Letter From The Director: August 2026

Perception vs. Reality

By Michelle Amazeen

As summer winds down, many scholars are closing out research projects and planning for the fall. The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference—held this year in New Orleans at the beginning of August—typically marks the beginning of the end of summer, at least for me. This year, I had the privilege of serving as a discussant for a panel of award-winning papers. The experience left me with several insights I want to share.

Five Key Takeaways

Emotional Barriers Matter More Than We Acknowledge

Misinformation, polarization, and well-being aren't simply failures of rational information processing. Fear-based emotional mechanisms actively suppress constructive engagement. Whether it's anxiety, concern about authenticity, or uncertainty, emotions are baked into both our digital platforms and social contexts. Understanding these emotional drivers is as important as understanding the facts themselves.

Perception Shapes Behavior More Than Reality

In polarized, algorithmically-mediated environments, what people perceive often matters more than what is objectively true. Distorted perceptions drive behavior, sometimes despite contradictory evidence. This has profound implications for how we think about misinformation research and democratic deliberation. It suggests that in contested information spaces, managing perception is as consequential as managing facts.

Context Is Everything

Outcomes are rarely direct or universal. Instead, structural and social factors shape how individuals respond to information, messaging, and crises. The social and structural contexts in which people encounter information matter as much as the information itself. One-size-fits-all approaches miss the complexity of how people actually process and act on what they learn.

Active Engagement Is Protective

Deeper cognitive and social engagement appears to protect against negative effects. Whether people collaborate rather than passively consume, express dissenting views, elaborate on messages, or cultivate diverse social ties, doing something (not just receiving something) makes a difference. This suggests that authenticity and agency matter more than we might assume.

Algorithmic Design Is Never Neutral

Platform algorithms, metrics, and affordances actively shape psychological well-being, political expression, and vulnerability to misinformation, a reality we cannot ignore. The real work lies in translating this knowledge into accountability. How do we build transparency into systems designed for opacity? Who gets a seat at the table when these systems are designed? And how do we ensure that algorithmic governance serves democratic interests rather than commercial ones?

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Letter From The Director: June 2026

Communication and Inequalities in Context: Reflections from Cape Town

By Michelle Amazeen

On June 4-8, 2026, Boston University was well represented at the 76th Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference with over a dozen faculty and graduate students in attendance. Held in Cape Town, South Africa, this year’s theme – Communication and Inequalities In Context – proved especially resonant given the location’s rich and complex history.

As one of the biggest global gatherings for communication scholars, the conference offered abundant opportunities for community building, networking, and hearing cutting-edge research before publication. Several CRC faculty and graduate students were recognized with awards for their excellence in communication research:

A paper led by PhD student James Crissman along with Drs. Ayse Lokmanoglu and Betsi Grabe won the top paper award for “Tracing Visual Communication’s Cross-Disciplinary Citation Footprint in a Network Analysis from 1975 to 2024” in the Visual Communication Studies Division.

Dr. Joshua Baldwin was a collaborator on “Ease and Constraints on Enjoyment and Appreciation: The Role of Narrative Challenge” which took top paper in the Communication Science and Biology Interest Group.

Dr. Morgan Weiland won the Best Dissertation Award in the Philosophy, Theory & Critique Division for “Making Internet Law: How Cyberspace was Socially Constructed as a First Amendment Speech System.”

Dr. Xiaoya Jiang won two awards: the top faculty paper award in the Global Communication & Social Change Division for a collaborative paper she led entitled “Public Expression about Presidential Debates in Latin America on Twitter (X): Social Network Features, Influential Nodes, and Top Messages in Six Countries,” and a second top paper award for a paper on which she collaborated: “Information Dynamics in Political Debates: Multimodal Approach to Candidates' Facial Expressions and Real-Time Public Reaction During the 2024 U.S. Presidential Debates.”

Understanding Communication and Inequality

Beyond the research presentations, the conference theme took on visceral meaning as we explored Cape Town's landscape and history. We were treated to the traditional music and dance of the indigenous Khoisan people at the opening ceremonies—a moment that honored the voices often marginalized in dominant narratives.

