Research

Open house

Joe Arney — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:17:44 +0000

Open house Joe Arney Tue, 08/25/2026 - 10:17

Matthew Koschmann at a book launch event at the United States International University–Africa, in Kenya. His book examines the role participation can play in solving complex problems such as housing access, a major challenge in Manila.

Joe Arney

The title of Matthew Koschmann’s new book is The Philippines Road Home.

That road wound up being a journey he almost gave up on.

The book—which makes the case for a participatory approach to housing access—traces its origins back nearly a decade, when Koschmann was a Fulbright scholar at Ateneo de Manila University. An expert in nonprofit organizational communication, the opportunity to study a major, complex problem like housing in another culture was enticing.

But when he worked on the project back in the states, “it just felt impossible to do without living there,” he said. “It’s really difficult for some middle-aged white guy from Colorado to conduct ongoing ethnographic research on the other side of the world.”

Koschmann, chair of the communication department and an associate professor, had one final visit to the Philippines on his calendar when he pulled out of the book project, but elected to make the trip. The connections he made there convinced him there might be room for his insights, after all.

“The book raises bigger issues of what it means to engage in participatory work, whatever the issue is, and how we help marginalized people become engaged in the decisions that directly affect their lives.”

Matthew Koschmann, chair, communication

“There were big contrasts between government housing programs, which were largely non-participatory, and the nonprofit sector, which defined itself as having a more participatory approach to housing,” he said. “From a communication standpoint, how those nonprofits were approaching the challenge was fascinating to study.”

In the Philippines, and especially Manila, housing is a major challenge. Koschmann’s book, which published in April, looks at the idea of participatory housing—which involves the meaningful involvement of relevant stakeholders in key stages of development and decision-making.

“It sounds simple, but every word in that sentence is contested,” he said. “To me, the work of participatory housing is about what it means to the people involved and how we accomplish participation together—as opposed to a government saying, ‘Well, we posted a flyer, so we’ve participated.’”

Making the case

One of the cases in Matthew Koschmann’s book focuses on the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, which he visited after The Philippines Road Home published.

In understanding how organizations are using participation in their housing work, Koschmann wrote cases for three of them—Habitat for Humanity, Gawad Kalinga and Community Organizers Multiversity—that showcased different ways to think about participation and communication as addressing a complex issue like housing. He brings that together around larger themes like language, symbolism, meaning and social construction to show how organizations can think about participation in framing and solving major problems.

“There’s no math equation that defines what it is to be participatory,” he said. “Taking a communication approach to this isn’t about trying to land on a definition, but rather, giving a fuller, richer sense of what participation means, how it’s practiced and how it’s experienced.”

You don’t, of course, have to travel to Manila to see what a housing crisis looks like: Access to housing remains a challenge in Colorado and throughout the United States. While the specific issues surrounding housing in the two countries are two different to compare, “where I see parallels are the conversations in our society around whose voice matters, who’s included, who gets to define what is meaningful and valuable, how we reach levels of shared understanding,” Koschmann said.

“That applies not just to housing, but immigration, higher education, policing, healthcare and so on. The book raises bigger issues of what it means to engage in participatory work, whatever the issue is, and how we help marginalized people become engaged in the decisions that directly affect their lives.”

That impact and perspective kept him going through countless research trips to the Philippines, where his affection for the local fruit has earned him the moniker “Mango Mateo.”

“I’m forever an outsider, but I’m also not a tourist anymore,” he said. “A big part of the work was earning that trust—so that when I got something wrong, people wanted to correct me, instead of joking about it behind my back, because they know this work matters.

“Connection, more than data collection, has been one of the most meaningful parts of the project. What really pleases me about the book is that the rich, full experience from the research work really shines through.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

A new book from a communication expert considers how stakeholder participation can address thorny problems, like housing access.

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Heads of the class

Joe Arney — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:39:27 +0000

Heads of the class Joe Arney Tue, 08/18/2026 - 12:39

Joe Arney

Meghan Sobel Cohen

One of Meghan Sobel Cohen’s most lasting memories of studying journalism at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� was Cokes with Voakes—office hours that then-Dean Paul S. Voakes would host to get to know students outside of class over sodas.

It’s a tradition she carried forward in her time as chair of the communication department at Regis University, in Denver, and is excited to bring back to the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information as an associate professor of journalism.

“Coming back to CU feels like such a full-circle moment for me,” she said. “So, maybe we’ll start coffee with Cohen, or cookies with Cohen, in the fall.”

Cohen (Jour’09), an expert on media systems in authoritarian contexts and journalism’s role in peacekeeping, is among 13 new faculty—three of them alumni—joining CMDI this fall, with another set to begin in the spring.

“I am so excited by the wealth of experience that our new faculty will bring to CMDI,” said Lori Bergen, founding dean of the college. “The perspectives, knowledge and curiosity they will bring to our teaching, research and creative work will continue to enrich our students and community.”

Cohen said she’s especially excited to return to what she called “a truly inspiring campus.”

“I feel really excited and grateful to be back in Boulder,” she said. “I was here when it was a school of journalism—and it’s inspiring to see the evolution of CU alongside the changes in journalism and communication. I’m excited to become a part of that, to encourage that evolution and help change the way our students think about communication, media and journalism more broadly.”

In addition to Cohen, the following faculty will join CMDI this academic year.

Advertising, Public Relations and Design

Hyun Seung Jin, associate professor. Jin joins the college from the business school of Queensland University of Technology, in Australia. His work explores psychology, creativity and technology.

Richard Khleif (PhDMediaSt’07), assistant teaching professor. Khleif brings decades of global technology industry experience to the college. He also is an emeritus founding member of CMDI’s advisory board, and completed the integrated marketing communication program from the former School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 1999.

Communication

Lamiyah Bahrainwala, assistant professor. Bahrainwala was previously chair of the communication studies department at Southwestern University. She studies anti-Muslim sentiment through surveillance, race, the environment and more.

Alicen Rushevics, assistant professor. Key themes in Rushevics’ research include discourses of reparation and apology, indigenous human rights and U.S. imperialism in the Pacific. She completed her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2026.

Environmental Design

Sophie Weston Chien, assistant professor. After completing two master’s degrees in landscape architecture and planning from Harvard University, Chien joined CMDI as a chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow. Her research involves organizing in design, participatory textile research and fabrication, and theorizing contemporary design practice.

Pol Fité Matamoros, assistant professor. Fité Matamoros completed his PhD at the University of California–Berkeley, where he has been a designer in residence since 2025. He examines connections between visual culture, the spatial production of social and racial difference, and regime building.

Priyanka Sen, assistant professor. Sen will join CMDI in the spring after completing her PhD from Cornell University. She studies the intertwined histories of the built environment and agricultural practices tied to South Asian migration.

Nettie Skievaski (EnvDes’22), assistant teaching professor. In addition to her career in graphic design, Skievaski has been an instructor at CMDI since 2022.

Information Science

Jason Lucas, assistant professor. Lucas earned his PhD from Pennsylvania State University. He develops multilingual A.I. systems across underserved languages to advance safe, equitable technology.

Aspen K.B. Omapang, assistant professor. Another Cornell scholar, Omapang researches political relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in managing natural resources.

Katlyn Turner, assistant professor. Turner has been a research affiliate and instructor with CMDI since 2023. Her work focuses on environmental and climate justice, technology, policy, systems, and self-determination.

Media Studies

Susan Abbott, assistant teaching professor. Abbott brings more than two decades of experience in media development, digital democracy and civil society to her teaching. She was previously a lecturer at CMDI.

