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January 2011
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Six Research Centers at the School Serve Clients, Shape Mass Media Scholarship
Doctoral Program Earns a No. 1 National Ranking
By Chelsea Reynolds
Master's Student
It's hard to escape the ads that recommend solutions for high cholesterol, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis and numerous other medical conditions affecting the aging baby boomer population. But do these appeals work? Some of the research guiding the development of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is taking place at the PRIME Lab, one of six dedicated research centers at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Undergraduate and graduate students have a variety of opportunities to work alongside faculty mentors in applied and scholarly research studies. Projects in health communication, politics, advertising messages, emerging technologies and more allow students to tailor their involvement with their professional goals.
The quality of some of the work has received national attention. This fall, the National Research Council released its first review of university doctoral programs since 1995. Among the national doctoral programs in communications reviewed, the Missouri School of Journalism ranked No. 1, and the University of Missouri was among the top eight research-producing communications education institutions in the United States.
"This is an extraordinary research achievement," says Esther Thorson, director of research for the Reynolds Journalism Institute and associate dean for graduate studies. "Our focus is to be the very best, most prolific journalism research unit in the United States."
Read on to learn more about the six centers: the Center for Advanced Social Research, the Center for the Digital Globe, Health Communication Research Center, the PRIME Lab, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and YAYA Media. Supporting these efforts is the Frank Lee Martin Journalism Library.
Center for
Advanced Social Research
The Center for Advanced Social Research conducts both academic and applied research. Clients include news media organizations, government agencies, academic institutes, professional associations and foundations. The Associated Press Managing Editors, the American Society of News Editors, Morris Communications, the Missouri Department of Health, the University of Missouri-St. Louis Public Policy Research Center, the Seattle Times and Missouri Foundation for Health are among those organizations that have worked with CASR in recent years.
"We're specifically interested in political and health communications," says Kenneth Fleming. "We also help news organizations and news trade organizations examine how new media can help promote journalism's role in society."
To do this, Fleming, his assistant director, four full-time staff members and up to 60 students from multiple disciplines design and conduct quantitative and qualitative research to measure the effectiveness of clients' messages.
"In essence, the students receive training from us about what survey research is and how to conduct objective and unbiased interviews," Fleming says.
Typically, Fleming and his clients discuss what it is they want to find out about a media message. CASR then will design a survey to provide feedback to the research questions. Student researchers often will conduct phone interview surveys or help analyze data. Although the information CASR produces is generally for practical reasons - for example, their clients use it in their media campaigns - the research is also highly academic.
"We call it piggy-back research," Fleming says. "The client will ask specific questions they want to have answered, but also we supplement their requests with academic research questions of our own, which we inform them of ahead of time. Because we are part of the university, we have an expertise in media practice and theory, and we have the School's reputation behind us."
Non-proprietary research from CASR surveys has been published in Mass Communication & Society, Journal of Health Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator and other leading journals.
For more information, visit the Center for Advanced Social Research website.
Center for a Digital Globe
The Center for the Digital Globe (CDiG) is an interdisciplinary center that focuses its research, teaching and conferences on the topics of globalization, e-commerce and digitization. Its mission is to prepare students and citizens for the world in which these interlinked and interacting forces are changing the way we live, work and learn.
The College of Business, the School of Law, the School of Journalism, and the College of Human Environmental Sciences, through the department of Textile & Apparel Management, were the original programs that created CDiG. Today, faculty members in political science, communication, geography, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, civil and environmental engineering, information sciences & learning technologies, mechanical and aerospace engineering and industrial and manufacturing systems engineering participate in CDiG projects.
CDiG's goals include interdisciplinary research, teaching and service at the state, national and international levels. Goals are accomplished in many ways, including involvement in grant projects, providing travel and project grants, offering sponsored events, which are open to the campus and to the public and offering courses and graduate certificate programs with a multidisciplinary and research focus.
CDiG-affiliated faculty are involved in numerous campus programs including directing two of the five Mizzou Advantage initiatives: Media for the Future and Understanding and Managing Transformational Technologies. Students are engaged in many research projects across disciplines and through graduate certificate programs. CDiG also helps students get involved in entrepreneurial projects where they can apply their research. In fall 2010 students across divisions built teams and competed on designing new software for Android, Google's mobile operating system. Adobe, Google and Sprint, as well as media partner Hearst Innovations, a unit of Hearst Corporation, sponsored the competition.
CDiG sponsors an annual spring symposium and additional events that feature recognized experts and other distinguished speakers. The 2010 symposium discussed new ideas for the future of media. Faculty and students present CDiG-funded research on campus as well as at peer-reviewed conferences around the world.
Additional information about CDiG projects is available at the CDiG website. Randy Smith, the Donald W. Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism, serves as co-director.
Health Communication Research Center
The Health Communication Research Center (HCRC) focuses on a multi-method approach for creating and measuring social change in health and science. Of particular interest to HCRC researchers is how new media - Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other emerging digital platforms - affect the meaning and acceptance of a message. Researchers also investigate how specific demographics process messages.
"We try to make health and science communications culturally relevant," says Glen Cameron, director of HCRC, the School's Maxine Wilson Gregory Chair in Journalism Research and a professor of family and community medicine. "And we're interested in making sure messages are credible and finding out how we can make that work in the new media environment."
Current projects include examining how tailored health messages impact black newspaper markets, how to improve the health literacy of Missouri citizens and how to bring science messages to the public that are easily understandable. These are a few of the many grant-funded projects taking place in the HCRC that bring more than $500,000 in direct funding to the Center. Since its creation in 2003, the HCRC has procured more than $50 million in total project funding from various federal and private granting agencies.