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Letter From The Director: May 2026

The Spring 2026 Semester in Review

By Michelle Amazeen

With the end of another semester, I have been reflecting upon the many activities in the CRC and among our fellows in 2026, thus far.

At a time when external research funding continues to be difficult to attain (and retain), the CRC again provided two internal funding opportunities: the Faculty Research Seed Grants and the Hugo Shong Misinformation Faculty Research Grants. You can read about the awardees and their projects in the pages that follow.

The CRC is also offering our fellows administrative support throughout the external grant lifecycle, from early proposal planning through submission coordination and post-award support. You can see more details on our website here.

Our Colloquium Series consists of monthly research presentations that highlight the original research of our CRC fellows. I would like to thank our 2026 spring Colloquium speakers which included a February talk from Professor Edward Downes about mobile device dependency. In March, we heard from Dr. Chris Chao Su and PhD student Patrick Mohan Zhang about how people learn information from generative AI, research that was funded by a Faculty Research Seed Grant. And in April, Dr. Ayse Lokmanoglu presented research on studying visual communication. You can read about these presentations as well as those from many of our past Colloquium speakers on our website.

In addition to our Colloquium Series, every semester our fellows nominate a distinguished scholar from outside the university to share their outstanding scholarship, expertise, and experience with the BU community. Our distinguished lecture series is a tribute to Dr. Melvin L. DeFleur, a past colleague, to honor his contributions to the fields of communication and media research. This spring, we were honored to host Dr. Yotam Ophir (University at Buffalo) as our DeFleur Distinguished Lecturer who spoke about “Misinformation and Society: Five Lessons I’ve Learned from Studying Thousands of Years of Falsehoods.” A recording of his talk is accessible on our website, as well.

In promoting a culture of research and collaboration, our fellows had opportunities throughout the semester to gather in person. This spring, our monthly Work-In-Progress meetings were coordinated by Dr. Ayse Lokmanoglu, enabling fellows to informally discuss their research with the intent of idea exchanges surrounding any aspect of research efforts (collaboration, theoretical premises, study design, methods, resources, analysis issues, literature searches, conference presentations, etc.). I am looking forward to seeing the new energy and changes Dr. Lokmanoglu is planning for the fall.

The CRC has two formal outreach programs designed to enhance public access to the work of our faculty fellows: the Media & Technology Public Opinion Poll and “The COMversation” podcast. Since its inception in January 2022, the COM/CRC Media & Technology Public Opinion Poll has enabled faculty fellows to advance their thought leadership on a variety of information integrity topics. This past semester, our polls involved dating apps and perceptions of and responses to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity. Faculty members with ideas for a future poll can get involved by completing this Google Form.

To make communication research even more accessible to the public, the CRC’s podcast, The COMversation, connects academic insights with current events. Hosted by Dr. Charlotte Howell, three new episodes were released this spring. The February episode addressed Migration, Media, and Memory with CRC fellow Dr. Roy Grundmann and Julia Cumes, a fellow with COM’s Center for Media Innovation for Social Impact (MISI). The March episode featured yours truly discussing my new book, Content Confusion. In April, Dr. Howell facilitated a discussion of the Heated Rivalry phenomenon with Dr. Katy Coduto and Professor Aaron Walker. More episodes are being prepared for release over the summer, so be sure to follow 'The COMversation' on Spotify or PocketCast and give us a listen!

Given the University’s commitment to engaging students in research, the CRC continued to facilitate fellows’ efforts to recruit students as research participants via our SONA research participant management system. The SONA system gives both graduate and undergraduate students an opportunity to become involved with various research activities across COM while earning course credit for doing so. This semester, 37 research studies were available to over 594 students from 43 different COM courses. I hope you will consider registering your courses for the Fall 2026 semester. For more information about how our SONA program works, please visit our website or email comsona@bu.edu.

Last but not least, I am incredibly grateful for the commitment and hard work of our staff this spring. Many thanks to our Lab and Research Manager, Amanda King, who has made our facilities a welcoming place for scholarly activities and has skillfully trained both experienced and emerging researchers on the technologies offered by the CRC. I would also like to thank our wonderful student assistants who helped to keep the Center running. Aditi Balaravi (MCR) was our Research/SONA Assistant, GT Nguyen (MS) was our Technical Assistant, and Mary Yiorkadji (MS) was our Multimedia Assistant. I look forward to welcoming back Aditi and Mary next semester and send GT best wishes upon her graduation from COM. Thanks to you all!