Journalism

Meagan Doll, assistant professor. Doll has held postdoctoral roles at the universities of Minnesota and Washington. She studies news consumption and production, with particular interest in perceptions of news in nondemocratic contexts.

Jason Lucas

Interdisciplinary importance

New faculty called the interdisciplinary nature of the college and its work a key factor in their decisions to come here. Cohen, whose work experience includes the U.S. State Department—where she observed the disconnect between the needs of human rights organizations and the limitations of journalists who cover them, leading her to her research niche—said the changing nature of the news business is a call for educators to combine related disciplines, to better prepare students for the challenges that await them after graduation.

Jason Lucas, of information science, said the department’s values and culture of collaboration were major draws to him—though also important is that his wife, Umniya Najaer, has been a postdoctoral fellow at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� since July 2025. His work studies artificial intelligence from the lens of language.

“There are 7,000 languages spoken in the world. And only about 20 of them have sufficient digital footprints to train robust models that can be useful for end users,” Lucas said.

It’s a safety concern, not just a usability issue, he said, as models can be attacked based on the data used to train them, leaving certain communities more vulnerable to the spread of disinformation or cybercrime. “And even with reinforcement learning, we cannot solve that basic security issue,” he said. “So we have to concern ourselves with both equity and safety.”

Lucas hopes to engage with these problems through SEAL, the Secure and Ethical A.I. Research Lab, which he’ll direct at CMDI.

Pol Fité Matamoros

Pol Fité Matamoros’ education spanned design disciplines like architecture, urban design and landscape architecture, which drew him to an environmental design department that brings all these areas under one roof. His research interest—which considers the advancement of fascist movements as expressed through visual and spatial culture—draws on these disciplines, plus humanities and social sciences.

“It’s easy to fall into this trap of saying the global rise of nationalist movements we see today is the same as it was in the 1920s. And it’s not,” Fité Matamoros said. “But there are similarities, and I think understanding how fascist movements in the ’20s and ’30s operated gives us a clue as to how they operate today.”

He studies the phenomenon through the lens of his native Spain, which watched its American colonial empire fall apart following war with the United States. The country’s attention turned to Africa, seen as a bountiful land of riches that could offset Spain’s decline—a concept Franco exploited in his rise to power.

He sees some of that today in the United States, where the Trump administration has pushed to rename the Gulf of Mexico and speak of colonizing Greenland and Canada.

Renaming, he said, is not just changing a label, “it repositions a space within a broader narrative of national rebirth. These spatial moves are not only moments of rhetorical excess, they create an appealing spatial argument for a violent nationalist narrative.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

CMDI is welcoming 14 new faculty with expertise in journalism, business, surveillance, technology and more.

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Eight is enough: CMDI piles up top paper awards at influential conference

Jayden Fortner — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:12:06 +0000

Eight is enough: CMDI piles up top paper awards at influential conference Jayden Fortner Wed, 08/12/2026 - 14:12

Iris Serrano (Jour , StComm’26)

After working as a journalist in Bangladesh for 17 years, Ershad Khan noticed a common theme that continued to drive his work as he entered academia.

Journalism’s most influential theories have been developed through a Western lens. And while these frameworks have shaped decades of research, Khan doesn’t believe they fully capture the reality of journalism in countries with different political systems, languages and cultural settings.

Now, the journalism PhD student in the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information is working to broaden perspectives.

Journalism PhD student Ershad Khan, left, won a best student paper award for his work on how A.I. is reshaping the news outside of Western contexts, as well as a research award. Here, he poses with the award alongside Beverly Horvit, of the University of Missouri.

“There’s a tendency to interpret press systems outside of the West as authoritarian, but there are nuances and other factors researchers miss,” Khan said. “I want to make things more inclusive from my own experiences and from my own cultural proximity.”

His paper, Artificial Intelligence and the Journalistic Field: Reconfiguring Capital, Legitimacy and Professional Authority in Bangladesh, examined how artificial intelligence is reshaping journalism in Bangladesh and affecting the workflow of newsrooms and journalists’ perception of their work.

One of the study’s biggest findings was that A.I.’s effectiveness relies heavily on language. English-language news organizations in Bangladesh can more easily integrate A.I. tools because large language models have been trained extensively in English. A lack of training data in Bengali means native-language newsrooms struggle to integrate these tools.

“The language these tools generate in a local language is something similar to seventh graders’ standard when they want to give output for their readers,” Khan said. “So they need to heavily edit those outputs. That’s not efficient for their newsrooms.”

This work earned Khan a first-place student paper award from the international communication division at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, which took place earlier this month in New Orleans.

He was among dozens of CMDI students and faculty to be recognized, bringing home a total of eight top paper awards and contributing 47 peer-reviewed papers. Khan also won a student research grant award for his proposal, Overt and Covert Control: How Competitive Authoritarian Regimes Restrict Journalistic Autonomy. The study aims to understand state mechanisms for controlling the press in the Global South based on data collected from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Uganda.

Founded in 1912, AEJMC is the oldest and largest alliance of journalism and mass communication educators and administrators at the college level. Today, the nonprofit organization includes thousands of educators and students from around the globe.

“It is such an honor for the work of our faculty and students to earn recognition from a prestigious organization like AEJMC,” said Patrick Ferrucci, professor and chair of the journalism department at CMDI. “To see the incredible work coming out of all the schools who attend the conference, and to then watch so much of CMDI’s work be recognized, is incredibly humbling. It’s a testament to all the great work from faculty and grad students in journalism and APRD.”

Angie Chuang, an associate professor of journalism, also received recognition at the conference for her book, American Otherness in Journalism. She was presented with the Frank Luther/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award, given to the best book on journalism and mass communication based on original research. She was also a finalist for the Tankard Book Award.

Angie Chuang, left, with the Frank Luther/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award she won for her book, American Otherness in Journalism. She is pictured with Raluca Cozma, outgoing Kappa Tau Alpha president and a professor of media and communication at Kansas State University.

Her book examines how the news has historically represented different communities and how political rhetoric has influenced who gets designated, as she said, “American with an asterisk.”

While writing the book, Chuang was surprised by just how quickly political landscapes and conversations about identity can change.

“How did we go from the summer of Black Lives Matter and really examining structural racism to banning DEI and questioning birthright citizenship in just a few years?” Chuang said. “When information is so fast-paced, and you have all of these new ways of communicating, things can change fast.”

Chuang said allowing people to limit what it means to be American will create a less-inclusive society. As the news industry evolves through social media, Substack, podcasts and other outlets, she said journalists have a greater responsibility to ensure voices are represented fairly.

“Whoever the news media is going to be, whether it’s traditional journalists or new media journalists, let’s remember what our values are,” Chuang said. “It’s not biased to say we would like to include all Americans’ voices in the news.”

Chuang’s work is defined by her experience working in the newsroom as a reporter, including coverage of issues related to race and ethnicity at The Oregonian. She called the award especially meaningful because it comes from peers who have also worked in the industry.

“To have journalists-turned-academics say this is a book that feels real, and has potential use in a newsroom today—that is a really nice compliment,” Chuang said.

A full list of CMDI presentations at AEJMC follows. Names in bold are CMDI faculty and students. In addition, many CMCI faculty and students in the journalism, media studies, and advertising, public relations and design departments moderated or served on panels, or led workshops, in addition to serving as heads of different divisions.

Advertising Division

Designing LLM Chatbots to Drive Webtoon Engagement: From Attention to Retention. Won-Ki Moon (University of Florida) and Sangwook Lee (assistant professor, APRD).

