Center for Media Engagement

Trustworthy Screening
2023-10-19 12:00 - 14:30 (America/Chicago) | DMC 5.102
Screening for the “Trustworthy” documentary, followed by panel discussion with the filmmakers, Stephany Zamor (Executive Producer) and Dana Richie (Director, Co-Executive Producer).
Trustworthy is a documentary that chronicles a 5,300-mile journey across America to explore the growing crisis of trust in media that threatens our democracy, and whether we can find common ground. The Trustworthy team spoke with journalists, experts (including Talia and Scott Stroud!) and everyday Americans across the political spectrum about how we got to this critical moment, how we can become better news and information consumers, and how we can come together to rise above the misinformation and discourse aimed at dividing our communities.
This documentary is a must see for everyone who seeks to better understand our media and help bridge the political divide.

The Role of Conversation Structure in Conflict: Speaking is More Effective for Resolving Conflict than Writing
2023-10-25 12:00 - 13:00 | DMC 5.208, 300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
Abstract
Resolving conflict is more important than ever as political and social dissent reaches record levels across the world. While it is clear that conversation between opponents is necessary to address conflict, an open question is how conversation structure influences conflict resolution. The current research examines a key aspect of conversation structure—the medium by which it occurs—and tests whether spoken (e.g., face-to-face, phone) versus written (e.g., online) conversations change conflict resolution outcomes. An initial experiment (Experiment 1a, n = 201) suggests that political opponents prefer to write to each other than to video-chat or audio-chat to address disagreement, expecting that writing would reduce conflict and increase conversational responsiveness (e.g., felt understanding, enjoyment). But ten subsequent experiments (n = 3,930) testing the real effect of the conversation medium indicate the opposite: writing (vs. speaking) harms conflict resolution. In Experiments 2-4, laboratory participants who reported strongly disagreeing on pre-selected controversial topics were randomly assigned to have conversations via different media (e.g., speaking, writing), and subsequently reported impressions of their conversation partner (i.e., humanization), conversation experiences (i.e., perceived responsiveness, conflict), and attitude change. Across these experiments, pairs who spoke (vs. wrote) humanized each other more, experienced more responsiveness and less conflict, and had greater alignment in resulting attitudes. Furthermore, the effect of medium was robust to how long pairs engaged (e.g., 6 vs. 12-minute conversations in Experiment 3) and seemed to occur even after the first substantive exchange of content (e.g., one exchange vs. multiple exchanges in Experiment 4). A follow-up experiment (Experiment 5) demonstrated that external observers perceive (transcribed) spoken conversations as politer and more civil than written conversations even when observers are blind to the medium, and that such differences are observed within the first few exchanges in the conversation. To examine the robustness of these results in the field, we partnered with an organization trying to increase civil discourse among political opponents in colleges (Bridge USA), conceptually replicating and extending our earlier lab experiments (Experiments 6a-b and 7 conducted at three college campuses across America). Our final set of experiments provide evidence for at least two potential explanations for the differences in speaking and writing. First, the greater synchronicity in spoken (vs. written) conversations (Experiment 8) improves conflict resolution. Second, even holding semantic language constant, the paralinguistic cues in spoken conversation seem to convey greater humanness in particular (Experiment 9). We also provide evidence against other possible explanations (e.g., greater backchanneling in spoken than written conversations, Supplemental Experiment S1). In aggregate, this research indicates that although people sometimes prefer to write than speak with an opponent, the spoken medium is probably better-suited than the written medium for resolving conflict. These findings have implications for how communication technology (e.g., social media) may shape discourse. Conflict is born not just from disagreement but from the structure of a conversation itself.
Speaker Bio
Juliana Schroeder is an an associate professor in the Management of Organizations group at Berkeley Haas. She holds the Harold Furst Chair in Management Philosophy and Values, and serves as the Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow. Her research explores how people make social inferences about others. She is a Faculty Affiliate in the Social Psychology Department, the Cognition Department, and the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley. She teaches the Negotiations and Conflict Resolution course at Haas.

Schroeder researches how people navigate their social worlds, including how people form inferences about others’ mental capacities and how these inferences influence their interactions. In particular, she studies how language affects the expression of one’s own—and the evaluation of others’—mental capacities. Her research has been published in a wide range of academic journals and in several book chapters. It has been featured by media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, NPR, and the Today Show. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation and awards from the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association. In addition to conducting research and teaching, Schroeder is a co-founder of the Psychology of Technology Institute, which supports and advances scientific research studying psychological consequences and antecedents of technological advancements. Her educational background includes a BA in psychology and economics from the University of Virginia, an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and an MA and PhD in psychology and business from the University of Chicago.

