Letters from the Director

Letter From The Director: September 2023

By: Michelle Amazeen

Welcome to the Fall 2023 Semester!

With the start of the academic year, I’d like to welcome you to the fall 2023 semester and share some information about the CRC.

First established at Boston University in 1959, the CRC serves to support its fellows as thought leaders who advance communication-related theory and methods in addressing society’s challenges. We are located in the lower level (basement) of Alden Hall at 704 Commonwealth Avenue. You can read about our facilities and technologies and bookmark our website at https://sites.bu.edu/crc/. 

We are excited to welcome our new full-time Lab and Research Manager, Amanda King, effective September 18^th. Amanda is a COM graduate, earning a Master's in Emerging Media Studies in 2021. We are joined by three graduate students who will be working in the Center this fall:

• Zain Bali (MCR), SONA Administrator
• Snigdha Bhowmik (FTV), Communications Assistant
• Xinyue “Tracy” Cui (FTV), Events Assistant

This fall, we have several events lined up:

Colloquium Series:

1. Thursday, September 28^th at 3:30 pm, Alexis Shore, EMS PhD Candidate: Platforms as Rulemakers for Interpersonal Communication: The Case of the Screenshot Feature
2. Thursday, October 26^th at 3:30 pm, Dr. Deborah Jaramillo (FTV)
3. Thursday, November 30^th at 3:30 pm, Dr. Joan Donovan (JO/EMS)

Dr. Melvin L. DeFleur Distinguished Lecture:

1. Wednesday, November 15^th at 3:30 pm, Dr. Kjerstin Thorson, Brandt Endowed Professor of Political Communication, Michigan State University

CRC Policies:

Fellows interested in reserving rooms for research purposes or reserving our technologies may do so using QReserve. To make reservations you will need to create your own QReserve account, associated with the CRC. Instructions for how to do so are included in the CRC Resource Guide. New and returning fellows are encouraged to review the CRC Resource Guide to (re)familiarize yourselves with our resources. Please also familiarize yourself with the policies and protocols of conducting research at the CRC, available here. Note: the Request for Research Study Details form (in step 2) is currently not available. To help us plan for use of the CRC this fall, in lieu of this form please email the following information to crccom@bu.edu. 

1. The name(s), titles and email addresses of you and any co-researchers
2. A preliminary title for your research project
3. If applicable, the faculty advisor associated with your project
4. Approximate start date, end date, and deadline (if applicable) for your project
5. Details regarding IRB approval/status (if applicable)
6. Whether you will require an iMotions-enabled laptop for your project
7. Whether you will require long-term storage for your research data

For researchers planning to use the SONA Research Participation Pool, the CRC will continue to offer its COM Research Review Board (RRB) as an alternative to IRB for review of survey-based studies that adhere to the COM Master Protocol. To fairly allocate the workload, all faculty fellows who utilize SONA are expected to serve on the RRB. 

For the fall 2023 semester, we will be unable to accept the use of SONA for class projects of individual students. Should you be willing to oversee the administration of such an effort as chair of the COM SONA Review Board, please email me.

Finally, please join me in welcoming several new CRC fellows who are now part of the COM community:

• Dr. Joan Donovan, Assistant Professor of Journalism
• Dr. AnneMarie McClain, Assistant Professor of Media Science
• James Crissman, EMS PhD student 
• Lilian Naa Korkoi Tackie, EMS PhD student
• Jiaxin Wang, EMS PhD student

I wish you all a successful start to the fall semester and look forward to seeing you in the CRC.

Letter from the Director: July 2023

By: Michelle Amazeen

Speaking Out: Then They Came for the Academics…

During my spring 2023 research sabbatical, I have continued my studies of disinformation. While having the time, resources, and support to focus exclusively on research is an increasingly rare privilege in academia, as I prepared to return as COM’s Director of the Communication Research Center, I have been reflecting on some of the challenges academic researchers face, especially those that study disinformation.

In 1943, the U.S. Department of War (today known as the Defense Department) released a short film called “Don’t Be a Sucker.” With anti-racist and anti-fascist themes, the film was intended to educate the public about prejudice and discrimination. At 14:56 into the clip (available here from the U.S. National Archives), the narrator – a Hungarian immigrant – remembers how the German Nazis came for academics and others who spoke for truth, exposing, among other things, the scientific fallacy of a “master” human race. These academics, writers, and scientists were exiled from Germany, jailed, or even put in concentration camps.