Broadcast and Mobile Journalism Division

Gatekeeping in Mobile Journalism: A Comparative Framework for Autonomous and Constrained Media Environments. Mamunor Rashid (PhD student, journalism).

Journalistic Authority as Epistemic Power: Framing and Ideology in Partisan News Talk. Manwar Hossain (PhD student, journalism).

Commission on Graduate Education

Making Asynchronous as Synchronous as Possible: Designing an Isolated Website for Summer Semester Online Journalism Course Engagement. Carl Knauf (PhD student, journalism).

Realities, Challenges, and Hopes in Career Building Toward Academia, Communication, and Journalism: Insights from Faculty and Graduate Student Perspectives. Mamunor Rashid (PhD student, journalism).

Commission on LGBTQIA+ Communities

The Professional Backstaging of LGBTQ+ Identity in Sports Journalism. Ashley Carter (assistant teaching professor, journalism). Top faculty paper, third place.

Commission on the Status of Minorities

Journalistic Objectivity, Epistemic Contests, and American (U.S.) Journalism: Audience Metajournalistic Discourse in Post-George Floyd Racial Reckoning. Dennis Okeke (PhD student, journalism). Top student paper, first place.

Commission on the Status of Women

I'm Worried ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Sexual Assault. I'm Worried ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Dying’: An Intersectional Analysis of How US Women Photojournalists Experience Occupational Safety Threats. Dinfin Mulupi (assistant professor, journalism).

Intersectional Analysis of Global Menstrual Leave News for Informal Labor. Shreyoshi Ghosh (PhD student, journalism).

Communicating Science, Health, Environment, Risk Division

Message Format and Influencer Roles in Sustainability Persuasion: Evidence for Format-Source Alignment in Climate Communication on Social Media. Vaibhav Diwanji (University of Kansas), Hong Vu (associate professor, journalism), Nhung Nguyen (University of South Alabama) and Nazra Izhar (University of Kansas).

We’re Leading the Transition: How Oil Companies Use Climate-Delay Discourses to Frame Their Responsibility on Social Media. Dien Luong (University of Michigan), (Frank) Hechen Ding (University of Kansas) and Hong Vu (associate professor, journalism).

Communication Technology Division

Assessing Relationships between Higher Education Institutions and the Public on Social Media: A Quantitative Content Analysis. Bachchu Shekh (PhD student, APRD).

Exploring How A.I. Technology Impacts Students’ Learning Outcomes and Self-Efficacy. Md Sazzad Hossain (University of Iowa), Shah Jahan Shuvo (University of Alabama), Bachchu Shekh (PhD student, APRD) and Jamil Marques (University of Iowa).

Community Journalism Interest Group

Vanishing Voices: Policy Failure and the Decline of Diaspora Journalism. Manwar Hossain (PhD student, journalism). Top student paper, first place.

Cultural and Critical Studies Division

At Least It Will Be 24 Hours Without Fake News’: A Thematic Analysis of Online Comments on Newsroom Strikes. Qiongye Chen (PhD student, journalism) and Ever Figueroa (assistant professor, journalism).

Journalism at the Crossroads of Culture and Climate: Journalists and Indigenous Perspectives on Environmental Reporting. Shitemi Khamadi (University of Indiana) and Dinfin Mulufi (assistant professor, journalism).

Navigating Hierarchies in Communication Journal Publishing: African Scholars’ Experiences and Strategies. Success Osayi (PhD student, journalism).

The Public Investment Fund and Saudi Sports Investment: Western Media and the Struggle for Legitimacy. Mohammed Abu Alqas (PhD student, journalism) and Huda Asiri (PhD student, journalism).

Racialized Stigma as Preoccupation or Site of Resistance: Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis of Mainstream and Chinese-Language News Media Coverage of the Atlanta Spa Shootings. Wen Lei (PhD student, journalism), Angie Chuang (associate professor, journalism) and Shreyoshi Ghosh (PhD student, journalism).

Risk Without Recognition: Power, Labor and Safety in Global Conflict Reporting. Mushfique Wadud (PhD student, journalism).

International Communication Division

Artificial Intelligence and the Journalistic Field: Reconfiguring Capital, Legitimacy and Professional Authority in Bangladesh. Ershad Khan (PhD student, journalism). Top student paper, first place.

Beyond the Threat-Efficacy Gap: A Longitudinal EPPM Analysis of Climate Journalism in Bangladesh Across Crisis Events (2020–2024). Mamunor Rashid (PhD student, journalism).

Climate Change Frame-setting on Audience Emotions and Engagement: A Comparative Study of Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore’s News Media. Hong Vu (associate professor, journalism), Le Thanh Trieu (Vietnam National University), Thin Van Dang (Vietnam National University) and Tham Thi Nguyen (RMIT Vietnam).

Competing Threats, Competing Enemies: Gulf and Egyptian Elite Discourse, Blame Attribution, and the Politics of Meaning in the 2026 Gulf Escalation. Mohammed Abu Alqas (PhD student, journalism).

Media Sources and Public Perceptions: Survey from High-Risk Areas in Peshawar. Hina Ali (PhD student, journalism).

Outward-Facing Legitimacy in Saudi English-Language News: Narrating Sport Diplomacy and Managing Sportswashing Critique After the FIFA 2034 Decision. Mohammed Abu Alqas (PhD student, journalism).

Power, Profit and the Press: A Comparative Political Economy of Media Ownership and Advertising Influence in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Muhammad Ali (PhD student, journalism) and Ershad Khan (PhD student, journalism).

Role Conceptions of Journalists and NGO Practitioners: Perspectives on Covering Humanitarian News in Crisis and Disaster Zones. Rania Al Namara (postdoctoral researcher, media studies).

Mass Communication and Society Division

Framing Dissent in South Asia: A Thematic and Discourse Analysis of Al Jazeera’s Coverage of Youth-Led Movements in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Mamunor Rashid (PhD student, journalism) and Md. Sajedul Islam (Southern Mississippi).

Media Ethics Division

Seeing and Not Seeing: Gen A.I., Professional Identity and Moral Perception Among Advertising Creatives. Jianhua Lu (PhD student, APRD). Top student paper, second place.

Paradigm Destruction: How Journalism Casually Contributes to Its Own Credibility Debacle: Patrick Ferrucci (professor, journalism).

Minorities and Communication Division

Beyond the Headlines: Arab Students’ Perceived Social and Personal Effects of U.S. Press Coverage of Gaza. Mohammed Abu Alqas (PhD student, journalism).

Introducing Racialized Metajournalistic Discourse: American Journalism and Racialized Violence in Digitized Metajournalistic Discursive Sites: Dennis Okeke (PhD student, journalism).

Newspaper and Online News Division

Disseminator or Advocate? Role-Toggling in Professional Practices Among Environmental Journalists. Patrick Ferrucci (professor, journalism) and Hong Vu (associate professor, journalism).

Evaluating Texting as a Strategy for Audience Engagement: A Chicago Sun-Times Case Study. Meagan Doll (assistant professor, journalism) and Benjamin Toff (University of Minnesota).

Revisiting the Protest Paradigm: Thematic Framing and Protest Legitimacy Across Liberal and Semi-Authoritarian Media Systems. Mamunor Rashid (PhD student, journalism).

Telling The Story of a Newsroom: Organizational Narrative and The Field of Journalism. Patrick Ferrucci (professor, journalism).

Participatory Journalism Interest Group

Examining Volunteer-Newsroom Collaboration in Community Radio: A Case Study on Community Radio in the Boulder and Denver Areas. Rania Al Namara (postdoctoral researcher, media studies) and Patrick Ferrucci (professor, journalism). Top faculty paper, first place.

