News

The International Communication Association recently named Professor Cuihua (Cindy) Shen as a 2024 ICA Fellow. The award is primarily a recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication.

Research conducted by undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty in the Department of Communication will be heavily represented at this year's meeting of the International Communication Association. Researchers in the Department will present a total of 47 different projects, including one top paper. Our faculty hold important leadership roles at ICA; Dr. Drew Cingel is Chair for the Children, Adolescents, and Media Division and Dr.

On May 30, the Department of Communication hosted a conversation between several of our successful alumni and a group of motivated, engaged undergraduates. In the first of what the Department hopes to make a regular event, the alumni panel answered questions about how they made decisions about graduate school, why they chose their particular fields of specialization, and how they apply principles they learned at UC Davis. 

The Department of Communication hosted its inaugural Communication Horizons conference from May 3 - 5, 2024. This year's conference theme was "Navigating the Complexities of Information Integrity in a Digital Age". The conference kicked off with a Friday-night keynote from Dr.

The Department of Communication recognizes graduating students with a high GPA who also have noteworthy achievements in other areas, which may include research, leadership in the classroom, and other extra-curricular activities. Among these high performing students, 16 students were recognized with a departmental citation award this year.

Congratulations to Rachael Kee who earned the NIH Dental and Craniofacial Research Building Bridges award for her poster: Does Cleft Lip/Palate Repair Surgery Restore Normal Neural Processing For Infant Faces? She presented this research as a poster at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS24) in San Francisco. Way to go, Rachael!

Ph.D. candidates Allyson Snyder And Camren Allen, as well as ASPIRE Undergraduate Researchers Valerie Klein and Nicole James were featured in the UC Davis Student Researcher series. The feature showcases research examining how children learn in virtual reality.

In a recent edition of the college newsletter, the insightful research conducted by Professor Drew Cingel, alongside graduate students Jane Shawcroft and Samantha Vigil, has been featured. Their collaborative article, originally published on The Conversation, delves into the complexities and scientific underpinnings of designing children's educational media. 

Professor Magdalena Wojcieszak has made headlines in the newsletter of the College of Letters and Science with her study on YouTube's recommendation algorithm. Titled "YouTube Video Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users," the research reveals how right-leaning users are more likely to receive extremist content recommendations.

Professor Seth Frey's new research, now featured in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), on the power of minimal contributors in crowdsourcing has been showcased in the newsletter of the College of Letters and Science.

Professor Jingwen Zhang's innovative use of AI chatbots for health motivation has been highlighted in the College of Letters and Science's newsletter. The piece, "An AI Chatbot to Improve Our Health: Communication Professor Wins Award for Innovation in Education and Public Health," acknowledges Zhang's achievement in receiving the 2023 K. Everett M. Rogers Award.

The United Nations is the main clearinghouse of international statistics.

Professor Magdalena E Wojcieszak has been awarded the European Research Council Consolidator Grant (2,000,000 Euro for 5 years). She will conduct a research project titled "Incentivizing Citizen Exposure to Quality News Online: Framework and Tools: NEWSUSE." 

Professor Seth Frey and his collaborators received a $50K Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund grant from the Ford Foundation. His team will be working on identifying ways to make it easier for open source software projects to transition to community-driven governance.

Professor Jingwen Zhang receives the 2023 Everett M. Rogers Award from the Public Health Education and Health Promotion section of the American Public Health Association.