short Film Festival, Fotogenia Festival (Mexico), and the Chroma Art Film Festival (Miami). It has been selected as a semi-finalist in the Zed Fest Film Festival & Screenplay Competition in California. The film is also pending submission in the Oakland Short Film Festival, with results announced in February.

Going up against thousands of entries, Font said having their film merely selected by the festivals is an honor.

“In the beginning, the goal was whatever comes from that combination of words and images, if it was good, we would submit it to a festival,” Font said. “But we weren’t sure that was going to happen.”

Bianchi reached out to Font in the spring to see if he would be interested in helping to convert Factories at Sea, a poem he wrote and published in his poetry book Avistamientos (Editorial Aparte, 2022), into a short film.

Font, whose course specialties include Introduction to Digital Media Production, Cinematography and Sound Design, Smartphone Cinema, Film Production, and Advanced Filmmaking, said that to “visually tell something that would match the poem” was a challenge.

“It’s not like when you grab a script or storyboard for advertising. For me, with a background of non-fiction and fiction, I have never done this before,” said Font, who has been in the production business for more than 25 years. “I’ve never had a poem that I could transform [into] images or find the images that suits well for the poem.”

Font and Bianchi began the project in May and devoted much of the summer to bringing the visual poem to fruition. Both were abroad for the summer—Font in Barcelona, Spain, and Bianchi in Santiago de Chile—but they worked together over Zoom to complete the project.

Still from Factories at Sea — Still image from Factories at Sea.

Bianchi, who provided narration as well as video clips of his son and father for the film, said Factories at Sea touches on personal topics such as becoming a father, and the passage of time. It also addresses community life and contemporary scenarios full of crises, people, and their possessions.

Bianchi says unlike mainstream narratives, he appreciates projects that “break the rules.”

“I like it when I don’t understand things, when they are left open [to interpretation],” he said.

For Bianchi, poetry is more than just literature but also a performative act. In 2000, he founded the Casagrande art collective in Chile, which has developed a series of editorial and public art interventions in the public sphere.

The Bombing of Poems, one of the collective’s internationally renowned works, consists of dropping 100,000 poems printed as bookmarks from an aircraft in cities that have experienced aerial bombing during military confrontations, such as Santiago de Chile (2001), Warsaw (2009), London (2012), and Madrid (2018).

This project is currently in a solo exhibition in Santiago de Chile called “Bombardeos de poemas: Volver a mirar el cielo (Bombings of Poems: Looking Again at the Sky),” in the context of 50 years since the Chilean coup d’état. Font helped Bianchi edit and produce the main video that is projected in one of the gallery rooms at Palacio Pereira’s art gallery.

Although the film-poem was a novel venture for Bianchi and Font, the duo already foresees a future collaboration, offering another opportunity to see what transpires.

“The art arrives in the process—it’s not before it starts and not when it’s finished,” Bianchi said. “The process is so important like that. In the process arrives the piece.”

Factories at Sea was also completed with the help of Elizabeth Zuba of Brooklyn, who translated the poem into English.

Study: YouTube did not actively direct users toward anti-vaccine content during COVID-19

September 18, 2023 | Lois Yoksoulian, University of Illinois News Bureau

New research led by data science experts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and United Nations Global Pulse found that there is no strong evidence that YouTube promoted anti-vaccine sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, performed an algorithmic audit to examine if YouTube’s recommendation system acted as a “rabbit hole,” leading users searching for vaccine-related videos to anti-vaccine content.

For the study, the researchers asked World Health Organization-trained participants and workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk to intentionally find an anti-vaccine video with as few clicks as possible, starting from an initial informational COVID-19 video posted by the WHO. They compared the recommendations seen by these users to related videos that are obtained from the YouTube application programming interface and to YouTube’s Up-Next recommended videos that were seen by clean browsers without any user-identifying cookies.

The team then used machine learning methods to classify anti-vaccine content, analyzing more than 27,000 video recommendations made by YouTube.

