The Mary Junck Research Colloquium Series was formally established in 2007 to nurture an intellectually vibrant climate with both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary shades, by scheduling scholarly presentations on diverse topics.

The speakers represent various disciplines and units on campus as well as other universities and organizations in the Triangle. The series has been particularly successful in attracting scholars and researchers of national and international renown from within the U.S. and abroad. The series attracts a diverse audience comprising faculty, graduate students and researchers from around the Triangle.

The colloquia meet 2-3:30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Freedom Forum Conference Center (3rd floor) in Carroll Hall.

The talks are recorded and made available for public view via the Mary Junck Colloquium Series playlist on the school's YouTube channel.

For more information or to make suggestions, please contact Sriram "Sri" Kalyanaraman at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 919.843.5858.

Spring 2012 Speakers

• Professor, College of Communications, Penn State
  
  
• Title: Moral Beauty and Media Entertainment
  
  
• Abstract: Research in media effects has frequently focused its attention on the many harms that media entertainment can cause, such as increased aggression, heightened mistrust, or the development of unhealthy habits. In contrast, the purpose of this talk is to overview recent and ongoing research on the possible positive outcomes of media entertainment. Specifically, in this presentation, Dr. Oliver will suggest that media entertainment can provide viewers the opportunity to grapple with life meanings, to seek greater insight concerning human compassions, and to be inspired by portrayals of moral beauty. Implications of these effects for prosocial content will be considered.

• Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, UNC-Chapel Hill

• Title: Twenty Years of Exemplification Research, or, What to do When a Theory Hits Middle-age.

• Abstract: Twenty years ago Professor Dolf Zillmann and a group of scholars at the University of Alabama began discussion about a program of research to investigate the effects of news reports on issue perception, focusing on the specific effects of case studies.  Eventually, a theory of exemplification effects emerged, and more than 40 published studies have utilized this theory.  Exemplification research continues, with the focus expanding from news to other areas of communication.  This presentation will trace the development of exemplification theory and consider the larger question of how a theory matures and adapts to maintain relevance.

February 9 - Dr. Daniel Kreiss

• Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, UNC-Chapel Hill

• Title: Producing and Coordinating Political Participation in Electoral Campaigning: Computational Management and the 2008 Obama Campaign

• Abstract: This presentation analyzes the new media managerial and data practices used by the 2008 Barack Obama campaign for president.  Campaigns have long sought to generate and effectively coordinate citizen participation in fundraising, messaging, and fieldwork.  To help secure these fiscal and human resources, the Obama campaign developed a set of management techniques and data and analytic practices designed to increase the allocative efficiency of resources and probabilistically produce desired actions among supporters and the wider electorate.  Through in-depth interviews with more than twenty staffers working with new media on the campaign, this presentation analyzes the New Media Division’s development of what I call a ‘computational management’ style, or the delegation of managerial, allocative, messaging, and design decisions to analysis of user actions made visible in the form of data as they interacted with the campaign’s media.  It does so through an in-depth study of the campaign's website optimization and field campaign practices.  While these practices and tools did not on their own produce the extraordinary mobilization around the campaign, they helped translate it into staple electoral resources: money, messages, and votes.

February 23 - Dr. Brian Southwell

• Research Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Senior Research Scientist, RTI International

• Title: The promise and perils of leveraging social networks for strategic communication

• Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a dramatic surge in popular attention to social networks (and social media). Strategic communication professionals have helped shine this spotlight, including social media components in many contemporary efforts. Useful theoretical development and empirical research, however, has been slower to emerge, especially in the arena of mass media campaign evaluation. Understanding the roles that social networks might play with regard to mass information spread and mass media campaign effects paradoxically requires a look backward: more than a century of thinking about interpersonal interaction tells us much about where we might head next. Southwell will outline an agenda of research in this vein and highlight several recent papers that begin to address (and raise) relevant questions.

March 1 - Dr. Christine Rini

• Research Assistant Professor, Gillings School of Global Public Health, UNC-Chapel Hill

• Title: Improving social support interventions: Benefits of understanding the features and consequences of effective enacted support

• Abstract: Too often, social support interventions that attempt to harness potential benefits of naturally-occurring social support fail to live up to their promise. One impediment to their success is that researchers know relatively little about the "active ingredients" of naturally-occurring social support transactions that occur in times of adversity. Under what circumstances are social support attempts most likely to succeed at helping support recipients manage the emotional and practical challenges of adversity? The social support effectiveness (SSE) framework identifies features of support theorized to influence the extent to which recipients will benefit from support they receive from a partner, family members, friends, and others in their social network. In contrast, traditional conceptualizations of enacted support focus on quantity-receiving more support is viewed as better than receiving less of it. This talk will review findings from research investigating the SSE framework and its implications for intervention. The research focuses on cancer survivors treated with hematopoietic stem cell transplant and investigates the effectiveness of support from a spouse or partner and family members.

March 8 - No Colloquium - Spring Break

• Associate Professor, Communication and Culture, Indiana University
• Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research New England


• Title: "There are no gay people here": Expanding the boundaries of queer youth visibility in the rural United States


• Abstract: Drawing on her experiences working for 2 years in rural parts of Kentucky and in small towns along its borders, Mary will map out how lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and questioning (LGBTQ) youth and their allies make use of digital media and local resources to combat the marginalization they contend with in their own communities as well as the erasure they face in popular representations of gay and lesbian life and the agendas of national gay and lesbian advocacy groups. Against a backdrop of an increasingly impoverished and privatized rural America LGBTQ youth and their allies visibly—and often vibrantly—work the boundaries of the public and media spaces available to them. This talk will explore how youth suture together high schools, public libraries, Wal-Mart, and the web to construct spaces for fashioning their emerging queer identities. Their triumphs and travails defy clear distinctions often drawn between online and offline or rural and urban experiences of identity, fundamentally redefining our understanding of the term 'queer visibility’ and its political stakes.

