Letter from the Director: December 2025

The Fall 2025 Semester in Review

By: Michelle Amazeen

December marks the conclusion of another bustling semester for the CRC which kicked off with our annual open house co-hosted this year with the Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact.

Our fall programming included our Colloquium Series, which consists of monthly research presentations that highlight current and original research of CRC fellows. Our speakers includedDr. Michael Elasmar in September (An AI-Assisted Methodology for Quantifying Measurement Error of Social Media Text Posts), Dr. Katy Coduto and Prof. Margaret Wallace in October (Friending Artificial Intelligence: How People Bond with ChatGPT Over Time), and Dr. AnneMarie McClain in November (Adapting and Dreaming: How Supportive Families of LGBTQ+ Kids Respond to Today’s Media Representation).

Every semester, the CRC invites a distinguished scholar from outside the university to share their outstanding scholarship, expertise, and experience with the BU community. Our Fall 2025 Dr. Melvin L. DeFleur Distinguished Lecturer was Dr. Brooke Erin Duffy (Cornell University) who presented a talk entitled, The Visibility Bind: Platform Labor, Precarity, and Resistance in the Creator Economy.

To foster connections within our research community, our faculty fellows met monthly as part of our Work-In-Progress meetings. Special guests this semester included representatives from BU’s offices of Federal and Foundation Relations as well as from BU’s Institutional Review Board.

Given the University’s commitment to involving students in research, the CRC continued to facilitate fellows’ efforts to recruit students as research participants via our SONA research participant management system. SONA provides both graduate and undergraduate students with the opportunity to engage in various research activities across COM while earning course credit. This semester, students from 50 different COM courses had access to over two dozen research opportunities. Faculty fellows (or their advisees) who utilize CRC resources are required to register their courses with SONA. We encourage all instructors to consider including their courses in the upcoming Spring semester. To enroll, please complete this form. For more details about the SONA program, visit our website or email us at comsona@bu.edu.

The CRC also sought to advance the thought leadership of its fellows with the Media & Technology Public Opinion Poll. In September, our poll addressed deepfakes: Big Margins Support Protections Against AI-Powered Deepfakes on Social Media. In October, Dr. Deborah Jaramillo lent her expertise to a poll about government censorship: Large, Bipartisan Majorities Oppose Government Censorship of Talk Show Hosts, Media Companies. And in November, our poll addressed climate communication related to research from Dr. Chris Wells: Falling Confidence that American Businesses Will Help Stop Climate Change. Faculty fellows interested in participating in a future poll can propose topics of interest by completing this form.

Finally, season two of The COMversation returned with an episode of True Crime Stories, featuring a discussion with Profs. Katy Coduto, Dick Lehr, and Kate Winkler Dawson, hosted by by Dr. Charlotte Howell. The COMversation is a podcast that connects academic insights with current events, aiming to make communication research more accessible to the public. More episodes are in the works, so stay tuned!

None of these efforts would have been possible without the commitment and hard work of our staff this fall. I am grateful to our Lab and Research Manager, Amanda King, as well as our wonderful graduate and undergraduate assistants who helped to keep the Center running. Yunhee Choi has been our Research Assistant and SONA Administrator doing the behind-the-scenes work on our research participant management system. Ramona Chae has been our Multimedia Assistant promoting CRC activities on our website and socials. Mingyu Palmer has been our Technical Assistant keeping our technologies accounted for and updated. And Aakshi Sinha and Maggie Styer have been our Podcast Assistants running the boards and editing our latest podcast episodes. Thanks to all!

Finally, to our CRC community of fellows, I wish you a joyous and restful holiday season and look forward to the many new and exciting activities we are planning for 2026!