Aiding in the work on these projects are 15 doctoral students, eight master's students and five full-time staff members. Cameron emphasizes that although HCRC research is practical for its clients, it is also highly informative for student employees who hope to someday work professionally in communications or conduct research at the university level.
"We bring in a lot of income, we employ a lot of students, and we educate under the Missouri Method," Cameron says. "But the real 'golden egg' for us is our data. We generate tons of papers, dissertations and journal articles. That's what separates us from other client-based research centers."
Student researchers regularly present findings at conferences, and some publish articles in academic journals.
For more information, visit the Health Communication Research Center website.
The PRIME Lab
The PRIME (Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects) Lab's goal is to advance knowledge of how individuals mentally process and are impacted by media content, says Paul Bolls, a co-director of the lab and associate professor of strategic communication. The PRIME Lab is part of a growing branch of research called media psychology research. This research is focused on observing patterns of brain activity that reflect mental processes engaged by media use and may explain the effects that different kinds of media content have on individuals.
To meet this end, PRIME Lab researchers (including both undergraduate and graduate students) study specific mental processes that unfold across time when individuals consume media. Researchers working in the lab use a combination of psychophysiological measures and self-report questionnaires to provide in-depth insight into the psychological impact of a wide range of media content. Psychophysiological measures index variation in brain activity underlying attention and emotion during real-time media exposure.
The lab is currently studying how Internet users emotionally respond to online activities including Facebook, Amazon.com and CNN. Another group of experiments is focused on understanding how specific features of public health messages, such as the use of fear-evoking images, impact message effectiveness. Ultimately, experiments in the PRIME Lab are designed to assess the psychological impact and inform the production of media content that can better serve the needs and well being of individuals in our society as well as media professionals and their clients.
"Essentially, we throw a broad research net, so we're interested in all media platforms and a broad area of media content," says Glenn Leshner, a co-director and professor of strategic communication.
Along with Kevin Wise, associate professor of strategic communication, Bolls and Leshner guide a team of undergraduate and graduate student research assistants who become engaged in all phases of conducting experiments. Students working in the PRIME Lab have given research presentations at the annual meetings of highly respected academic associations such as the International Communication Association and Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Student researchers can participate in just a single study or complete a full thesis or dissertation using the lab as a research center. A large part of the Lab's mission is to provide research experience for students that goes beyond the classroom and adds tremendous value to their college education.
"The only qualifications we seek in students is that they're interested in how people process media," Leshner says.
The PRIME Lab is interested in collaborating with alumni on research projects. Whether through conducting studies for third-party organizations or exploring research collaborations, the lab welcomes all professional inquiries.
For more information please contact one of the PRIME Lab directors: Paul Bolls, Glenn Leshner, and/or Kevin Wise.
The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute
The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, under the direction of Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Esther Thorson, pursues a robust agenda of applied research for news organizations and companies that address marketplace, technology and communication innovation and opportunities.
One of the main areas of RJI research is media economics. RJI doctoral research fellows Hari Sridhar (now an assistant professor at Michigan State University) and Elina Tang have been involved with Thorson and Professor Murali Mantrala of the MU Trulaske College of Business in developing mathematical models of how dollars newspapers invest in their newsrooms, advertising and circulation departments translate to circulation and advertising revenues. These models are being applied at a number of newspapers across the nation. The research team, which now includes doctoral student You Li, is now linking the number of words and stories about specific newspaper topics (e.g., international news, sports, crime, business) to revenue generation.
RJI is now engaged in a statewide study of how the introduction of high-speed broadband influences all aspects of life in rural and small-town populations. An interdisciplinary team of faculty researchers from across the campus is launching a baseline survey this month before the new cable-supported broadband is available. The team will return to these areas after about 18 months. This research is reminiscent of the groundbreaking studies of how television affected the lives of people in remote areas when it was finally introduced and promises important understanding of how technology fundamentally changes communication patterns.
Additionally, RJI teams talented graduate student researchers with each year's class of Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellows. Fellows' projects are unique opportunities for all students to work with some of the brightest minds in journalism as they pursue the newest innovative ideas and concepts in journalism. The entrepreneurial spirit at RJI creates an exciting learning experience for students, faculty, Fellows and staff.
For more information on these and many other projects, visit the Reynolds Journalism Institute website.
YAYA Media
YAYA (Youth and Young Adult) Media is a for-profit subsidiary organization of Mojo Ad, the School's student-staffed agency. Student teams, supervised by faculty, create custom advertising and public relations campaigns for clients who wish to target those in the 18- to 24-year-old age group. YAYA Media creates an annual "State of the YAYA." Among the dozen topics covered, this year's downloadable report offers insights on branding/customization, technology, feedback expectations and convenience.
Because student researchers belong to their own target demographic, they are particularly suited for the study of young adult markets, says Margaret Duffy, associate professor of strategic communication and YAYA Media co-founder and CEO.
Students who are selected for Mojo Ad work with national clients. Students do significant research on each brand's positioning vis-a-vis the YAYA market. They come up with three complete campaigns for each client.
"YAYA research is unique, as it combines the intuitions and insights of our ever-changing Mojo Ad students with high quality marketing and social science research," Duffy says.
For more information, visit the YAYA Media website.
The Frank Lee Martin Journalism Library
The Frank Lee Martin Journalism Library connects both media researchers within the School and journalists across the globe with theoretical, empirical and practical journalistic resources. Part of the MU Libraries system, it is the first and largest of any journalism library in the country. It houses nearly 30,000 journalism texts and provides access to thousands of online resources.
"We think we are the primary resource for journalists seeking information from all over the globe," librarian Dorothy Carner says.
For more information, visit the Frank L. Martin Journalism Library website.
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