“We found no evidence that YouTube promotes anti-vaccine content to its users,” said Margaret Yee Man Ng, an Illinois assistant professor of journalism with an appointment in the Institute of Communications Research and lead author of the study. “The average share of anti-vaccine or vaccine hesitancy videos remained below 6% at all steps in users’ recommendation trajectories.”

The initial goal of the research was to better understand YouTube’s famously opaque techniques for content recommendations—going beyond querying the platform’s application programming interfaces to collect real-world data—and whether these techniques funnel users toward anti-vaccine sentiment and vaccine hesitancy.

“We wanted to learn about how different entities were using the platform to disseminate their content so that we could develop recommendations for how YouTube could do a better job of not pushing misinformation,” said UN Global Pulse researcher Katherine Hoffmann Pham, a co-author of the study. “Contrary to public belief, YouTube wasn’t promoting anti-vaccine content. The study reveals that YouTube’s algorithms instead recommended other health-related content that was not explicitly related to vaccination.”

“The videos that users were directed to were longer and contained more popular content, and attempted to push a blockbuster strategy to engage users by promoting other reliably successful content across the platform,” Ng said.

The study also allowed the researchers to examine how users’ real-world experiences differ from the personalized recommendations obtained by querying YouTube’s “RelatedToVideo” application programming interface. This API is designed to help programmers search for related content on the platform or using clean browsers, replicating the experience of a new user visiting YouTube with no search or view history, which is often used to study the platform’s recommendation system.

The study reports that the watch histories of users significantly affect video recommendations, suggesting that data from the API or a clean browser does not offer an accurate picture of the suggestions that real users are seeing. Real users saw slightly more pro-vaccine content as they advanced through their recommendation trajectories. In contrast, searches performed by the API or clean browsers during the study were drawn toward irrelevant recommendations as they advanced.

“I think one benefit of this study relative to others is that it proposes a relatively lightweight methodology to gather real data on how people navigate through YouTube’s video recommendations,” Pham said. “So unlike the APIs, which will just sort of randomly suggest new links, the users can critically review the links and pick one, which sort of mimics the behavior that many people would use on YouTube in reality.”

Understanding recommendation systems is important because it promotes transparency and holds them accountable,” added co-author Miguel Luengo-Oroz, a professor at the Telecommunications School of the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. ”This helps people understand the choices being made for them by platform designers.”

Ng is also affiliated with the Department of computer science, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the Center for Social and Behavioral Science at Illinois.

Editor’s notes:

To contact Margaret Yee Man Ng, call 217-300-8186; email ymn@illinois.edu.

The paper “Exploring YouTube’s recommendation system in the context of COVID-19 vaccines: Computational and comparative analysis of video trajectories” is available online. DOI: 10.2196/49061

View original press release.

ICR welcomes 2023 cohort

September 18, 2023

The Institute of Communications Research is excited to announce our 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.

Weiting Du earned his master’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University, specializing in science and environmental journalism, and holds a bachelor’s degree in ecological environmental engineering from Chongqing University. Weiting’s research interests encompass media effects and risk communication under the context of climate change, with a particular interest in climate inactions. In parallel, Weiting explores how contemporary visual imagery represents the complex interplay between human-environment relationships, collective memories, and broader societal issues. Weiting’s past research covers topics such as the social power of photography in China and persuasive health messages.

Yewon Hong received her master’s degree in cultural studies/critical theory and analysis from the University of Amsterdam and a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Yonsei University. Her research interests include cuteness, aesthetics, affect, game, critical theory, cultural studies, and cultural analysis.

Yanbo Li’s research interests lie at the intersection of computational communication and political communication. Specifically, Li is interested in using computational methods to learn about online misinformation and incivility contagion inside and between different countries and the possible factors that foster these processes.

Veranika Paltaratskaya completed her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and art history at Emory University, and her master’s in advertising at UIUC. Veranika’s master’s thesis focused on the topic of time perception during media use. Her current research focuses on time perception, message fatigue, and computational approaches to communications research.