Disrupting the Profession: Participatory Journalism and the Audience Turn: Fahad Humayun (Ball State University) and Muhammad Ali (PhD student, journalism).

Political Communication Division

Framing Democracy After Authoritarianism: How Bangladesh’s Media Covers Established vs. Uprising-Born Parties in the 2026 Election. Mamunor Rashid (PhD student, journalism).

Qatar’s Mediation Role Under Pressure: Comparative Framing and Strategic Narratives in U.S. and Qatari Coverage of the 2025 Doha Strike. Mohammed Abu Alqas (PhD student, journalism).

Religion as a Connective Communicative Social Technology: A Theoretical Framework. Lorcan Neill (University of North Carolina), Daniel Kreiss (University of North Carolina) and Jordan Morehouse (assistant professor, APRD).

Voices Unsilenced: A.I.-Generated Political Communication in Constrained Democracies. Muhammad Ali (PhD student, journalism) and Hina Ali (PhD student, journalism).

Public Relations Division

To DEI or Not To DEI: A Multi-Source Analysis of Corporate Social Advocacy. Teresa Tackett (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville), Andrea Lorenz (Kent State University) and Bridget Barrett (assistant professor, APRD). Top faculty paper, third place.

The Dialectical Tensions of Neoliberal Narratives and Field Logic in Public Relations AI Practices: Kyle Harris (PhD student, APRD).

Sports Communication Interest Group

Peripheral Mending at the Edges of Sports Journalism: Metajournalistic Discourse of the Terry Rozier Sports Gambling Scandal. Ever Figueroa (assistant professor, journalism) and Patrick Ferrucci (professor, journalism)

Visual Communication Division

Violence, Suffering and Courage: Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographs, 2003 to 2025: Lisa Krantz (University of Missouri) and Ross Taylor (associate professor, journalism). Top faculty paper, third place.

Iris Serrano graduated from CMDI in 2026 with degrees in Journalism and Strategic Communication. She covers student news and events for the college.

Faculty and student research into topics like A.I. and community journalism were recognized at this year’s AEJMC conference in New Orleans.

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Is beauty about looks—or views?

Joe Arney — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:06:15 +0000

Is beauty about looks—or views? Joe Arney Wed, 08/05/2026 - 09:06

The Asian baby girl trend—social media videos in which young Asian American women transform themselves with makeup, hair treatments, glasses, temporary tattoos and more—is all over social media. Researcher Seonah Kim says the trend tells us a lot about commodification and shifting dynamics of cultural representation online. Clockwise from top left, photos courtesy @maiphammy, @MishChoi, @stephaniewose, @RoxetteArisa, @ohnonina and @Lolwutjan via YouTube.

Joe Arney

Let’s get your first question out of the way: Seonah Kim is not interested in makeup.

“I’m like a film scholar who likes studying cinema more than watching movies,” Kim said. “I’m not into beauty, but I enjoy studying it—specifically, how Asian women’s bodies are racialized and gendered in media through beauty.”

Asian culture is enjoying a moment on screens and in streams across the United States, from Squid Game and Beef to K-pop. But most of Kim’s research looks at so-called “Asian baby girl” videos on YouTube, in which young Asian Americans dramatically transform their appearance with makeup, temporary tattoos, hair treatments and more.

Kim, an assistant teaching professor of media studies at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� College of Communication, Media, Design and Information, began studying the Asian baby girl phenomenon as a part of a book project. But the real origin story of this research comes from interviews she did with South Korean women who darkened their skin as part of their beauty regime. Kim sought to understand why they did so when many of their contemporaries focused on making their skin lighter.

“They would tell me, ‘I know I cannot be Caucasian, but this is a way to experiment with a kind of American identity,’” Kim said.

Seonah Kim

She was especially interested in South Korean women who darkened their skin as part of their beauty regime.

In her extensive interviews with Korean women who darken their skin, Kim found a rebellious streak—people challenging the “model minority” stereotype and looking to stand out from the crowd. Many told Kim they chose to darken themselves to resist the narrative of people who want to be lighter.

That helped lead her to Asian Americans performing the Asian baby girl identity. In those videos, she saw influencers adopting a rebellious streak of Asian Americans from a generation ago, who challenged the “model minority” stereotype to stand out from the crowd.

Shifting dynamics on social

Now, with digital and social media, these transformations are a powerful source for attention. Just look at the virality of Asian baby girl videos, as Kim does.

“On social media, we see the commodification of an aesthetic that has a lot of historical context,” Kim said. “This idea of beauty was created by a few Asian American women who wanted to challenge deep-seated stereotypes in the United States. When the Asian baby girl becomes ahistorical, visually appealing and easily consumable, it tells us quite a bit about the shifting dynamics of cultural representation and the self-commodification of Asian American identity in digital media.”

The result of ABG videos—and heightened Asian visibility in current media—is a positive sign to Kim, though it’s not without its drawbacks.

“We’re seeing different types of Asian Americans—they’re outspoken, funny, angry, entertaining. But at the same time, we risk trading one set of tropes for another.”

Seonah Kim, assistant teaching professor

“We’re seeing different types of Asian Americans—they’re outspoken, funny, angry, entertaining,” she said. “But at the same time, we risk trading one set of tropes for another. I’m not saying whether it’s good or bad, just that we need to be more critical of the media we see and the story it’s telling.”

In a recent paper in Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, Kim explored how YouTube’s attention economy has commodified Asian femininity. Though Asian Americans of a generation ago used beauty as a way to express independence and establish a counterculture, creators on social media don’t have that same influence over Western media.

“TikTok and Instagram reward content that’s visually entertaining and sexualized,” she said, “and unfortunately, I don’t see the digital space encouraging those types of discourses.”

It’s a topic she gets to explore in some depth in her classes, as well. Kim teaches an introductory social media course, as well as classes in media literacy and digital culture, where students can observe the impact of the attention economy on culture. The questions she gets there, Kim said, tend to focus on the media panic being generated around digital platforms and artificial intelligence.

“They really want to understand how social media works, to better evaluate that panic narrative,” she said. “They want to be better consumers of media.”

Her focus on commodification in ABG videos can be read as negative, but Kim said she appreciates the Asian American creators trying to carve out their own cultural niche in the digital media landscape, and who are producing different narratives about representation.

It’s a consideration she’s keeping in mind as she continues to study themes around representational inequality in transnational contexts. She’s especially keen on the idea of how the performance of ABG can challenge what it means to be seen as American. In fact, Kim is now at work on a book project incorporating her work on skin darkening among Korean women and the ways these women embrace and perform “Americanness” through the Asian baby girl phenomenon—along with how those practices challenge racial constructs in Asian contexts.

“Until now, from an Asian standpoint, Americanness is closely tied to the representation of whiteness,” she said. “Could that be replaced with a more Asian American representation—and what are the risks in doing so?”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

Asian Americans of a decade ago used beauty to establish a counterculture. A research expert says today's Asian baby girl trend doesn't possess the same influence.

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'We live under one sky'

Jayden Fortner — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:23:45 +0000

'We live under one sky' Jayden Fortner Thu, 06/11/2026 - 13:23

Naim Aburaddi hopes that one day, the people of Gaza will be able to look at the sky without fear. Lanterns were projected over livestreamed footage of Gaza stars at the beginning of the show, which also featured live music. Photo by Jack Moody.

Hannah Stewart

When Naim Aburaddi was a master’s student in California, he laughed when his friends asked him to go to Joshua Tree National Park to stargaze.