Eighty years on, the New York Times posted an article indicating that academics are once again under attack by their government. This time, it’s disinformation researchers who are being targeted by government legislators, not in some far away country, but right here in the United States. The goal is to undermine research into false claims about elections, vaccines, and other topics. The similarities to the historic descent into fascism are chilling.

 

Unfortunately, government suppression of academic inquiry is not new in the U.S. Among its wide-ranging investigations, in 1959, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed 40 public elementary and high school teachers in San Francisco accusing them of being Communists. Despite having little prosecutorial powers, the stigma of being called before the HUAC ended the careers of many including some of these educators.

Even with tenure – a mechanism that is supposed to protect academics from losing their position because of their speech, publications, or research findings – there are many examples of legislative and political interference with academic freedom.

PEN America – a non-profit defending freedom of expression – has noted a growing trend in legislative actions around the country attempting to influence what can be taught in public schools, colleges, universities, and libraries.

In Florida, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill requiring review of professors’ tenure every five years and is also proposing that trustees should be able to call for a tenure review at any time.

There is a long history of communication scholars, in particular, who have been targeted for their attempts to study media and communication systems. Some of them have been denied tenure at their institutions, others have been harassed, and some even received death threats.

One recent case includes Nicole Hannah-Jones being denied tenure in 2021 by the trustees (most of whom were elected or appointed by the state legislature) of the University of North Carolina over concerns about how her research depicted the historical record on slavery in the U.S. Another local example is that of Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor emeritus who researches linguistics but has also extensively criticized the U.S. media system – most notably in his book Manufacturing Consent – and is a political activist. Over the years, he has endured being harassed by the Nixon administration as well as “death threats, bomb threats, [and] hysterical accusations” by others.

At its best, communication research aids legislators in policy making. “Through all periods of research on the uses and effects of media,” note scholars Byron Reeves and James L. Baughman, “scholars actively studied questions that concerned the public, the communications industries, or government regulators and legislators, and the researchers expected that their efforts could in some form result in social change.”

Yet, when ideological differences exist in just what social change is warranted, conflict arises.

History tells us what happens when those who are clinging to power do not wish to sincerely debate the empirical evidence on what is best for the public:

• They take control of the media, outlawing any news or programming not controlled by the government as when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 or when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
• Books are banned or burned, as occurred during the Nazi regime, to “purify” literature. Disconcertingly, in the 2022-2023 academic school year, book bans in U.S. public schools are up by 28%.
• They manufacture evidence and block others from examining it.

Rather than harassing the academics who try to examine our media systems for the nature and effects of disinformation, legislators should be facilitating that research and utilizing it to develop evidence-based policy.

With the turn of the calendar to the 2023-2024 academic year, I look forward continuing my research on disinformation, supporting others with their own research efforts, and engaging with those interested in developing evidence-based communication policies.

Letter from the Director: April 2022

The Dark Side of Comedy

When the Boston University Communication Research Center was first organized in the late 1950s, some of its earliest research involved the study of comics.

Fears were so great in the U.S. about the potential harms of comic books on youth that Congress created a subcommittee to study their effects on juvenile delinquency.

Unlike the comics in books, newspapers, and magazines, a separate type of comics – the stand up kind – emerged as a phenomenon of study. Encompassed by the field of “humor studies,” researchers examined the psychological and physiological effects of humor – positive or negative – on individuals or groups of people.

At this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, audiences witnessed the dark side of comedy when Best Actor nominee Will Smith assaulted comedian and awards host Chris Rock on stage after he ad-libbed a joke about the hairstyle of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Given that CRC Fellow Dr. Patrice Oppliger is an Executive Board Member and Past President of the International Society for Humor Studies – and has even co-edited a book called The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy – it seemed fitting to get her perspective on how communication research can help us understand this media spectacle. Oppliger told me, “In putting together our book, we framed the contributions from academics and professional comedians focusing on the communication model components: sender (comedian’s background), message (type of jokes), channel (venues), and receiver (audience reception).” She explained,

These factors can also be used to analyze the “Oscar slap” heard ‘round the world on March 27, 2022. Issues of race and gender complicate matters as do the backgrounds of the players involved. Will Smith’s PTSD from not being able to protect his mother from his abusive father and Jada Pinkett Smith’s battle with an autoimmune condition and the loss of her hair culminated in Smith slapping Rock after he joked about her resemblance to the title character of the 1997 film G.I. Jane.