To our CRC community of fellows, I wish you a wonderful summer with time to relax and recharge. I look forward to seeing you in the fall.

Letter From The Director: April 2026

How Three Minutes Can Make Research Matter

By Michelle Amazeen

I was recently invited by BU’s Office of Graduate Affairs to deliver the keynote address at the 2026 “Three Minute Thesis” (3MT) Competition.3MT is an internationally celebrated program in which graduate students learn to share their work with non- specialist audiences in only three minutes. Ten finalists presented their research, with the top three receiving prize money (First place $1,000; Second place $500; People’s choice $500). Below is my keynote address:

The Power of Distillation: How Three Minutes Can Make Research Matter

Thank you — and congratulations. You’ve reached a huge milestone: years of intense study, nights in the lab or archives, endless revisions, and now you must explain it in just three minutes. That constraint isn’t arbitrary. It’s a training in clarity: to turn complexity into something a busy, diverse world can understand and use.

We live in a very different information environment than scholars did even a decade ago. Trusted newsrooms no longer sit at the center of the public conversation. Instead, information flows through countless websites, social platforms, and personalities — many of whom have little relevant expertise but enormous reach. At the same time, generative AI is making it easier than ever to produce convincing-looking images, audio, and text. The result is what I call “content confusion”: everyday people — and institutions — increasingly uncertain about what is real, what is accurate, and whom to trust.

That matters for you, because if you don’t set the narrative for your work in plain, reliable terms, someone else will — and their version may be wrong, incomplete, or even deliberately misleading. This is true whether your topic is climate science, public health, engineering, history, or the arts. Good research has real consequences only when it is communicated clearly enough to be heard and understood.

Your 3MT is not just a contest; it’s practice in stewardship—the act of sharing knowledge so it can inform decisions, policies, and public life.

A few short strategic takeaways for what your ability to communicate now enables:

1. Influence beyond the academy. Clear, compelling accounts of research increase the chance your findings will shape policy, industry practice, or public understanding. That is impact.

2. Defensive clarity. In an era of misinformation and AI-enabled fabrication, transparent explanations and honest statements of uncertainty help inoculate your work from misinterpretation or misuse.

3. Trust building. Simple, accurate communication—over time—accrues credibility. Audiences remember authors who are clear, candid, and consistent.

4. Iterative scholarship. Treat communication as part of the research cycle. When non-specialists respond, you learn what assumptions or gaps matter in the world outside your lab or archive; that feedback can refine future work.

5. Ethical responsibility. When your findings affect people’s health, safety, or livelihoods, clarity is a moral obligation as much as a professional one.

The broader point is this: the 3MT forces a discipline that matters for how knowledge travels today. You’ve practiced distillation under pressure. Use that skill strategically—as an extension of your scholarship, not an afterthought.The tiny, well-crafted narrative you deliver in three minutes can be the seed for broader conversations, trustworthy public engagement, and real-world impact.

Finally, a reassurance. The old “knowledge deficit” idea—the hope that facts alone would change minds—is largely dead. People filter information through values, identity, and trust. Your clarity won’t automatically change every audience, but it does make your research accessible to those who are ready to learn and it strengthens the foundation for dialogue with others. So as you step up today, remember: you are not being asked to dilute your scholarship but to make it heard. Three minutes is an invitation to translate rigor into reach—to plant a clear idea that can grow into public understanding, policy, or practice. Your voice matters in an age of content confusion. Keep speaking with honesty and care, listen to how people respond, and let those responses sharpen your work.

Thank you — I can’t wait to hear your three-minute stories.

I hope to see some COM PhD students at next year’s competition. More information about the event is available here.

Letter From the Director: February 2026

Access, Influence, and Visibility: Communication Research on the Epstein Story

By Michelle Amazeen

On February 4, 2026, BU’s The Daily Free Press published an article with the explosive headline, “BU COM dean corresponded extensively with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014 and 2015, files show.” The story notes that these contacts occurred after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor, a timing the piece treats as central to its significance.