Se II (James) Park received his master’s in advertising and bachelor’s in communication, both from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Se Il’s interdisciplinary research focuses on persuasive messages in the context of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Metaverse, and Web 3.0. He wants to examine the difference in consumer behavior in a more immersive and intelligent virtual. In addition, he worked for the Korean government agency, KOTRA, as a marketing consultant in Chicago and for a blockchain project, WEMIX, as a business development and PR manager in Korea.

Nisa Rahman received her MS in advertising from the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and BA in communication from Purdue University – West Lafayette. Nisa’s research interest lies in emerging technologies and their effect on social behavior in the context of health communication. This exploration takes shape through studies utilizing anthropomorphic conversational agents, i.e., “chatbots” to debunk health misinformation and persuade behavior change, as well as the effect of modality in cognitive processing. Nisa is also interested in the intersections between gender presentations and its influence in Human-AI Communication.

Wei Xiao received her MA in communication, culture, and technology from Georgetown University and BA in communication and economics from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is broadly interested in exploring alternative approaches to the reasoning behind sharing dis/misinformation to debunk dis/misinformation or inoculate people against misinformation. Her research also involves technology policy topics, such as data privacy, free expression, and AI governance. While fighting traditional disinformation, Wei is equally dedicated to addressing the potential ramifications inherent in AI-amplified disinformation scenarios.

Junwei Zhan received his master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Oregon. Before joining ICR, he explored gardens and vehicles in Japan as media to better understand the condition and method of language/culture. Junwei’s research interests are centered around the relations between subjectivity, governmentality, global media network and the network’s interpretive power, which eradicate the boundary between public/private space, human/posthuman and self-governing/self-enslaving. Besides his academic research on communication and media, he is also a cross-disciplinary artist.

Zixuan (Melodie) Zhao earned her BA and MA degrees in journalism from the University of Missouri. She is primarily researching the social and psychological effects of media messages and digital media use. Her specific interests revolve around the interactions between interactive media technologies and individuals’ identity, perceptions of “otherness,” and social relationships, as well as their role in driving social mobilization or polarization.

Nini Zhou’s research interests include critical studies of communication, free labor of women online, and female digital communities.

I on the Media

September 8, 2023

“I on the Media” is a series from the University of Illinois College of Media in which faculty, staff, and students at the college address current issues and research. It began in 2020 to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on media-related issues.

Hear from our experts

9/8/2023

In this Q&A, Professor Brant Houston, Knight Chair of Investigative and Enterprise Reporting in the Department of Journalism, discusses the implications of the August 11 police raid on the Marion County Record, run by retired associate professor of journalism Eric Meyer.

9/7/2022

Angela Aguayo, associate professor of media and cinema studies, discusses the Illinois Community Media Project, funded by Chancellor Jones’s Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice Research Program. The project supports people making and circulating media that is most aligned with the interests of that community. (Video produced by Andrew Hall.)

1/18/2022

Nikki Usher, associate professor of journalism, discusses their new book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism. They argue that “the future of journalism conversation is actually a future of democracy conversation.” (Video produced by Andrew Hall.)

12/8/2021

Brian K. Johnson, professor of journalism, demonstrates how he applies a photojournalism methodology to his creative works and how to find the unseen in the seen.

11/5/2021

Kevin Wise, professor of advertising, discusses current studies at the MAD (Media and Advertising) Lab, where researchers have access to psychophysiology, eye-tracking, and virtual reality equipment. (Video produced by Andrew Hall.)

2/9/2021

Victor Font, lecturer in media and cinema studies, discusses how the pandemic affected film production in his class last spring, how he approached fall semester, and why he’s optimistic going forward. (Interview conducted by Connor Ciecko, Videography and Photography Intern.)

Watch the student film that was disrupted by the pandemic.
Watch the Normal Rockwell-inspired video made before the pandemic.

12/3/2020

Derek Long, assistant professor of media and cinema studies, discusses trends in movie exhibition since the pandemic, distribution and production studio strategies to mitigate losses, and the shift to streaming. (Interview conducted by Connor Ciecko, Videography and Photography Intern.)