March 29 - Dr. Srividya Ramasubramanian

• Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Texas A&M University

• Title: Obama, Oprah, & Omarosa: Counter-stereotypic media exemplars and their effects on prejudice reduction

• Abstract: In this presentation, Prof. Srivi Ramasubramanian will share findings from three studies that test the “Obama effect,” the role of counter-stereotypical media exemplars in reducing prejudice against the racial/ethnic out-group as a whole. Previous research shows that exposure to counter-stereotypic versus stereotypical media exemplars has a positive effect on reducing stereotypical attitudes (Bodenhausen, et al., 1995; Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001; Ramasubramanian & Oliver, 2007). These studies suggest that exposure to stereotypical media personalities can influence heuristic decision-making relating to policy opinions. However, these effects have not been studied in the context of counter-exemplars.

  The studies presented here will test the generalized appraisal perspective against the enlightened racism perspective in news and entertainment contexts. According to the generalized appraisal model (Bodenhausen et al., 1995; Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001), exposure to counter-stereotypical out-group members will lead to a positive shift in general attitudes towards out-group in general. In contrast, Jhally and Lewis’ (1995) propose the enlightened racism model that suggests that positive portrayals of out-group members will not really change existing beliefs. Implications for media stereotyping processes, media literacy, entertainment studies, journalism, and political communication will be explored.

April 5 - Dr. C. W. Anderson

• Assistant Professor, Department of Media Culture, College of Staten Island (City University of New York)

• Title: The Long History of Data Journalism: Reporting, Social Science, and Document Analysis in 1912 and 2012 (With a Brief Stop in 1979)

• Abstract: Journalistic authority arises out of the way a particular act ("reporting") intersects with a particular object ("the public.") In the digital age, both what journalists do and to whom they direct claims about what they do are in the midst of a seismic shift. Along with older challenges to traditional notions of  reporting like "citizen journalism," partisan news-gathering, and social media, the growth of data journalism marks the most recent problematization of the reporting process. This talk marks an early attempt to frame our understanding of data journalism by focusing on particular news objects (documents), the manner in which documents collide with our understanding of data, and the way the relationship between reporter and document has shifted over time. A focus on data journalism can also shed light on broader questions in the humanities and social sciences, particularly the relationship between modern knowledge practices and "big data."  
  
  This talk comes at a very preliminary moment in the authors' new research project on the culture, history, and ontology of data journalism, and is thus provisional in many ways. Beyond outlining the general framework discussed above, the talk will consist of several brief stopovers at critical moments in the history of documents, journalism, and social science-- the growth of the data driven progressive reform movement in the early 20th century, the invention of so-called "precision journalism" in the 1970s, and the application of data journalism to document analysis today. The talk, being preliminary, is less concerned with presenting settled conclusions than it is with engaging the audience in dialog and conversation, all of which will hopefully shape the research project as it goes forward.

April 12 - Dr. Thales Teixeira

• Assistant Professor, Marketing Unit, Harvard Business School

• Title: Viral Video Ads: Viewed Humor is not Shared Humor

• Abstract: To become viral, online video ads need to be viewed and then shared. Yet, what works for one may not work for the other decision. In this research we focus on humorous content and tease out the
  differential impact that type of humor (pure or shocking) has on these two sequential decisions. In a
  lab, we record the facial expression of consumers as they are watching online ads containing either
  pure (i.e., smile, laughter) or shocking humor (e.g., shock from profanity), and examine its impact
  on their decisions to view the ad fully and to share it. The video data is processed using facial
  expressions tracking software and used to calibrate a dynamic sequential Probit model that accounts
  for both within and cross-decision dynamics. We find that shocking humor increases viewing but
  reduces sharing compared to no humor at all. Yet, content is not the only factor of viral ad success;
  individual personality traits also matters. We also find that highly extroverted and self-directed
  consumers share more often and to more people each time. We further test the interaction between
  humor type and personality in a viral field study in which we sent ads to lab participants and tracked
  total views derived from sharing. We find that extroverted people garnered 300% more total views
  by sharing non-shocking humor ads than introverted people sharing ads low in humor.

April 19 - Dr. Matt McAllister

• Professor, College of Communications, Penn State

• Title: 'Brut Slaps…And Twins': Hypercommercialized Sports Media and Gender Ideology

• Abstract: This presentation examines trends in the hypercommercialization of sports – forms that merge media coverage and representations of sports with advertising texts – and the implications for the cultural circulation of gender objectification and hegemonic masculinity. Two case studies are examined.  The first is ESPN’s “Coors Light Night Cap” that aired on the sports highlight program SportsCenter from 2003-2005, and amplified the gender ideology in Coors Light “Twins” advertising campaign at that time.  Second is the 2011 “Brut Slap” sponsorship of the national radio program The Jim Rome Show, analyzing both sponsored messages within the program as well as Facebook postings by Rome fans.   These examples illustrate the movement of not only commercialism and materialism into what would have formally been non-advertising spaces, but also a rigidly normative gender ideology moving between content categories as well.  Implications for gender ideology and hypercommercialism in a niche-marketed culture are discussed.