Talk radio and social media have been rife with mansplaining/whitesplaining about how the joke was harmless. There is perhaps more to the joke given the history of the actors involved. Years earlier, Rock made a disparaging remark about Jada’s #OscarsSoWhite boycott of the 2016 Oscars, joking that she had not been invited in the first place. Rock noted the 2022 joke was “a nice one.”

Aside from Netflix comedy specials, stand-up is generally performed in an intimate setting – in front of a live audience who have access to the performer. In The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy, we include stories of audience members attacking comics. Thus, assaults on stand-up comedians are not unprecedented. The juxtaposition of the Oscar slap highlights the difference between film comedy, where scripted lines go through several layers of editing, and the free-style stand-up stage (reports are that Rock improvised the line). There is also a tradition of roasting audience members at award shows. For example, earlier that night, Regina Hall made a humorous reference to Will and Jada’s open marriage. While her comment did not draw an assault from Smith, it may have primed his reaction.

Beyond the live audience (most of whom gave Smith a standing ovation after his Best Actor win), social media lit up with “Team Will,” “Team Chris,” and “Team Jada” tweets. The one-minute exchange presents fodder for academics and armchair analysts alike that will be debated for years to come.

Indeed, as evidenced from students in my CM180 “Understanding Media” class, their reception of the situation was decidedly mixed. We discussed the controversy on the day that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Smith would be barred from attending the awards ceremony for 10 years because of his “harmful behavior.” When eliciting feedback from students, they shared the following observations:

Student A: “10 years is too much. That’s a little extreme. 1 year would have been better.”

Student B: “On the one hand, 10 years is a long time. On the other hand, if we do not give the situation a proper punishment, those who observed the violence conducted by Will Smith will think that it’s okay to use violence to solve problems.”

Student C: “Will other actors be treated the exact same…like, is this the standard going forward?”

Student D: “I think there’s other people the Academy should also ban. There’s people in the Academy who have committed domestic violence –who have been prosecuted – and are still there.”

As clearly demonstrated by Smith’s reception of Rock’s joke – and the mixed reception of audiences wide and far to Smith’s response – humor studies and communication research can offer nuanced insights into the effects of humor on individuals and groups of people.

Letter from the Director: March 2022

Disinformation Warfare in Perpetuating World Tensions

The unfolding, grisly war in Ukraine has made clear that in 2022 – nearly a century after communication theorist Harold Lasswell’s dissertation on propaganda – battles take place not only with physical confrontations, but also continue via information warfare designed to win the hearts and minds of observers. Communication researchers play a special role in helping to understand this process.

In the first days of the Ukraine invasion near the end of February 2022, I heard a live interview on the BBC Newshour where host James Menendez interviewed a member of the Russian Federal Assembly, Vitaly Milonov. For four minutes – with minor pushback from Menendez – Milonov parroted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talking points, including that “the UK, European Union, and United States have provoked the invasion, that Ukraine's president lacks public support, and that Russia has valid rights to keep Ukraine under its influence.” This interview was followed by another with former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul who proceeded to tear into Menendez for airing “nonsense” from a Russian MP. McFaul asked,

…if it was September 1st, 1939, would you put on the air a member of the Nazi Party to try to explain this ridiculous, absolute falsification of history and information that we just heard from Mr. Milonov? Because this is complete, utter nonsense what he just said, and I’m wondering if we’re doing a service to the world by giving him a voice on the BBC?

Herein is another exemplary case where the gatekeeping and framing responsibilities of journalists is crucial amidst a tidal wave of propaganda. Adding to the complex decisions traditional journalists must make when reporting on wars is the ascendance and accessibility of social media platforms. Citizens are now able to help narrate the first draft of history, highlighting the heroism of everyday Ukrainians as they resist and fight back against the Russian military. Of course, the danger is that this digital front is also vulnerable to propaganda and outright disinformation campaigns to demoralize or deceive Ukrainians and the wider world.