11/5/2020

Brant Houston, Knight Chair Professor in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting in the Department of Journalism, discusses student-driven investigative reporting of COVID-19 on the website he oversees, CU-CitizenAccess.org, which serves as a lab for digital innovation and data journalism. (Interview conducted by Connor Ciecko, Videography and Photography Intern.)

10/5/2020

Ewa Maslowska, assistant professor of advertising in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising, discusses the changes in consumer behavior and brand advertising strategies that researchers observed in the first few months of the pandemic.

5/11/2020

Mike Yao, professor of digital media and head of the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising, explains the mental and social impacts of using computers and digital devices while working and learning from home.

4/22/2020

Alison Davis, a lecturer in journalism who teaches documentary production and has won seven regional Emmy Awards, recommends five documentaries to watch while we’re in quarantine and shares tips for documenting your own experience during this unprecedented time.

4/15/2020

Eric Meyer, associate professor of journalism, discusses how his weekly paper in Kansas, the Marion County Record, has temporarily removed its paywall and has begun distributing the paper free for 13 weeks to county residents to keep people better informed.

I on the Media: Brant Houston discusses the police raid on ‘Marion County Record’

September 8, 2023 | Holly Rushakoff

About the Media Expert

Professor Brant Houston is Knight Chair of Investigative and Enterprise Reporting in the Department of Journalism. He is the author of Changing Models for Journalism: Reinventing the Newsroom, co-author of the Investigative Reporter’s Handbook, among other books. In addition to teaching, Brant Houston oversees the online newsroom CU-CitizenAccess.org, devoted to community and watchdog reporting and data-driven stories by journalism students.

Houston served for more than a decade as the executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and was an award-winning investigative reporter at daily newspapers for 17 years. He is co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and the Investigative News Network and advises nonprofits newsrooms in the U.S. and internationally.

What were your first thoughts when you learned about the August 11 police raid on the Marion County Record, run by your former colleague, retired University of Illinois associate professor of journalism Eric Meyer, as well as his home?

My first thoughts were that this was an out-of-control, small-town justice system whose actions resembled those of autocratic governments in developing countries. Although those governments go on to burn down news offices and imprison reporters.

Did you talk about the Marion County Record and Eric Meyer with your advanced reporting classes on the first day of class, only 10 days after the raid?

I did talk about it. To be candid, most of the students had not heard about it. The one student who had been in one of Eric Meyer’s classes was aware of it. I explained what had happened, the dangers it represented to a free press if replicated, and talked about the broad national support Eric Meyer and his weekly were getting.

What does it mean for local journalism and First Amendment rights that the national response to this case has been one of overwhelming support for Meyer and his newspaper?

We live in a time when the national press is under constant criticism and attack, while at the same time officials and the general public have realized the local newsrooms, which generally are regarded as more credible and accessible, have been deeply diminished by a changing business model that has led to budget and staff cuts. The national response shows there is still strong belief in the First Amendment and a free and independent press.

Marion County police were ordered to return the seized equipment and phones because of insufficient evidence to support a raid. How can newsrooms prevent overstepping of their First Amendment rights?

The only way to prevent such invasions of newsrooms and other overstepping of First Amendment rights is through the assertion of the value of those rights and immediate and robust responses to those violations. It is a constant struggle to preserve those rights, but absolutely necessary.

Is there a misperception of investigative journalism and its value?

I think the value of solid credible investigative journalism is widely recognized and appreciated. While those under scrutiny may not like it, the public still counts on investigative journalists to be watchdogs for the community, to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse in government and to hold the powerful accountable for taking advantage of the powerless. For a community, investigative reporting is often the court of last resort, when bureaucracies or businesses fail to correct bad practices or protect the public.

“I on the Media” is a series from the University of Illinois College of Media in which faculty, staff, and students at the college address current issues and research.

New journalism professor Alex Gonçalves explores social dynamics through data-driven insights

August 21, 2023 | Kelly Youngblood

Alex Gonçalves believes a vibrant press is crucial to the future of democratic societies. He also knows the foundation of a dynamic media ecosystem is created in the classroom.

For that reason, it’s been his goal to work in journalism education since Gonçalves left the newsroom as a science reporter and began his academic journey more than a decade ago.