Letter from the Director: November 2025

Content Confusion: Why Americans Are Losing Faith in Corporate Climate Promises—and the Media’s Role

By: Michelle Amazeen

As the world wrestles with an accelerating climate crisis, hope rests on collective action from governments, corporations, and citizens. Yet last week’s conclusion of COP30 produced an agreement largely seen as “incremental at best" and far less than what the planet urgently needs. One climate reporter called the final agreement “a document that shows no commitment whatsoever to truth,” highlighting the growing disconnect between political rhetoric and reality.

In this climate of skepticism, public trust in corporate environmental promises is plummeting. COM’s latest Media & Technology Survey found that only 48% of Americans today believe corporate initiatives will truly make a difference on climate change, down sharply from 60% in 2022—a statistically significant drop. Even more damning, 57% agree that “corporate promises to address climate change are mostly empty promises,” while only 9% disagree.

The public is increasingly recognizing the greenwashing doublespeak from corporations that loudly promote sustainability efforts, even as the majority of their investments continue to support activities that harm the environment. This credibility gap highlights the urgent need for greater transparency and accountability in corporate environmental claims.

This widening credibility gap stems not only from corporate inaction but also from how content from these companies is handled by leading news media—institutions supposedly dedicated to truth and public enlightenment. Yet, many prestigious outlets blur the lines between editorial reporting and sponsored advertising, a practice known as native advertising, which often serves corporate interests more than the public’s.

As I chronicle in my latest book, Content Confusion, in May 2023, the New York Times publicly called out Google for pledging to defund climate disinformation while YouTube continued serving ads funding climate lies. Yet the Times itself engaged in a similar duality: producing and hosting native advertising campaigns for ExxonMobil that promote “green” initiatives while distracting from or obscuring the fossil fuel giant’s broader environmental harm.

In reporting on the 2022 US House Oversight hearings on fossil fuel companies misleading the public about climate change, a Times article noted ExxonMobil’s algae biofuel ad campaign created by BBDO Worldwide and published in the New York Times. However, it omitted that the Times’ own T Brand Studio produced a closely related native advertising campaign promoting algae-based fuels. This campaign, now part of a Massachusetts Attorney General lawsuit alleging false advertising, remains live on the Times’ website—even though ExxonMobil ended its algae biofuel efforts in late 2022.

The Times was paid $5 million to produce this 2018 campaign, which was driven by the client’s belief that public perceptions had been distorted by a “volatile news cycle” that misrepresented ExxonMobil’s climate commitments. The campaign intentionally leveraged the Times’ trusted voice—a “Timesian” tone—to reach audiences, making the ads feel like part of the publication’s editorial content.

This represents a fundamental breach of journalistic integrity. When a news organization creates and amplifies branded content to compete against its own news coverage, it becomes complicit in muddying public understanding of critical issues. The very platform meant to reveal truth instead facilitates “content confusion”—the blurring of news and promotional messaging that obscures reality.

The New York Times is far from unique. The Washington Post’s WP Creative Studio has produced many climate-related native advertising campaigns for fossil fuel and petrochemical interests, as have Bloomberg, The Economist, the Financial Times, Politico, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and other leading news outlets. Several of these campaigns have been implicated in lawsuits alleging deceptive advertising practices.

Such practices indicate how once-clear editorial boundaries have eroded in today’s market-driven media landscape, opening doors for corporate actors to insert themselves into the flow of “trusted” information. In a time when rapid, reliable information is paramount, this commercial influence contributes to a broader disinformation epidemic.

With the public growing increasingly cynical about corporate climate commitments, journalists and news organizations must choose sides unequivocally. The false equivalence created by mixing advertising and editorial content betrays the societal role of the press and jeopardizes democratic discourse. Disclosures alone cannot mitigate the risk when sponsored content is crafted to emulate unbiased news and exploit institutional credibility.

As the fragile COP30 deal shows, our climate challenges are immense. If media organizations continue allowing their platforms to be used for greenwashing and corporate doublespeak, they not only fail their ethical obligations—they impair the public’s ability to discern fact from fiction in a crisis where truth is critical.