Growing up in Gaza City, Aburaddi never had the “privilege,” as he called it, to enjoy the night sky—there was always the fear of drones, surveillance or being bombed—but his experience at Joshua Tree changed how he looked at the dark.

As part of his dissertation, Naim Aburaddi organized an event at Fiske Planetarium that combined elements from his project Phoenix of Gaza XR and his personal story. Photo by Jack Moody.

“We live under one sky. I hope that one day we unite under this one sky that we have, and I hope for a better future for everyone,” he said.

That hope was at the center of his event, Reclaiming Our Sky: A Tale of Immersive Survival, hosted at Fiske Planetarium in the spring.

The planetarium show was born out of The Phoenix of Gaza XR, an extended reality project he co-founded alongside his mentor Ahlam Muhtaseb, while pursuing his master’s degree at California State University-San Bernardino. Using footage from Gaza XR, Aburaddi shared his personal story, as well as that of the project itself, to immerse attendees in Gaza, both before and after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

“I left in 2014, and I never had the chance to go back,” he said. “This project started from a very personal place, with a question of how I can use immersive media, virtual reality and 360 filming to return to Gaza.”

As a doctoral student with teaching obligations, Aburaddi often used Gaza XR in the classroom to show students a practical application of virtual reality technology while also encouraging them to connect with a culture half a globe away. He has since used the technology in a class he helped create, A.I., VR and Society, which challenges students to use technology as storytelling tools.

Rather than simply having students read first-person accounts of colonization or segregation, Aburaddi has students interact with immersive media that puts them, digitally, in those situations.

“Students learn how to film in 360, and then we’ll see how we can show documentaries in VR before taking them to the planetarium, so they see how the story can be told in a different way, using these different formats,” Aburaddi said.

“In my personal research and the classroom, I’ve looked for ways technology can be used to preserve culture and to create new formats of engagement with displaced people and marginalized communities. So, how can we build this connection with them, and how can we use it for repair and reconstruction?”

Digital historic and cultural preservation wasn’t always his goal, however. It was a byproduct of how the Gaza XR team had to reevaluate its mission after Oct. 7.

Initially, the team hired a local journalist to film daily life in Gaza and “show the happy moments, the beauty and how people made life out of nothing,” Aburaddi said. But following months of retaliatory strikes from Israel, much of Gaza was destroyed—and the team decided that had to be documented, too.

“Most of the locations we had filmed before were gone—the historical locations, the churches, mosques, even the streets and public squares,” Aburaddi said. “We didn’t realize it at first, but this project became a way to preserve history and culture.”

The dangers of acquiring that new footage became all too clear when Yahya Sobeih, the photojournalist hired to capture new scenes, was killed in an airstrike. But the added content has shown hundreds of people Gaza’s resilient residents and rich history—like the centuries-old Turkish bathhouse Hamam al-Samrah, now demolished. Gaza XR has been shown nearly 60 times worldwide at various universities and other venues, but Reclaiming Our Sky was a unique show for the Boulder community.

Almost 120 tickets were sold, but Fiske, which seats 200 people, was nearly filled with students, faculty, staff, community members and even a crew from Japanese public media. Many stopped Aburaddi and other members of the Gaza XR team to congratulate them on their work and ask questions.

All of their feedback, as well as an analysis of the event itself, was included in his dissertation, which explores how virtual reality can preserve culture, engage with marginalized communities and rebuild.

“We encourage students to do multimodal research that includes a creative component as well as the traditional dissertation,” said Nabil Echchaibi, a professor in media studies and Aburaddi’s advisor.

“Naim is the true embodiment of that interdisciplinary narrative. He's working with people in critical media practices in the Immersive Media Lab and the Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media. He feels like he's at home in all these areas, and he brings that to his students, as well.”

The event concluded with a panel discussion with Aburaddi, his advisors—including Gaza XR co-founder Ahlam Muhtaseb, center—from both CMDI and CSUSB as well as others involved in the project. Photo by Jack Moody.

Nabil Echchaibi, a professor in media studies and Aburaddi’s advisor, introduced the event hosted at Fiske Planetarium. Photo by Jack Moody.

In addition to showing footage from his project Phoenix of Gaza XR, Aburaddi shared his personal story with the audience. Photo by Jack Moody.

Hannah Stewart graduated in 2019 with a degree in communication. She covers student news at the college.

A PhD student’s extended reality project on Gaza has enjoyed worldwide showings. In the spring, he introduced a new VR feature that includes live storytelling and footage from the ruined city.

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Trust the process

Joe Arney — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:02:14 +0000

Trust the process Joe Arney Fri, 04/24/2026 - 11:02

Henry Ugwu was managing communications for the Nigerian government’s pandemic response when he realized he needed more experience. That led him to CMDI and its PhD in strategic communication. Photo by Kimberly Coffin.

Joe Arney

It was while managing the Nigerian government’s pandemic-related communication campaign that Henry Ugwu realized he needed more experience.

“I was all of 25 years old, running meetings with ministers and governors, and trying to guide them on what to do,” said Ugwu, who was the technical communications lead on the project. “That’s when I realized I had to up my game.”

To be fair, Ugwu’s game was already highly leveled when he arrived at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��. Most notably, he was a senior communications specialist with Credo Advisory—with offices in Nigeria and Washington, D.C.—where he worked on clients such as World Bank and the US Agency for International Development; he also was a youth fellow at the International Monetary Fund.

But coming to the College of Communication, Media, Design and Information for his PhD in strategic communication gave him a theoretical grounding that he said has dovetailed nicely with the practical skills he developed in his professional career. It was still an adjustment for Ugwu to find himself in a classroom, though.

“The industry is all about immediate results—you run a campaign, you see the data in real time, you see the impact of the work you’re doing and behaviors you’re helping to change,” he said. “Now, I apply theories to explain the phenomena of what happens in the field.

“My first semester was a bit of a learning curve, with a lot of reading to do. But I love the academic research side of things, where I explore varying topics, make a hypothesis, test it and try to publish it.”

An early advisor connection

Ugwu credited his advisor, Jolene Fisher, with helping his maturation as a student and researcher. In fact, he already knew of Fisher—an expert in strategic communication for development work and social change—from his career.

“My first introduction to Jolene was through her incredible work, and when I reached out to her to learn more, she could not have been more encouraging and personable,” he said. “I came here with all these broad ideas, and Jolene really helped me narrow things down. She has been extremely instrumental in my success as a researcher.”

Jolene Fisher

Fisher still remembers the Zoom call she took with Ugwu as he was exploring doctoral programs.

“I couldn’t believe, after doing so much research in international development and communication, that I might finally have a student who was just as into this work,” she said.

Ugwu’s work is tailor-made for the crisis development organizations are navigating. His broad interests encompass public relations, health communications and development communications; his dissertation explores issues of trust that multilateral development organizations like USAID and the United Nations are facing at a time of cutbacks and intense scrutiny of their work.

“The legitimacy of organizations like the World Bank and the UN is coming from critics who say that, since they’ve been established, they haven’t met their missions of driving development and eradicating poverty,” Ugwu said, noting the significant positive impact such organizations have had in addressing the world’s most complex issues. “But it’s important to examine the impact and relevance of these organizations from the perspective of communications professionals who are managing this emerging crisis.”

One thing he’s interested in, for instance, is localization—involving stakeholders in a solution, rather than prescribing answers from faraway places.

“It’s listening to what the needs are and having people at the grassroots lead in identifying and working toward solutions,” Ugwu said. “This kind of work is important to anyone working on communications in global health or in international development.”

There is extensive scholarly work on development communication, but Fisher said Ugwu’s work represents a novel approach in thinking about how these kinds of relationships are created and managed through the lens of public relations.