“I am motivated by the thought of contributing to the education of the next generation of journalists and communicators,” Gonçalves said.

This fall, he joins the College of Media as a new assistant professor in the Department of Journalism.

Gonçalves, who received a PhD in communication from Columbia University and a master’s degree in comparative media studies from MIT, will be teaching Journalism 102: Surviving Social Media.

At both universities, Gonçalves studied the role of social media in the emergence of new cultural paradigms—a subject that continues to be a part of his research to help “inform the policies that shape the role of digital platforms.”

In addition to teaching, Gonçalves is also passionate about his research, which focuses on the intersection of computer science and social communication.

When he realized the College of Media would offer him the opportunity to teach and to continue research, he knew it was the right place for him, where he “could teach future journalists and communicators while advancing my research agenda in a very stimulating intellectual environment,” he said.

Gonçalves also felt a personal connection to the College of Media as he’d always admired the late James W. Carey, a journalism professor, former director of the Institute of Communications Research, and former dean. Carey, a student of the media’s role in society, was an internationally recognized scholar in communications research.

“I was exposed to [Carey’s] thought on journalism at MIT. His [book] Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society was part of the recommended reading list for the degree in comparative media studies,” he said. “Later, I joined the PhD program he founded and infused with his vision at Columbia Journalism School.”

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2002, Gonçalves worked as a software developer in Brazil for eight years. He got a second bachelor’s in social communication and worked at a Brazilian newspaper as a science journalist for four years.

In 2011, Gonçalves received the Visionary Journalist Fellowship, a $55,000 prize toward a master’s degree in communication abroad. The following year, he won a Person of the Year Fellowship, a $10,000 award given by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce to young professionals pursuing graduate studies in the U.S.

Eventually, Gonçalves began to focus on academia—teaching numerous courses in data science, public speaking, journalism ethics, and science reporting—and research, using computational methods to study digital communication.

His focus on understanding social dynamics through data-driven insights helped him obtain an $82,500 Brown Institute Magic Grant for the development of a platform to make defense contracting data searchable by journalists and transparency activists.

Currently, Gonçalves is working on turning his dissertation into a book, with plans to publish in the U.S. and Brazil, which examines the role of social media in the rise of the New Right in Brazil.

Though his roles have varied throughout his career—from software developer and reporter to scholar and educator—the interplay of communication and technology, and a desire to share knowledge with others, have been common threads.

“I believe education is a privileged space for real communication. I love seeing my students making use, in practical settings, of the knowledge that I shared with them,” Gonçalves said. “Occasionally, I get emails from former students of mine telling me that something I shared with them has become very useful in their professional lives. That makes me very happy.”

New journalism lecturer and science writer Nancy Averett strives to highlight humanity behind research

August 21, 2023 | Kelly Youngblood

As an independent science journalist for the last 17 years, Nancy Averett has dedicated her career to writing about the intersection where science and humanity connect.

The award-winning reporter, who has a passion for the “sociological side of science and putting a human face on it,” says her secret weapon as a science writer is simple—she’s not a scientist. Instead, she views herself as a translator, reaching into the minds of scientists, engineers, and doctors to explain how their research will impact people.

She’s looking forward to sharing that passion with students and fellow faculty this fall as a new lecturer in the Department of Journalism.

Averett, who has been published in Scientific American, Discover, The Nation, and other magazines, will teach three courses this fall: Science Journalism, Intro to Journalism, and Newsgathering across Platforms.

Averett will bring a breadth of experience to the classroom, having served as an adjunct instructor at Miami University of Ohio, where she designed and taught courses in news writing, editing, and feature writing.

In addition to teaching and mentoring young journalists, Averett was one of five journalists selected by a national nonprofit in 2019 to teach a workshop for scientists on how to communicate better with the press. She has always found teaching to be a worthwhile pursuit.

“I just found all of those [teaching] experiences pretty rewarding,” said Averett, who is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and Society of Environmental Journalists.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in international affairs at the University of Colorado, Averett went on to obtain a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

For the next 10 years, Averett worked as a reporter at three daily newspapers including the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri; the North Jersey Herald & News in New Jersey; and the Morning Call in Pennsylvania. She was recognized with awards for her writing at each post.