Until clear, enforceable separation between advertising and editorial content is restored, readers and policymakers must navigate a landscape of “Content Confusion,” where the line between genuine news and corporate spin becomes increasingly invisible—and where democracy and climate action suffer as a result.

Letter from the Director: October 2025

Navigating Pressures and Protecting Free Speech: Public Views and the Future of Media Freedom

By: Michelle Amazeen

Following recent government pressure to remove Jimmy Kimmel from his ABC late-night show over his politically charged remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Boston University’s Communication Research Center (CRC) conducted a nationwide survey to gauge Americans’ views on government censorship and the First Amendment.

The survey revealed a clear majority (74%) supports First Amendment protections shielding private media from government censorship, except in extreme cases like inciting violence. Conversely, only 19% agree the federal government should threaten media companies with legal consequences over content.

To better understand these findings, I turned to two CRC experts: Dr. Deborah L. Jaramillo, Professor of Film and Television and director of the Film and Television Studies Program at the College of Communication (COM), and Dr. Morgan Weiland, Assistant Professor of Communication Law in COM’s Department of Mass Communication, Advertising, and Public Relations.

Morgan, you noted that these survey findings suggest that FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s recent warnings to ABC regarding Jimmy Kimmel’s comments—actions you described as jawboning or what other experts term ‘censorship by proxy,’ where the government pressures private entities to restrict speech—are likely unpopular not just with the general American public, but also among Republicans. Could you expand on this? Why is this happening despite its unpopularity, and what can the public do?

Weiland: The Trump administration's moves with respect to the press are not surprising. Many of them were spelled out in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's document that appears to inform the Trump administration's actions. Consider that before he was FCC Commissioner, Brendan Carr wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC.

To the extent that the administration's policy changes and attacks on the press cut against First Amendment principles, our survey suggests that they would be unpopular across the political spectrum. Majorities of survey respondents told us that they oppose government censorship and support content neutrality, both of which are core normative and -- at least for now -- doctrinal First Amendment free speech principles.

Deborah, you and I previously discussed incidents where media content was moderated through industry self-regulation, such as Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on ABC’s The View and Joe Rogan on Spotify. Similarly, radio airwaves were rid of Father Coughlin in 1940, and Trump was banned from Twitter in 2021. How is the current situation different? Couldn’t media companies just be making editorial decisions aligned with their corporate interests?

Jaramillo: I appreciate this question because it pushes us to think about the multiple stakeholders involved in the issue and the circumstances that trigger a decision like ABC’s. Media companies always make decisions in their corporate interests, but in response to what specific external factors?

First, we have Trump’s vocal hatred of Kimmel and, second, as Morgan mentioned above, an FCC chair who walks in lockstep with the president and, in doing so, does not hesitate to dangle its power to approve mergers in front of Disney, Sinclar, and Nexstar. Third, the loosening of media ownership rules in the 1990s and early 2000s has resulted in station groups like Sinclair wielding more power over networks than any single affiliate could. The fourth factor, the assassination of Kirk, was the tripwire. Everyone right, left, and center had to ignore his politics and agree that murder is bad, lest they be accused of, at best, bad taste, and at worst, encouraging political violence.

Public figures, comedians included, were vulnerable because while these horrific moments require reflection and discussion, they more often than not are hijacked by calls for simplistic narratives. The confluence of all of these factors made it easy for Carr to run the FCC playbook and try to force ABC’s hand.

Are these survey findings about television broadcasting applicable to other media?

Jaramillo: According to the poll 67% of respondents favor government-required content warnings for indecent or offensive material, and 45% support government efforts to protect viewers from such content, but just 29% believe the government should intervene when viewers are offended by violent, indecent, or political television content.

I often tell my students that when they study television they wind up studying the government, the public’s relationship with the government, and the public’s attitudes toward free speech. Which sectors of our society do we believe deserve speech protections? Why are we more accepting of government intervention in cultural arenas than in health care, particularly when children are usually held up to be the most vulnerable in both of these areas?

