Dept of Communication - Undergraduate Information Session
2023-05-10 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Dodd 175

Ashley Martin, Ph.D. - Brown Bag Talk
2023-05-11 11:00 - 12:00 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Gendered Cognition: The Primacy of Gender in Seeing Human
What does it mean to be (seen as) human? In this talk, I explore this question and show that the attribution of gender is a critical component of seeing someone—or something—as human. Given gender’s primacy in social cognition, I propose that gender is linked to “seeing human” in a way that cannot be said of other social categories (i.e., race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or disability). I test this hypothesis in a number of studies that induce humanization (i.e., anthropomorphism) and measure social-category ascription, as well as those that include (versus remove) gendered information and measure humanization. I then present new work that explores gendered cognition using “non-binary” stimuli and among non-binary individuals. Finally, I explore the implications of gendered cognition for people’s preferences for, and attachment to, gendered technology. These findings underscore the importance of gender in humanization and have theoretical and practical implications for research on gender, (de)humanization, and social cognition, as well as for current discussions on gender neutrality.

Natalie Kahn Colloquium in Communication speaker Ashley Martin from the Stanford Graduate School of Business with Natalie Kahn and Roy Patience
2023-05-11 11:00 - 12:30

Department Speaker Series: Jimmy Calanchini (UCR, Psych)
2023-10-19 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Putting the Environment Back in Person-Environment Fit

Abstract: Psychology scientists have recognized for decades that individual behavior is a function of both the person and the environment. However, due to a dominant focus on individual differences, psychological data on intergroup bias have historically been collected through small, controlled experiments with the individual as the unit of analysis – to the relative exclusion of the environment. Recent technological advancements facilitate massive amounts of data to be collected from diverse populations and locations. Capitalizing on these newly-available data, researchers can geolocate the responses of individuals to provide insight into regional variation in intergroup biases with a degree of ecological validity impossible in the laboratory. In this talk, I will present correlational evidence linking regional biases to outcomes of consequence, propose a novel theoretical perspective for understanding regional intergroup bias, and discuss future directions for this emerging line of research.

CPG: Christian Grose (USC, Political Science)
2023-11-03 12:30 - 14:00 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Do Funding Communications Increase Election Officials’ Willingness to Open More Polling Places? A Field Experiment

Abstract: Can encouragement communications cause election officials to open more polling places? Does increasing spending on elections to open more polling places lead to higher voter turnout? Public officials who administer elections make decisions about the operation of elections, and these decisions are directly influenced by budgets available. However, scholars of elections have rarely examined the role of budgets on elite choices regarding making it easier to vote. I theorize that some election administrators are stewards of voter access while others are not. A field experiment was conducted during the 2020 US general election where local election officials randomly received direct communications encouraging them to apply for funding by a nonpartisan university institute; and a control group of local election officials were not. Results of the field experiment show that the randomized communication led to a 3.9%-point increase in local officials applying for and receiving the funding compared to control group officials. In a 2SLS causal model and in correlational analyses, there is evidence that exogenous increases to election budgets and exogenous increases in polling locations led to higher voter participation. The conclusions are that some public officials can be encouraged to increase voter access via budgetary or financial nudges and communications.

Department Speaker Series: Swabha Swayamdipta (USC, Computer Science)
2023-11-16 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Understanding Online Discourse through Social Context and Structured Pragmatics
Abstract: In an increasingly online world, understanding discourse on social media is akin to understanding our society. However, when it comes to social media discourse, a disproportionate amount of focus has been laid on content moderation via hate speech detection. In this talk, I will address a key limitation of this application: existing hate speech detection systems are riddled with racial biases introduced during annotation, which are reinforced and propagated by models trained on such data. I will present the inadequacies of current methods for debiasing hate speech detection and show how the subjectivity of this task design leads to debiasing failures. Next, I will focus on uncovering the origin of bias in toxic language detection. I will demonstrate how annotators’ demographics and beliefs influence their toxicity ratings, and how ignoring such societal context can lead to biased outcomes. Finally, I will present some ongoing work on understanding online discourse on homelessness, which presents some unique challenges. Overall, I will argue for the value of rethinking traditional the hate speech classification task, and the need for richer context and nuance when considering online discourse.