With aspirations to write more long-form articles for magazines, Averett ventured into freelance writing, publishing her first articles in Runner’s World. Soon after, she attended an American Society of Journalists and Authors conference where she met other freelance writers and learned many of them were covering science news.

“After a while [I thought], I want to do what they’re doing. Their stories are really cool,” she said.

Averett started to pitch story ideas to Audubon magazine and “did a lot of writing about birds.” She also began to write for university publications.

From there, Averett focused on writing about wildlife, climate change, and environmental science, gaining recognition at top national publications including Sierra, Undark, and Mother Jones.

Her extensive journalism experience also includes working as the Midwest Climate Reporting Fellow for the Food & Environment Reporting Network, writing breaking news and long-form stories about climate change and agriculture, food production, and land rights issues.

In 2020, she won first place for Outstanding Feature Story from the Society of Environmental Journalists for an article on air quality and industry titled “Undone Science: When Research Fails Polluted Communities.” That same year she also won the Robert G. Fenley Writing Award (silver) from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Averett says she will likely cut back on freelance work to focus on teaching, and perhaps, to pursue a long-held dream of writing a book.

For now, she’s thinking about ways to help students realize the importance of effectively communicating science.

“We’ve got to find a way to excite people about science and understand really how science works,” Averett said. “I think being science literate would basically save lives.”

Journalism master’s student Herbert DaCosta awarded fellowship to help educate public about climate change

July 10, 2023 | Kelly Youngblood

Herbert DaCosta, a graduate student in the journalism master’s degree program, was awarded the 2023-24 Thornton Tomasetti Foundation Technical Literacy Fellowship for his exceptional submittal to help the wider public understand and connect with climate change. DaCosta is a research development manager at the University of Illinois Office of Proposal Development.

The fellowship offers up to $5,000 in funding for projects that further the public’s technical literacy on environmental issues and other topics. Submittals were reviewed by Jim Glanz, New York Times international investigative reporter; Richard L. Tomasetti, consultant and founding principal; and Elisabeth Malsch, managing principal of Thornton Tomasetti, Inc.

DaCosta said he plans to use the fellowship to carry out the research needed to write about climate change in a way that a broader audience can understand.

“The fact that there is a significant percentage of the population who believes that climate change is a hoax means that we still have a large gap to reach when it comes to the academic community to reach [people’s] minds and hearts,” DaCosta said. “It is possible that although the academic community has sent out the message, it was not in a way in which the public could relate and understand. My goal is to give a small contribution to narrow that gap.”

“We’re extremely proud of Herbert for earning this fellowship where he can make an impact by improving how journalists communicate environmental issues to the public,” said Mira Sotirovic, associate professor and Karin and Folke Dovring Scholar in Propaganda, and head of the Department of Journalism. The Department of Journalism has prioritized the study of science and technology journalism, creating an online curriculum that begins Fall 2023.

In his current job, DaCosta supports the Illinois research community in the development of large and multidisciplinary grant proposals. The position, which he’s held since 2017, has been a great fit for DaCosta, who is a trained scientist with a passion for writing.

After obtaining a PhD in chemistry with minors in physics and computer engineering from the University of Florida and a Doctor of Science in chemistry from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, DaCosta worked as an industrial research engineer. He developed novel catalytic converters to decrease regulated emissions from diesel engines and new technologies to capture carbon dioxide and to convert it into useful products.

Realizing he liked writing more than research and development, DaCosta found a career in research development that allowed him to combine his science skills and his interest in writing.

DaCosta plans to complete his master’s degree in journalism at Illinois next year. He said his goal is to be able to “write about science for the wider community and to become better at assisting the Illinois research community in the development of large grant proposals.”

DaCosta feels it’s important to be able to communicate science and technology concepts clearly to educate others.

“Learning is more effective when the new lessons learned are built on previous knowledge,” he said. “Also, learning is enabling, in many ways. The more one learns, the more one can learn.”