As seismic shifts test those partnerships and strain resources, “it’s more important than ever to understand how we think about who holds the power to make decisions about development projects,” she said. “And his fieldwork really helps him see these challenges and bring them to life for the students in his classes, who may not appreciate the different places their strategic communication education can take them.”

Combining work experience, research insights

The chance to bring the observations from his life and work in Nigeria to the field was a key reason Ugwu was excited about doing a PhD.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to contribute to revisiting, and maybe improving, some existing theories—or potentially developing a new one,” he said.

Henry Ugwu’s work in the field ‘really helps him see these challenges and bring them to life for the students in his classes,’ says his advisor, Jolene Fisher. Photo by Kimberly Coffin.

Ugwu hopes to research and teach in academia—he recently won a Graduate Part-Time Instructors Teaching Excellence award from the Graduate School and a research and academic achievement award from CMDI—but plans to keep active in industry so that he’s able to bring trends and insights to his students. He shared the story of fueling up his car during the worst of COVID and overhearing a conversation where a woman claimed the disease wasn’t real, in spite of all Ugwu and his team were doing to change behavior and ensure positive health outcomes for residents.

“That was hard to hear—despite being aware of such skeptics from our polling data—but it forced us to change our approach, which had been really high-level communications,” he said. “We realized we needed more grassroots engagement to complement what we were doing on radio, television and social media.

“Conducting research that helps people better understand the scale of the problem was fulfilling. And that’s something I want to be able to offer to students—because there are some lessons that you can really only learn from being out there and doing the work.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

Celebrating the Class of 2026

The transition from industry to PhD work was an adjustment for Henry Ugwu when he arrived at CMDI. Learning new perspectives helped him create novel research on trust.

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2026 Graduation Celebration

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Apart from the heard

Hannah Stewart — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:00:53 +0000

Apart from the heard Hannah Stewart Wed, 04/15/2026 - 16:00

Hannah Stewart

Brook Vann has long been interested in sound as a tool for both data analysis and digital storytelling.

“I have some really fond memories of having story time and having something read aloud,” Vann, a PhD candidate in media production, said. And they’re particularly interested in how the accessibility of sound can help a story better resonate with an audience.

Brook Vann curating an art show at D.D.D.D., in New York. Photo courtesy of Brook Vann.

“If your car is making a strange noise, you don’t have to be a trained musician to think about whether something is wrong with it,” they said. “And sound can help make sense of data that might otherwise be impalpable—it allows for a certain viscerality.”

Visceral is a good word for two research projects Vann has collaborated on—the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting and a eugenics campaign North Carolina embarked on a century ago. They said they are motivated to research heavy topics because they believe it’s important to be curious and talk about difficult things. Creative work, they said, brings stories to the public in a digestible way, and inspires a sense of curiosity in viewers—which is even more powerful when that audience is students.

“I get to teach undergraduates why media is important, and how and why you should engage with it,” Vann said. “I love talking to students about their intentions with the project versus how their peers interpreted it. And that’s where my creative practice comes in because I can share my own experiences working through a project and how I can be certain my audience receives the message I intend.”

It was this passion for teaching that led them to be one of six graduate students who represented the college at last year’s Institute on Teaching and Mentoring Conference, in Atlanta. Vann said it was a great opportunity to not only represent the college, but to also network with scholars from different fields, thus gaining new perspectives.

Their advisor, Betsey Biggs, an assistant professor who’s working with them on the Pulse project, said Vann’s perspectives are a reason for their success.

“They are willing to bring a lot of different fields together, such as sound studies, gender studies, music, art, cultural theory, materiality and so on,” Biggs said.

The Pulse team created a 24/7 web broadcast made up of eight individual audio channels. Alone, the channels are abstract, at times eerie and disjointed. For the full experience, users must listen with other participants, each using their own mobile device, in the same setting.

The inspiration for the project was a graffiti wall at the site of the shooting, where survivors and allies left messages in remembrance of the victims. The wall was recently torn down; in contrast, Vann and the team hope to further develop the memorial, expanding the eight channels to 49—one for each victim of the shooting—and integrating voices into the broadcast stream.

“With the graffiti wall, you could see messages, but then they faded with time and new messages,” Vann said. “By allowing the community to contribute, it won’t have an end point—it will continue to be a space that holds memory and grief.

“Community engagement is something that’s always been important to me and has been a big part of the research and work I’ve done here at CMDI.”

And their research has taken them beyond Boulder. Last summer, Vann was a research fellow for the Digital Justice Lab, at Dartmouth College, where they worked closely with faculty and data scientists on a project called Eugenic States, which tracks forced sterilizations in North Carolina, Iowa and California. There were thousands of historical documents to sort through—many of which were heavily redacted—that had to be rendered into data points.

To make sense of the information, Vann created a booklet as well as an interactive digital platform that shows sterilizations filtered by age, assigned sex and county. Depending on the data’s value, the points vary in size and color, and there’s an ambient sound element Vann created to go with the data visualization.

“I was inspired by the blue ghost fireflies in North Carolina—when you're far away, they tend to have a green hue, but when you're closer, they look blue,” Vann said. “The counties with smaller numbers of sterilizations have a smaller ring with fewer green layers, while the counties with more sterilizations are blue, have more layers and take up more of the screen.”

Vann plans to continue working with the lab after graduating from CMDI in May, helping the Dartmouth team to integrate the interactive platform onto the servers there.

Biggs said their contributions to the college extend far beyond their creative successes.

“They’ve really helped the culture of our department for the graduate students, and so we'll miss them, but we know they're gonna go out and do great things,” she said.

Hannah Stewart graduated from CMDI in 2019 with a degree in communication. She covers student news for the college.

PhD candidate Brook Vann was one of six students to represent CMDI at a national teaching conference last fall. Their research and creative work blends sound with social justice, which makes them a stronger instructor.

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Throwing shade

Joe Arney — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:05:36 +0000

Throwing shade Joe Arney Tue, 04/14/2026 - 10:05

Joe Arney

When you’re thinking about urban infrastructure, the first things that come to mind are probably related to transportation, utilities, communications and public services.

Shade is probably not on that list. But if you’re a mile closer to the sun, as Denver is, it should be, according to an expert in environmental health and urban greenness.

“As the climate changes, many cities have increased their focus on studying sun exposure,” said Sara Tabatabaie, an assistant teaching professor of environmental design. “But they’re doing so mainly from a heat mitigation standpoint, and not necessarily for skin cancer prevention.”

Earlier this year, Tabatabaie received a third grant to continue studying how Denver, and other cities, can engage in sun safety planning and shade design to make the outdoors a less hazardous place for your skin. Worldwide, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer; in Colorado, it is a rising problem, per the National Cancer Institute.

Creating novel guidelines

It’s such a novel consideration for designers and public health officials that Tabatabaie’s work really had to start at the beginning. In the early phases of this project—a partnership between the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Community Engagement, Design and Research Center—she developed an intensive methodology to assess ultraviolet exposure in different urban environments, or typologies. From there, she proposed design guidelines—customized for different public space typologies—to help neighborhoods hit appropriate sun safety thresholds.

“This work incorporates lived experiences of shade and place into real design guidelines,” she said. To do so effectively, she and student researchers from CEDaR completed extensive surveys—audits, observation, environmental modeling and parametric simulation—to establish design guidelines that could improve UV safety for each typology as the sun moves through the sky during the day.

Sara Tabatabaie’s research looks at sun mitigation from the standpoint of UV protection. Other research has mostly focused on heat prevention. Photo by Nathan Thompson.