CPG: Je Hoon Chae (UCLA, Communication)
2023-12-01 12:30 - 14:00 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title:Robust Persuasive Effect of Political Fact-Checking and Remaining Challenges
Abstract:The proliferation of misinformation and the persistent gap in factual information among partisans represent significant concerns in contemporary U.S. politics. Fact-checking, a journalistic intervention aimed at verifying the accuracy of claims and information, is seen as a key strategy to address this issue. While early studies suggested a backfire effect, where strong partisans reinforce their existing beliefs when presented with counter-attitudinal corrections from fact-checkers, recent experimental evidence suggests this backfire effect is not replicable. Instead, fact-checking effectively updates the factual beliefs of even staunch partisans in line with fact-checked information. This presentation addresses two critical questions. First, to what extent is the persuasive effect of fact-checking effective across various scenarios? Through a series of randomized experimental designs, I demonstrate that the persuasive effect of fact-checking remains robust even when presented by an out-group source, when the credibility of fact-checkers is impaired, or when headlines are automatically tagged on social media posts. Second, how extensively do U.S. partisans consume fact-checking content, particularly cross-cutting fact-checking? By analyzing original articles from PolitiFact, their Twitter posts, and retweet patterns, I show that a disproportionate number of fact-checking articles written by PolitiFact, a major political fact-checking organization, are counter-attitudinal from the Republican standpoint. Furthermore, the sharing patterns of these fact-checking posts suggest that Republicans or conservatives rarely share such content amongst themselves, casting doubt on their exposure to cross-cutting fact-checking in their daily lives.

CPG: Marlon Twyman (USC, Communication & Computer Science)
2024-01-24 15:00 - 16:30 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Metawisdom of the Crowd: How Choice Within Aided Decision Making Can Make Crowd Wisdom Robust

Abstract: Quality information can improve individual judgments but make group decisions less accurate; if individuals attend to the same information, the predictive diversity that underlies crowd wisdom may be lost. We explore this tension within the context of decision support systems that provide the choice of decision aids and before then primary judgments. We argue that whenever a set of decision aids induce diverse errors, this structure leads to higher group accuracy because aid choice will exhibit predictive diversity itself. In two experiments—the prediction of inflation (N=1907, pre-registered) and a tightly controlled bean-count estimation task (N=1198)—we find strong evidence for this.

Department Speaker Series: Scott Page (University of Michigan, Business, Political Science, Complex Systems, and Economics)
2024-01-25 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Speaker: Scott E. Page (University of Michigan, Santa Fe Institute). (website)
Title: Organizations and Cultural Coherence
Abstract: I construct a mathematical framework to elucidate and analyze the interdependence between structural features of an organization and some of its cultural attributes. By the structure of an organization, I mean whether individual actions are assigned hierarchically, agreed upon through a more equal democratic process, or encouraged through incentives. By culture, I will focus on standard measurable features such as tightness, individualism, trust, risk taking, and uncertainty avoidance. I show that congruence – the alignment of organization structure and culture – though an often articulated organizational goal does not, except in rare cases, imply efficiency. The creation of a healthy, constructive culture and not congruence should therefore be the goal of organizations.

Comm Undergraduate Information Session
2024-02-21 10:00 - 11:00 | Rolfe 3134

Department Speaker Series: Carolyn Parkinson (UCLA, Psychology)
2024-02-29 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: The brain in the social world: Integrating approaches from psychology, neuroscience, and social network analysis

Abstract: This talk will cover work integrating theory and methods from psychology, neuroscience, and social network analysis to examine how people track, encode, and are influenced by the social networks that they inhabit. One set of studies tests if, when, and how people retrieve knowledge of familiar others’ positions in their real-world social networks when encountering them. Related research tests how this knowledge, once retrieved, shapes downstream processing and behavior. A second set of studies tests if human social networks exhibit assortativity in how their members perceive, interpret, and respond to their environment. Consistent with this possibility, we find that proximity between people within their social networks is linked to similar neural responses to naturalistic stimuli, similar subjective construals of such stimuli, and similar patterns of brain connectivity. A final set of studies examines how shared understanding relates to overall levels of social connectedness within communities. We find that people who process the world in a manner that is more reflective of community norms have greater overall levels of subjective and objective social connection. All human cognition is embedded within social networks, but research on information processing within individuals has progressed largely separately from research on the social networks in which individuals are embedded. The set of findings to be reviewed in this talk suggests that integrating approaches from psychology, neuroscience, and social network analysis can provide new insights into how individuals perceive, shape, and are shaped by the structure of their social world.

CPG: Davin Phoenix (UCI, Political Science)
2024-03-06 15:00 - 16:30 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Emotional Representation: Identifying the Characteristics and Consequences of Elected Officials Mirroring the Emotions of Their Constituents (with Christopher Stout, Gregory Leslie, and Elizabeth Schroeder)

Abstract: In this study, we identify a previously overlooked component of representation, which we label ‘emotional representation.’ Emotional representation occurs when elected officials mirror the dominant emotional state of a constituent group through their public outreach. First, to explore the existence of emotional representation, we examine the degree to which members of Congress mirrored Black people’s documented increase in expressions of anger following the murder of
George Floyd in the Summer of 2020. Using a regression discontinuity design and sentiment analysis including 305,358 tweets, 190,192 Facebook Posts, and 35,409 press releases, we show that descriptively representative MCs provide the highest levels of emotional representation. Second, to examine the impact of emotional representation, we deploy a two-stage experiment to 390 Black respondents. We find that Black people who increased in anger after being primed with images of police violence view elected officials who engage in emotional representation as more
favorable, empathetic, and trustworthy.

