Each semester, the UConn Department of Communication welcomes expert guest lecturers to share insights and research from across the field of communication.
Dr. Bree McEwan – Thursday, October 2, 2025
Talk Description
Dr. Bree McEwan (Professor, University of Toronto Mississauga) will visit on Thursday, Oct 2, 12:30pm, Arj 225, and present a talk, titled “Identifying Affordances across Technologies: From Social Media to Social VR”. Dr. McEwan would be leading a workshop on Research Methods (Friday, Oct 3) with the following objectives:
- Exploring issues of transparency, open science practices, and need for replication studies in Communication
- Examining affordances of social media and virtual environments
- Understanding the role of cognition and heuristics related to learning in VR and social media spaces
Bio
Bree McEwan is a Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, a director in the Data Sciences Institute, and a faculty affiliate of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. She is a co-organizer and founder of the Questioning Reality conference, a social VR research incubator. McEwan authored Navigating New Media Networks and co-authored Interpersonal Encounters. She directs the McEwan Mediated Communication Lab which researches the intersection of technology and social interaction. McEwan has published on relational maintenance on social network sites, texting in romantic relationships, linguistic patterns in online communities, and the diffusion of information through social media. In addition, McEwan has metascience interests focused on transparency and replication in the social sciences. Current studies of the McMC Lab focus on affordances of social virtual environments, cognition and heuristics related to learning in VR spaces, and nonverbal communication patterns of avatars and agents.
Dr. Janet Yang – Thursday, March 13th, 2025
Talk Description
Title
Risk communication about PFAS contamination
Abstract
PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals extensively used in industrial and consumer products due to their water, heat, and oil-resistant properties. Exposure to PFAS may be associated with many health risks such as liver and kidney diseases, decreased immune function, cancer and so on. Simply communicating the health risks linked to PFAS exposure may foster a skeptical and dismissive attitude that “everything causes everything” among consumers. As such, it is imperative to identify effective communication strategies to motivate people to pay attention to risk information related to PFAS contamination. In this talk, Dr. Yang will present the latest findings from her lab that examine the impact of perceived relevance and conflicting information on risk communication behaviors, as well as downstream behavioral outcomes such as policy support and mitigation action.
Bio
Professor Janet Yang studies how communication behaviors and decision-making processes are influenced by the way people perceive risk. She has conducted research in numerous environmental and public health contexts, including climate change, plastics recycling, vaccination, and COVID-19. She has published over 110 peer-reviewed journal articles in leading communication, risk, and interdisciplinary journals and received numerous top paper awards at professional meetings. Her research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, among others. She was awarded the 2020 Hillier Krieghbaum Under 40 Award by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the 2021 Chauncey Starr Distinguished Young Risk Analyst Award by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). She is a 2023 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2024, she received the KCHC Lewis Donohew Outstanding Scholar in Health Communication Award.