Project visualizations illustrate the placement of shade structures related to play areas. This one shows shade at Scott Carpenter Park, in Boulder, in the afternoon.

The current phase of the project is translating her evidence-based findings into actionable strategies that can guide policy and transform neighborhoods for sun safety. Tabatabaie hopes that, through this work, CDPHE can craft stronger urban forestry initiatives, improve streetscape requirements and invest in neighborhoods that lack sun protection.

“In this next phase, I’ll be investigating the institutional and political pathways for shade interventions, so we understand how to integrate these findings into urban policies, regulatory codes and planning frameworks,” she said.

She also plans to perform a cost-benefit analysis of shade.

“We want to be able to share the cost of implementing shade against the health benefits that shade offers to residents,” she said. “We know cost will be an important consideration for helping people understand the value of introducing shade into these typologies.”

Jota Samper

In the first phase of the project, the team—Tabatabaie; Jota Samper, associate professor and co-director of CEDaR; and a team of environmental design students—surveyed six different neighborhoods throughout the city to assess shade and sun risk. The orientation of streets, walkability and sidewalk types were shown to directly affect the sun risk index; the survey also revealed neighborhoods with a higher percentage of children provided limited shade—problematic, as children are more susceptible to sun damage than adults.

“What I found fascinating about Sara is that she took tools that are used in other fields”—like Rhino, a versatile 3D modeling tool, and related applications like Grasshopper and Ladybug—“and applied them to her interest in research,” Samper said. “It was amazing to see how she implemented them not just to measure sun exposure, but to show how different modalities of design could have different impacts, and help us visualize and understand that in a more complex way.”

The work may seem simple on its face, but there are a number of quirks that become apparent the more you look at shade. Cover from trees, for instance, is variable on windy days and mostly disappears in the winter. Meanwhile, surfaces designed to reflect sunlight, and protect from heat, may reflect those UV rays back at people.

“Until now, shade thresholds have not been consistently defined across all typologies, which has made it more difficult to design sun-safe places,” Tabatabaie said.

“Community engagement, and using people’s lived experience, is so important in the design process. Because if people don’t believe in the design, they won’t use it.”

Sara Tabatabaie, assistant teaching professor, environmental design

All this is happening against the backdrop of cities embracing the outdoors and encouraging residents to spend time outside by investing in parks, multiuse trails and micromobility options. But based on average UV levels in Denver, more than 20 minutes of direct sun exposure is not recommended, especially for fair-skinned people.

Balancing more time outdoors with more awareness of sun risk is something Tabatabaie takes seriously in her work.

“Community engagement, and using people’s lived experience, is so important in the design process. Because if people don’t believe in the design, they won’t use it,” she said. “We can’t just design something that looks great. We have to observe how people behave and interact with a design to ensure we’re creating something people want to use.”

Student research impact

That’s a lesson she imparted to the students working alongside her on the project. Gabby Rodriguez, a senior majoring in landscape architecture, studied urban trail systems to help guide recommendations for that typology.

“Looking at the climate we live in today demonstrates that smart landscape architecture projects are more needed than ever—especially at a time when everything is changing so rapidly,” said Rodriguez, who hopes to do more public-oriented projects after graduating this spring. “But the challenging part is definitely putting the scientific processes and methodologies into terms that the general public can understand, so you can convey that importance to people.”

The work is especially important to Rodriguez, who—like many native Coloradans—never turns down an opportunity to be outdoors.

“It’s exciting to see a project like this come to the surface,” she said. “I loved the opportunity to work with Sara, who is one of the most intelligent people I’ve known and is focused on cultivating a good space to bring design solutions for important problems to light.”

Tabatabaie’s gift for encouraging her students to become passionate about these issues speaks to her teaching ability, Samper said.

“The rigor Sara brings to her research really rubs off on her students,” he said. “The students understood the stakes were high, that this was a real client with a serious issue, and that their research was really going to impact policy in Colorado. That elevated the whole output of the students, which was really wonderful.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

More cities are studying ways to mitigate heat from intensely sunny days. One expert is more focused on the dangers posed by UV exposure.

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‘Good evening, I’m an A.I., and this is your nightly news’

Joe Arney — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:40:58 +0000

‘Good evening, I’m an A.I., and this is your nightly news’ Joe Arney Tue, 03/31/2026 - 07:40

Most Americans haven’t yet encountered A.I.-generated news anchors, but the popularity of the technology abroad—and the potential cost savings—mean that’s likely to change, says PhD student Muhammad Ali. Here, he showcases his work at the university’s Three-Minute Thesis competition. Photo by Glenn Asakawa.

Joe Arney

The rigors of pursuing a doctoral degree leave even the most dedicated students occasionally questioning what brought them on this difficult path.

For Muhammad Ali, a PhD student in journalism, motivation is never far from the surface. His father, Malik Sajid Diyal, was killed in 1990 after being the driving force for establishing the first girls’ schools in his conservative Pakistani hometown.

“My father was a government contractor, he was a social worker—but more than that, he was a person who believed education can transform society,” Ali said. It’s a reason he left a career in public relations behind, seeing education as “not just a way to give information, but a powerful tool for resistance, hope and transformation.”

“This degree is not just a piece of paper for me. It is a legacy I have to carry forward, and a change I can make to society.”

As he prepares to graduate this May, Ali’s research work, which explores how news stations are using generative artificial intelligence—especially in on-air broadcasting—is shedding light on an area with enormous implications for how the news is delivered in the future.

‘A completely A.I. newsroom’

His interest was piqued when he was watching Channel 1, out of Los Angeles, and realized something was a little off about the telecast.

“It’s a completely A.I. newsroom, where they are producing, disseminating and gathering news content through A.I.,” Ali said. “You could see it if you looked closely at the anchors’ mouths, and some of their gestures.”

‘A.I. videos are generating views on social media, they’re making money on social media—and the business managers will be paying close attention to that,’ Muhammad Ali says. Photo by Glenn Asakawa.

Muhammad Ali, right, accepts a best paper award at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s annual conference. Photo courtesy Muhammad Ali.

It’s the sort of thing Ali had never seen in American journalism before, but A.I. anchors have been in use throughout Asia and the Middle East, including his native Pakistan, for years, and they’re quickly getting better at mimicking human speaking behaviors.

“What’s really unknown, especially in the US, is how audiences will react to these changes, and whether they will accept A.I. news presenters,” he said. “It’s one thing for a movie or cartoon, another when it’s the nightly news.”

Even if you have been following the rise of A.I. journalists and anchors, you may not be aware that stations have required anchors to sign deals giving the company the rights to their faces, to build digital versions that are available day and night, don’t require holidays, health insurance or sick time, and don’t have long commutes.

You probably have an idea of where this is going, but Ali said A.I. will create new kinds of jobs in journalism without replacing editorial judgment or human curiosity. Stations in Pakistan, for instance, have started employing “prompt managers” who use A.I. to create and refine content for the digital anchors to read.

“The influence of technology companies on the news is much more than what we ever expected.”

Muhammad Ali, journalism

Even if job displacement is minimal, there are many ethical considerations to moves like this—and given the speed at which A.I. is rolling out in news and elsewhere, research like Ali’s is critical to slowing down and challenging us to ask the right questions about how this technology could change our relationship with the news.

“If something goes wrong, who will be responsible?” he said. “The organization is requiring the journalist to give his face, but that face doesn’t come with his integrity and objectivity and beliefs. There is real potential for misuse.”

In fact, he’s finding examples of that already, including authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups that are using A.I. anchors to disseminate misinformation and propaganda in ways that look convincing.