Dan Costanzo (NORC at the University of Chicago)
2024-04-08 15:00 - 16:00 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
ABSTRACT: Researchers who conduct population surveys face escalating costs and declining response rates, as they aim to collect data that is representative, trustworthy, and publishable. Sample recruitment is often prohibitively expensive to researchers, and cheap convenience samples are fraught with representation and quality issues. NORC at the University of Chicago has built a survey panel called
AmeriSpeak to help researchers navigate these choppy waters. AmeriSpeak is a probability (random) sample of US households recruited to take surveys for NORC. Dan Costanzo, a Director of Business Development at NORC, will talk about AmeriSpeak’s novel approach to sample recruitment, which includes sending field interviewers located throughout the US to the homes of non-responders. The
result of NORC’s rigorous efforts is a panel that delivers higher response rates and a more representative sample of US adults than mail and phone recruitment efforts alone provide. AmeriSpeak is commercially available to academic, government, media, and other researchers. Costanzo will also talk about the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS), a federally funded program through
Northwestern University that enables academic researchers to use AmeriSpeak for free.

Department Speaker Series: Emilio Ferrara (USC, Communication & Computer Science)
2024-04-11 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
TITLE: AI & Social Manipulation

ABSTRACT: In this talk, I will overview my decadelong journey into understanding the implications of online platform manipulation. I’ll start from detecting malicious bots and other forms of manipulation including troll accounts, coordinated campaigns, and disinformation operations. The impact of my work will be corroborated with examples of findings enabled by our technology, e.g., our unveiling of the “Russian bots” operation prior to the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, which informed official Senate investigations and new regulations. I will then illustrate similar issues with the 2020 U.S. Election, as well as COVID-related conspiracies and public health misinformation. I’ll conclude by discussing the ML tools we developed to model online mis/disinformation, reveal the malicious adversaries behind the curtains, and characterize their activity, behavior, and strategies, suggesting how they are changing the way researchers and study online platforms in the era of automation and artificial intelligence.

Department Speaker Series: Dana Mastro (UCSB, Communication)
2024-04-25 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Threat in the form of News: Examining the ways that news coverage of immigration constrains systemically marginalized groups

Abstract: Although U.S. media portrayals of racial, ethnic, and other historically excluded identities vary based on the group, platform, and genre, generally speaking these groups have tended to be both underrepresented and, at times, unfavorably depicted across the media landscape. The current talk addresses this issue with a particular focus on coverage of immigration in the news. Specifically, the manner in which U.S. news characterizes immigration and immigrants will be addressed followed by a discussion of empirical research investigating how variations in the themes in this content affect opinions about, feelings toward, and behaviors regarding immigration and immigrants among both ‘dominant’ and traditionally marginalized groups.

CPG: Nikki Usher (USD)
2024-04-30 11:00 - 12:30 | Comm Project Room – 2310 Rolfe
Title: How and why American journalism (accidentally) amplifies anti-democratic actors: Small town extremists, media storms, and a broken news industry

Abstract: Within a week, a no-name Republican state representative from a town of 384 people in Illinois catapulted from obscurity to a prime-time appearance on Fox News’ Ingraham Angle. This newly-empowered politician, Darren Bailey, would go on to hijack the pro-business Republican party in Illinois toward extremism. Democratic backsliding emerges across all levels of politics, but the threats posed by small town politicians to the rule of law have been overlooked. This research asks, first what features of local political ecologies that might facilitate the rise of small town anti-democratic extremists? Second, how does the political economy of the contemporary news ecosystem–local, regional, national, and partisan media–serve to amplify these bad actors? Ultimately, this case study considers how small-town extremists are enabled by the structural, cultural, and normative dimensions of democratic life that they seek to undermine, especially the difficulty the institutional news media faces in covering anti-democratic actors.

POSTPONES: CPG: Ben Epstein (DePaul)
2024-05-10 15:00 - 16:30 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Exploring Political Communication Strategies of Women’s Rights and LGBTQ+ Communities Over Time

Abstract: This study uses a mixed methods approach to explore the communication approaches of organizations advocating for greater political power, access, and representation for women and LGBTQ+ Americans over time. First, I identify a diverse sample of organizations and publications advocating for greater political inclusion for women and LGBTQ+ Americans over the past two centuries, with particular attention to those in the contemporary digital era. Next, various print and digital communications efforts are analyzed, applying a framework developed over a number of studies to compare the varied communication approaches of organizations advocating for marginalized communities. Finally, content analysis is used to evaluate newspapers, magazines, social media posts and websites from these organizations and publications. Through these approaches I explore the rhetorical strategies and goals of political messages communicated by these groups by centering their words, and find that while many notable changes have occurred, much is remarkably consistent over time.