Communication research does not adjudicate conduct but can help contextualize revelations like this by asking: What was the pattern of public attention to Epstein over time, and what communication mechanisms might have shaped that pattern?

Gatekeeping — the selection, shaping, and withholding of information as it moves from sources to audiences — is central to that inquiry. Although his 2008 conviction was public record, it’s important to note that news coverage of Epstein was minimal until 2019 (see Figure 1). MediaCloud, an open-source platform that aggregates and analyzes news content from roughly 70,000 publications, shows a pronounced rise in articles mentioning “Jeffrey Epstein” only in mid-2019.

The paucity of attention to Jeffrey Epstein is further illustrated by Google Trends, an online tool that shows how often people search for specific terms over time, revealing rising topics and relative interest compared to other queries. We can see that public searches about Epstein were virtually non-existent until July 2019 (see Figure 2). Taken together, these tools indicate that widespread public awareness did not track, in the aggregate, with Epstein’s earlier 2008 conviction.

Returning to the notion of gatekeeping can further contextualize the type of news attention that did exist. Coverage prior to 2008 mixed neutral or favorable profiles of Epstein’s philanthropy and social ties with occasional critical reporting that raised questions about the sources of his wealth and the nature of his relationships with powerful people. Sustained, widespread investigative scrutiny was relatively limited until the major reporting from Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald that preceded his 2019 arrest.

One notable profile was a March 2003, Vanity Fair article by Vicky Ward that scrutinized Epstein’s extravagant lifestyle and probed the sources of his wealth. What was omitted were the sexual assault accusations of two women interviewed by Ward; according to NPR, a live round of ammunition and a dead cat’s head were left outside Vanity Fair publisher Graydon Carter’s home in an apparent attempt to intimidate him into not publishing those allegations. The omission illustrates how editorial decisions — whether driven by legal risk, safety concerns, or other pressures — can suppress salient information and, unintentionally or otherwise, contribute to reputation laundering.

The Vanity Fair example shows how discrete pressures—legal risk, intimidation, editorial judgment—can alter what reaches the public. Frameworks such as Joan Donovan’s Lifecycle of a Media Manipulation Campaign help move us from such anecdotes to systematic analysis of how narratives are created, amplified, suppressed, and, eventually, corrected, and of the actors and tactics that shape what the public hears — and what it does not.

Applying this lens to Epstein’s 2008 case shows multiple constraining forces: a non-prosecution agreement negotiated by prosecutors limited federal exposure and kept key details from victims and the public; most coverage remained local and episodic rather than sustained nationally; and the broader news environment (pre-#MeToo) offered weak incentives for pursuing high-risk sexual-abuse investigations.

Most importantly, what The Daily Free Press article highlights is how Epstein made key adjustments to his media manipulation strategy. Following his 2009 release from prison, Epstein worked to normalize his public profile by cultivating relationships with scientists, journalists, and cultural institutions through philanthropy and access to power networks. That pattern helps explain why individuals and institutions might have engaged with him without encountering the level of sustained scrutiny that emerged only later.

I reached out to Eric Gordon, director of the Center for Media Innovation & Social Impact, who shared the following. “Understanding this nuance does not remove culpability from all those who interacted with Epstein prior to 2019. It challenges the notion that any interaction with the man demonstrates alignment or willing ignorance of his crimes. What is common knowledge now was not then. We need to avoid the intellectual trap of seeing the past through the lens of the present. Instead, as we process the millions of newly released documents from the files, journalists and the concerned public need to evaluate each of the disclosed associations on its own merits, and not as an undifferentiated tranche of ‘gotchas.’”

We must never lose sight of what matters most: Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused underage girls, and survivors deserve justice, support, and institutional accountability. At the same time, communication research helps us identify practical, system-level changes that would make it less likely for similar harms to be obscured in the future. These include stronger disclosure and vetting practices for institutional relationships, clearer newsroom and editorial guidance on handling donations and outside offers of access, and procedures that ensure survivors’ interests are prioritized in institutional decision-making. Such measures are not intended to excuse past behavior but to reinforce accountability and protect students, staff, and the public from future harm — while preserving legitimate academic and editorial exchange.