Looking historically, concerns about media control have persisted for nearly a century. Representative Luther Johnson of Texas warned before the Radio Act of 1927:

American thought and American politics will be largely at the mercy of those who operate these stations, for publicity is the most powerful weapon that can be wielded in a republic. And when such a weapon is placed in the hands of one person, or a single selfish group is permitted to either tacitly or otherwise acquire ownership or dominate these broadcasting stations throughout the country, then woe be to those who dare to differ with them. It will be impossible to compete with them in reaching the ears of the American people.

Today media consolidation continues with many major properties owned by billionaires: Elon Musk (Twitter/X, Starlink), David Zaslav (CBS News, TikTok), Jeff Bezos (The Washington Post), Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong (The Los Angeles Times), and even the President of the United States with TruthSocial.

What do these polling results imply for the current US media landscape? What does it mean if private media companies comply in advance with authoritarian pressures? Is there any hope?

Weiland: I want to step back and take a long view on some of the trends that you highlighted to put them in historical context -- and hopefully end on a somewhat positive note. One of the reasons there was so much exuberance in the early 2000s about the internet was precisely that it would solve the problem of media consolidation that plagued the American media system during the latter half of the twentieth century.

To be sure, the internet and the social media companies that have come to dominate it ended up replicating a version of the media consolidation problems we saw in the 20th century, due in part, as my research shows, to legal decisions that effectively foreclosed on regulation and allowed for "self-regulation" of online speech. But the critique still stands. And the stakes of that critique are even higher today. It is much easier for the government to intimidate a consolidated media landscape that is dependent on the FCC and FTC for mergers and other support, and for which their media offerings are a sliver of their overall corporate portfolios.

But the survey shows that the public's values point in the direction of policy solutions. If the public dislikes censorship and supports content neutrality, then supporting a diverse array of independent media outlets could provide one solution. It's much harder for the government to play wack-a-mole with a diverse, diffuse, and disobedient press.

Jaramillo: When the radio networks moved into television, they set out to assert the dominance of the commercial paradigm and to use the prohibitive expense of TV production and broadcasting to their advantage. In other words, they didn’t want TV to be radio, which was cheaper and, after much debate, made space for noncommercial broadcasters.

Commercial TV broadcasting began in 1946, and while noncommercial stations did crop up slowly, we did not have legislation to create national public broadcasting until 1967. The systematic marginalization of noncommercial TV and the failure to insulate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s financial health from political pressure has meant that how we see TV–what we love, what we hate, what we find boring, how our days are broken up–has been determined by the logics of corporate media.

If I could add another question to the poll, I would want to know how many people are in favor of a fully taxpayer-funded, independent public broadcasting system. Not what we had until recently, but an actual, financially secure public broadcasting system. If, as our poll indicates, the majority of Republicans and Democrats are in favor of the government protecting TV viewers, then we need to understand if or whether that protection goes beyond content warnings. Protection is also about access to information that ensures a robust citizenry and access to entertainment unencumbered by commercial constraints.

In other words, we can’t have a thorough discussion of corporate media’s capitulation to an authoritarian regime without also interrogating the ways our government and the major media companies weakened the information ecosystem at the start, not just by limiting viable alternatives but by foreclosing the public’s ability to imagine a television system not dominated by NBC, CBS, and ABC (or, in today’s media landscape, Disney, Comcast, Warner, etc.). Although Kimmel is a less-than-ideal cause (does no one remember The Man Show?), I’m hopeful the activism that has grown because of the blatant show of corruption will continue well beyond his next jab at Trump.

As our experts noted, the recent survey confirms broad public opposition to government censorship and strong support for First Amendment protections across political lines. While media consolidation and political pressures pose real challenges, the public’s commitment to free expression offers a foundation of hope. By staying vigilant and fostering diverse voices, we can work toward a media landscape that truly supports democracy and open dialogue.