Comm Information Session
2024-05-15 10:00 - 11:00 | Rolfe 1200

Department Speaker Series: Megan Burkhardt-Reed (UCLA, Communication)
2024-05-16 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: The emergence of communication in infancy: Development and evolution

Abstract:
Do gestures truly precede vocalization in modern human development and in the evolutionary origin of language? Or is vocalization more foundational for communication? Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the evolutionary origins of language. Speculations on the evolution of language have evoked comparisons across human and non-human primate communication. However, many argue that the origins of language relate closely to the origins of modern human infantbehavior. To the extent that the issue of language origins has been raised, most recent published opinions exploring evolutionary possibilities have leaned toward a “gesture-first”hypothesis. But much empirical information does not accord with the gestural claims.

In this talk, I will present findings from two of my longitudinal studies that systematically compare rates of gestural and vocal communication across the first two years of life. The findings from this research reveal that the bulk of activity in the first and second year of life are in the vocal domain rather than gestural, suggesting a more foundational role of voice. I will propose a framework to allow comparable counting of communicative and/or potentially communicative events of both infant gesture and vocalization. To date, clear definitions and criteria for classification have not been a major focus of empirical investigation on gesture and vocalization as language foundations in prior research. I will also outline my current study on understanding the ways older infants continue to babble and speak and the ways caregivers respond to these communications and then present some of the methodology for conducting this work. I will conclude with thoughts on the broader implications of my findings and future directions of my program of research.

Natalie Kahn Talk, Department Speaker Series: Muniba Saleem (UCSB, Communication)
2024-05-30 11:00 - 12:15 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Title: Media Representations and Their Broader Implications for Intergroup Relations

Abstract: This talk highlights the role of media as an ecosystem in cultivating societal divisions within multicultural contexts. Utilizing correlational, experimental, and longitudinal research methodologies, I provide a comprehensive analysis of the nuanced effects on both racial majority and minority audiences. The findings reveal three broader implications of media depictions of racial minorities. First, exposure to negative media portrayals of racial minorities adversely affects the attitudes and behaviors of racial majority members towards these groups. Second, such negative depictions harm racial minorities’ self-esteem and group esteem, while reinforcing their perceived disadvantaged status in mainstream society relative to other groups. Finally, mainstream media representations undermine the sense of belonging, inclusion, and integration of racial minority members within mainstream society, culture, and politics.

2024 UCLA Department of Communication Commencement Keynote Address
2024-06-25 08:00 - 17:00

The 2024 Presidential Election and the State of American Politics w/ Lynn Vavreck (UCLA)
2024-10-03 12:30 - 13:45 | Pritzker 3572

Citizens’ Perceptions on How Misinformation Distorts the News Environment w/ Toni Van der Meer (University of Amsterdam)
2024-10-10 11:00 - 12:15 | Rolfe 2303

Depression and Democratic Backsliding: Depression, Conspiracy Beliefs, and Support for Political Extremism w/ Matthew Baum (Harvard University)
2024-10-24 11:00 - 12:15 | Rolfe 2303

"Measuring Resilience to Misinformation: A Global Multilevel Framework" Peter Van Aelst (University of Antwerp)
2024-11-01 13:30 | Comm Project Room – 2310 Rolfe

"Generative AI and politics: what is next after the 2024 super election year" Claes de Vreese (University of Amsterdam)
2024-11-05 11:00 | Comm Project Room – 2310 Rolfe

Comm Information Session - Undergraduate Major
2024-11-13 10:00 - 11:00 | Royce 150

The Evolution of Social Paradoxes w/ David Pinsof (UCLA Social Minds Lab)
2024-11-14 11:00 - 12:15 | Rolfe 2303

"Adjusting the Margins: Political Communication Efforts by Marginalized Communities Over Time" Ben Epstein (DePaul University)
2024-11-18 14:00 | Comm Project Room – 2310 Rolfe

Building a shared infrastructure to study the internet: The National Internet Observatory, with David Lazer
2025-01-14 15:00 - 16:30 | Comm Conference Room – Rolfe 2303
Organized by the Communication and Politics Group…
ABSTRACT: The National Internet Observatory (NIO) is an NSF-funded project aimed to help researchers study online behavior. Participants install a browser extension and/or mobile apps to donate their online activity data along with comprehensive survey responses. The infrastructure, housed at Northeastern University, starting in 2025, will offer approved researchers access to a suite of structured, parsed content data for selected domains to enable analyses and understanding of Internet use in the US. This is all conducted within a robust research ethics framework, emphasizing ongoing informed consent, and multiple layers, technical and legal, of interventions to protect the values at stake in data collection, data access, and research. This talk will provide a brief overview of the NIO infrastructure, the data collected, the participants, and the researcher intake process.