To help make sense of this complex environment, I turned to two of the CRC’s Research Fellows with expertise in international communication.

According to H. Denis Wu, Professor of Communication, “International news about wars has been immensely critical to people’s surveillance of the state of the world because of the nature of the subject matter as well as the information about it.” He explained,

The news about wars is more impactful for people and inevitably riskier, harder, and more expensive for the media to deliver. The coverage of Ukraine so far reflects what communication researchers have long indicated: it shows what has happened as well as the emotions behind the stories. The news has covered not just the military activities and economic sanctions – which is extremely important – but also the bravery, resistance, and resilience of the Ukrainians who face an almost insurmountable enemy. The former category of news belongs to the first-level agenda while the latter is affect-based, thus second-level agenda. It is crucial in shaping the sentiment of audiences and their actions, as illustrated in Image and emotion in voter decisions: The affect agenda.

Of course, shaping perceptions of wars has a long history. Michael G. Elasmar, Associate Professor of communication provides some of this background:

Shortly after the end of World War II, the United States, under the auspices of UNESCO, launched a major research initiative for determining the conditions that affect international understanding, intergroup perceptions, and support for military conflict among nations. It was called the World Tensions Project. The overarching goal was to determine what can be done to preempt a repetition of the devastation witnessed during World War II. The initial World Tensions Project resulted in numerous studies that examined the role that communication and media play in contributing to how other countries and people living in those countries exist in our minds. It is worth noting here that, at that time, the field of communication science did not yet exist, and the study of media impact was scattered across sociology, psychology, education, and other classical disciplines. Interest in conducting this type of research waned and mostly disappeared after the 1960s when there was a growing belief that another world war was no longer a probable event.

I asked Elasmar what the knowledge gained from the original World Tensions Project tells us about the likely changes in the reaction of Americans over time to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He explained,

Studies conducted in the two decades following the launch of the World Tensions Project taught us that news and entertainment media play an important role in creating, reinforcing, and/or modifying the images of countries in our heads and these images can influence attitudes toward other countries and support for military action. And that pre-existing information about a country will determine which portions of the new information about this specific country the human brain will focus on and retain in its memory. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, surveys of Americans conducted in 2020 by the Pew Center for the People and the Press (PCPP) and by Gallup in early February of 2022 have consistently found an unfavorable opinion of Russia among a vast majority (70% and 85% respectively) of survey respondents. Between 2007 and 2020, PCPP found that favorable opinion of Russia among Americans had fallen by 25%. Gallup found that favorable opinion of Russia dropped from 51% in early February of 2012 to 15% in early February of 2022. These patterns show that the preexisting information about Russia’s government was already overwhelmingly negative prior to its invasion of Ukraine.

Applying what we learned from the World Tensions Project, we can predict that the images of atrocities and destruction stemming from the Ukraine invasion will strongly reinforce the pre-existing negative information about the Russian government held by Americans. One direct implication of this effect is that American consumers might shy away from traveling for leisure to Russia and/or consuming Russian-made goods and services for a long period after the Ukraine war no longer dominates international news. Another indirect implication is that the images of destruction and atrocities emerging out of Ukraine might interact with other negative factors prevailing in the minds of Americans in ways that no one could have predicted just a few weeks ago. The longer the war in Ukraine goes on, and the more its effects are felt in their daily lives (through price increases of everyday necessities, threats of cyberattacks, news about the potential of nuclear bombs by the Russian military, predictions of a recession etc.) the more likely will Americans demand for and support a direct military intervention to end what they perceive as a Russian threat to their safety and the safety of their families. Americans will want to hold the Russian government accountable for destroying a modern European country and committing atrocities against civilians, and to punish the Russian government for a war that is causing an impending economic recession and stifling American optimism about the end of the pandemic.

As the war in Ukraine drags on, our CRC Fellows continue to monitor the important role of mediated communication in forming, changing, and reinforcing perceptions of war, countries, governments, and people around the world.