A matter of perspective

Ali’s advisor, Patrick Ferrucci, said the work is important because there is little scholarship on this topic in western Europe or the United States, where free presses have historically helped journalists push back against these kinds of innovations. And his background—not only growing up in a place where A.I. anchors are more common, but bringing years of leadership and industry experience in public relations—make his perspectives especially valuable, in class and as a researcher.

Patrick Ferrucci

“Journalism here historically fights new technology well past losing that fight,” said Ferrucci, a professor and chair of the journalism department. “Because of the economics of the news, you can absolutely see A.I. anchors coming to journalism.

“But I see some of the things A.I. can do and I think, ‘That would have helped me when I was a journalist,’” he added. “Understanding how to use these technologies without making yourself irrelevant is something we talk to our students about, and Ali’s research is really important, especially as the topic is so understudied outside of Asia.”

The interdisciplinary nature of a CMDI education—where students are encouraged to explore the intersections of different industries and schools of thought, to better uncover innovation—helped Ali bring a tech-oriented perspective to the craft, and business, of journalism.

“The influence of technology companies on the news is much more than what we ever expected, and means we have to answer for new kinds of biases or hallucinations in the data that aren’t being fact checked,” he said. “And like we’ve heard about in other industries, editorial decisions are being impacted by these technologies, as well.”

He’s already started to make his mark in academic circles, including earning a best student paper award at the conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Kappa Tau Alpha Award for top student paper.

Motivated by his father’s memory, Ali is committed to using his PhD—which he expects to complete in May—to teach future generations of students to work with these technologies and become smart consumers of news who are aware of A.I.’s inroads into the nightly news.

Especially because, as he’s found, younger viewers are more accepting of their headlines coming from a machine.

“The younger generation wants to experience new things, see new things, and they’re used to using their technology and social media to do it,” he said. “These A.I. videos are generating views on social media, they’re making money on social media—and the business managers will be paying close attention to that.”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

More stations are experimenting with A.I. anchors, and a PhD student says the trend has finally reached the United States.

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An education in empathy

Joe Arney — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:00:00 +0000

An education in empathy Joe Arney Tue, 03/24/2026 - 01:00

Ross Taylor, left, runs an on-camera interview as part of his latest documentary project, A Refuge of Scouting. The film, which has been screened around the country and will be on PBS in the fall, draws on the strong sense of empathy Taylor, an associate professor of journalism, brings to his work and his classes. Photo by Pat Clark.

Joe Arney

By his own admission, Ross Taylor was not a very successful Boy Scout, having never advanced beyond second class.

“I went on one camping trip, and it rained a lot and I didn’t like that the weather was bad,” said Taylor, now an associate professor of journalism at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� College of Communication, Media, Design and Information. “So, I went home and complained to my parents and asked if I could stop.”

His own time with the Scouts may have been short lived, but he’s returned to the organization—not to tie knots or pitch a tent, but to tell the story of an all-refugee troop in Aurora.

“This film is about reframing how we see American identity through a traditional lens,” Taylor said. “Scouting brings with it a lot of traditional norms and preconceived ideas of identity in America. And this troop works within a lot of that framework, but helps expand our understanding of what it means to be an American.”

A Refuge of Scouting was accepted to, among others, the Maryland International Film Festival, which takes place this month, and, like Taylor’s other documentary work, will be shared via Public Broadcasting Service beginning in the fall.

The film, which Taylor co-directed with fellow CMDI professor Pat Clark, is a continuation of work he did with P.J. Parmar, a medical doctor who owns and operates Mango House, a shared space for refugees in the western United States. The property is run for, and by, refugees, and was the subject of Taylor’s 2021 documentary, Mango House.

“Parmar was a Boy Scout himself, and he often said scouting was a safe space from facing racism, and he wanted that experience for refugees,” Taylor said.

Building trust within refugee communities

“To engage in these spaces requires me to be a better person, a more empathetic person.”

Ross Taylor, assistant professor, journalism

Doing this kind of work, and immersing yourself in a community of refugees—especially children who have fled significant trauma—requires a special kind of personality. It’s an approach to work—and life—that Taylor brings to his projects and his classes from his nearly 20-year career as a photojournalist.

“Building trust within the populations I work with requires a high level of empathy—I’m working in spheres that involve traumatic events, or the aftereffects of trauma,” Taylor said. “To engage in these spaces requires me to be a better person, a more empathetic person.”

It’s a lesson he learned the hard way. As a photographer, Taylor was once scolded by a mother for taking a photo of a crying boy after striking out during a youth baseball game. He credits that experience with teaching him to bring a more empathetic perspective to what he’s capturing.

And in class, that means showing students they can be empathetic, but also confident in using their voices to tell important stories. It shows up even in the simplest acts, like opening classes by asking students to share something good in their lives.

“It really warms up a classroom environment, and it sets an example of how I conduct myself in the work that I do,” Taylor said. “I want them to see empathy in action and think about what it means for them when they become professionals and leaders.”

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Chancellor Justin Schwartz, right, recognized Ross Taylor with an End Zone Innovators Award at a Buffs home game in the fall. Photo by Vivenne Malone.

Ross Taylor credits his sense of empathy with helping him build trust among the people whose stories he tells in his work, including his most recent documentary about a Boy Scout troop made up of refugees.

In A Refuge of Scouting, Taylor shows how the values of scouting look through the eyes of young refugees from around the world. Early work on the film began before Donald Trump returned to the White House, but it’s hard not to see this project as a rebuke of the othering that the federal government has engaged in, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, to sealed borders, to deportations and mass incarceration.

“We are all much more alike than we are different,” Taylor said. “When you spend time with a young kid who’s a refugee from another country, you begin to quickly realize, they’re a kid just like any other kid you would know.

“Working within the refugee community has given me a lot more respect, care and admiration for the people I’ve met and the contributions they make to our culture. My hope for this film is to help more people have the same experience I’ve had, so that we have more compassion for each other.”

Clark, an award-winning filmmaker and assistant professor of critical media practices, joined the college at the same time as Taylor, and they’ve taught and collaborated before—but said seeing up close the sense of empathy and connection his colleague brings to his projects was inspiring.

A model for authenticity

“Ross, the journalist, is able to unpack all these threads and find the people who help tell the story,” Clark said. “But it’s his personality that makes him so good at what he does. I talk about it in my classes a lot—the more you spend time with the folks you’re working with on the film, the more authentic they will be on camera. And that’s who Ross is. He gets people comfortable, he brings them in close and he makes everybody feel good about him being there. That’s how you really tell the story.”

For his part, Taylor said he appreciated Clark’s immense technical knowledge. It’s part of what makes CMDI special—the encouragement of authentic collaboration between separate, but related, disciplines to create meaningful impact.

“We are stronger as a unit than as individuals, because some projects require a substantial amount of expertise that crosses departments,” Taylor said. “This is definitely an example of that.”

Taylor is already thinking about his next documentary project, though his immediate plans are more centered on photography projects. He remains in awe of the medium’s power to make the world a better place; A Refuge of Scouting is his third documentary.

“Documentary—and, by extension, journalism—is a wonderful way to see a shared experience,” he said. “And it can help break down the preconceived notions we have about each other, and help us care for one another as we navigate the very real and challenging daily life we all experience.”

Ross Taylor and Pat Clark are no stranger to classroom collaboration, but A Refuge of Scouting is their first documentary together. Here, Taylor, left, and Clark are kneeling in the front row, off to the right, with the scouts in a theater.

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.

A hard lesson from his days as a journalist has helped a CMDI professor tell moving stories through documentary.

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