Archives

Communication Assistant Professors Amanda Cooper and Elizabeth Hintz Named 2025 Early Career Scholars by NCA

Posted on by
Portrait of Elizabeth Hintz
Portrait of Amanda Cooper

Dr. R. Amanda Cooper, PhD. (image on right), assistant professor of interpersonal communication, has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Leslie A. Baxter Early Career Award, presented by the Family Communication Division of the National Communication Association (NCA).

Dr. Elizabeth Hintz, PhD. (image on left), assistant professor of health communication, has been honored with the 2025 Early Career Scholar Award from NCA’s Health Communication Division. This marks her third early career accolade from the association—having previously received awards from the Interpersonal Communication and Family Communication divisions in 2023. With this trio of recognitions, Hintz has achieved a rare and distinguished milestone in the field of communication.

These awards celebrate the impactful research and scholarly contributions of Cooper and Hintz, as well as their commitment to advancing their respective areas of study.

Awardees will be formally recognized at the 111th Annual NCA Convention this November.

The National Communication Association is a scholarly society committed to promoting excellence in communication research, education, and practice to enrich lives and foster a more informed and connected world.

UConn Communication Faculty Member Highlights Dementia Care Strategies in UConn 360 Podcast

Posted on by
Portrait of Amanda Cooper

STORRS, CT. — In recognition of World Alzheimer’s Day on September 21, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Amanda Cooper, PhD., joined the latest episode of the UConn 360 podcast to share insights from her recent research on dementia care and family communication.

Cooper’s recent study, published in the Journal of Family Communication, examines how families can preserve the personhood of loved ones living with dementia. Her work emphasizes the importance of maintaining emotional connections through everyday interactions. Strategies such as expressing affection, engaging in shared storytelling, and affirming identity are shown to help individuals with dementia feel valued and understood.

The podcast episode, titled “Caring For Family Members With Dementia,” explores the practical and emotional dimensions of caregiving. Cooper draws on both academic research and personal experience to offer guidance for families navigating the challenges of dementia-related transitions.

As a new member of the UConn community, Cooper also reflects on the university’s supportive atmosphere for researchers and educators. She notes that the collaborative environment has been instrumental in advancing her work on family communication and end-of-life care.

The full episode is available via the UConn 360 website.

UConn Professor of Communication Dr. David Atkin, PhD., inducted as ICA Fellow

Posted on by
Dr. David Atkin receiving fellowship award on stage.
Dr. David Atkin shaking hands with person bestowing award.

Inducted as a Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA)

DENVER, CO — The International Communication Association (ICA) has named Dr. David Atkin, Professor of Communication at the University of Connecticut, to its prestigious 2025 Class of Fellows, recognizing his distinguished contributions to the field of communication.


The ICA Fellow designation is one of the highest honors in the discipline, awarded to scholars whose work has made a lasting impact on communication research and theory. Dr. Atkin’s selection reflects a career defined by innovation, rigor, and influence across multiple domains of digital and mediated communication.

Since first attending ICA in the mid-1980s, Atkin has built a prolific research portfolio that includes over 190 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and five scholarly books. His work has shaped understanding in areas such as media effects, communication technologies, political communication, and media policy. He is widely recognized for developing and validating key theoretical models, including the Functional Equivalence framework, the Integrated Communication Technology Adoption Model, and Technology Fluidity Theory.


Atkin’s scholarship has earned him a place among the top 1% of researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences globally, with consistent rankings for research output and citation impact. His contributions have not only advanced academic discourse but also informed real-world applications in media and technology policy.

Beyond his research, Dr. Atkin has served in editorial roles for leading journals and played an active role in ICA and other professional organizations. His commitment to teaching and mentorship has been recognized with honors such as the Krieghbaum Under-40 Award and the University Distinguished Scholar Award.

Comm Speaker Series Events: Fall 2025

Posted on by

Each semester, the UConn Department of Communication welcomes expert guest lecturers to share insights and research from across the field of communication.

Learn More About the Comm Speaker Series

Dr. Janet Yang – Tuesday, October 28, 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.

Dr. Young Anna Argyris – Tuesday, November 11, 2025  

Title

Why Some Ideas Never Die: Understanding Virality, Decay, and the Digital Afterlife of Information

Abstract

This talk explores why some ideas fade while others refuse to die. Drawing from large-scale analyses of social media data, I examine how the lifecycle of information—from viral amplification to gradual decay—shapes individual and collective decision-making in digital environments. My research investigates the mechanisms through which online information, whether about vaccines, influencers, or ideologically charged topics, continues to influence health and social outcomes long after its initial burst of attention.

Methodologically, my work employs machine learning, image recognition (deep learning), clustering and topic modeling, and linguistic feature extraction to uncover how digital messages spread, transform, and persist. My latest project extends this inquiry to the manosphere, a network of online communities where male-supremacist narratives resist typical attention-decay patterns. By modeling decay-avoidance strategies—such as cross-platform reposting and meme reframing—this research highlights why certain ideologies sustain influence despite platform interventions or time. Collectively, these studies reveal how virality and decay cycles define the digital afterlife of information and its enduring impact on public decision-making.

Bio 

Dr. Young Anna Argyris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information, College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. A former consumer analyst at Samsung, she studies how digital platforms shape information dissemination and decision-making. Her NIH- and NSF-funded research integrates data analytics, artificial intelligence, and health informatics to investigate how information spreads, decays, and influences health and social outcomes.

Dr. Argyris earned her Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, and an MBA from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. Her work has been published in top-tier journals in information systems, health informatics, and public health, including The British Medical Journal (BMJ), Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), Information Systems Research (ISR), Communications of the ACM, and Social Science & Medicine. The average impact factor of her publication outlets exceeds 9, reflecting the rigor and interdisciplinary reach of her research. Her work has been featured in NPR, Michigan Public Radio, and other media outlets, addressing health misinformation and digital behavior.

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:

  1. Exploring issues of transparency, open science practices, and need for replication studies in Communication
  2. Examining affordances of social media and virtual environments
  3. 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.