The Hopes of Digital Citizenship: What Can We Learn from Latin America?
2024-02-06 12:30 - 13:30 | DMC 5.208, 300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
What is digital citizenship? The buzz word has been around for several years and people interpret it differently. In general, it is conceptualized as the next evolutionary stage of citizenship – from civil to political to social/economic to digital citizenship. But little is known about how various organizations approach digital citizenship and how the concept really plays out. Dr. Luis Santana, Assistant Professor at the School of Communications & Journalism Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago (Chile) and visiting scholar at the Center for Media Engagement’s Propaganda Research Lab will explain digital citizenship based on his research and hone in specifically on Latin America. He has published extensively on the topic and his work is driven by extrapolating from local insights into conceptual frameworks.
Dr Santana will be joined by Dr. Zachary Elkins, Associate Professor at the Department of Government and co-director of the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choice. Dr. Elkins will provide comments based on his extensive research on issues of democracy, institutional reform, and national identity, with an emphasis on cases in Latin America.
The second half of the event will be reserved for Q&A.
Dr. Samuel Woolley, Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Media and founder of the the Center for Media Engagement’s Propaganda Research Lab will give introductory remarks and Dr. Inga Trauthig of the Propaganda Research Lab will moderate the discussion.
Lunch will be served. The event will last 60 mins total.
Speaker Bios:
Luis Santana
Luis E. Santana is an Assistant Professor at the School of Communications & Journalism and director of the Fostering Digital Citizenship program at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile. Additionally, he serves as a research associate at GobLab within the same institution. He holds a PhD in Communication and an MPA from University of Washington, Seattle. Between 2020 and 2023 Dr. Santana prepared two reports on Digital Citizenship for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Currently is at the beginning of a three-year project (funded by the Chilean National Agency for R&D) focused on the sociability aspects and norms of digital citizenship. Dr. Santana has been during the last three years a member of the advisory council for the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children in Chile and he is part of the Global Kids Online researchers, contributing qualitative research in South America.
Zachary Elkins
Professor Elkins’ research focuses on issues of democracy, institutional reform, research methods, and national identity, with an emphasis on cases in Latin America. He is currently completing a book manuscript, Steal this Constitution: The Drift and Mastery of Constitutional Design, which examines the design and diffusion of democratic institutions. Much of his research is on the origins and consequences of national constitutions. With Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago), Professor Elkins co-directs both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choices, and the website Constitute, which provides resources and analysis for constitutional drafters in new democracies. Elkins earned his B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Study Abroad in Germany Info Session
2024-02-08 18:00 - 19:00 | https://utexas.zoom.us/j/94114886614
Study abroad in Germany with the Summer Program in Communications in Erfurt (SPICE). Hear from Dr. Scott Stroud about the exciting classes (taught in English) shared with German classmates. Program includes plenty of free time to explore Germany and Europe, as well as a guided trip to Berlin! All UT majors are welcome.
Applications Due: Feb. 15, 2024
More info: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/abroad/student/pgm_list/detail/nlogon/749/

Coming Out as Dalit: A Book Reading with Author Yashica Dutt
2024-04-09 15:30 - 17:00 | DMC 5.208, 300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
April 9, 2024, 3:30 – 5:00 PM
DMC 5.208
Please join us on April 9th for a reading and Q&A with the author of “Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir of Surviving the Indian Caste System”, the critically acclaimed Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar, 2020.
Born into a “formerly untouchable manual-scavenging family in small-town India,” Yashica Dutt was taught from a young age to not appear “Dalit looking.” Although prejudice against Dalits, who compose 25% of the population, has been illegal since 1950, caste-ism in India is alive and well. Blending her personal history with extensive research and reporting, Dutt provides an incriminating analysis of caste’s influence in India over everything from entertainment to judicial systems and how this discrimination has carried over to U.S. institutions.
Dutt traces how colonial British forces exploited and perpetuated a centuries old caste system, how Gandhi could have been more forceful in combatting prejudice, and the role played by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, whom Isabel Wilkerson called “the MLK of India’s caste issues” in her book “Caste”
. Alongside her analysis, Dutt interweaves personal stories of learning to speak without a regional accent growing up and desperately using medicinal packs to try to lighten her skin.
Published in India in 2019 to acclaim, this expanded edition includes two new chapters covering how the caste system traveled to the U.S., its history here, and the continuation of bias by South Asian communities in professional sectors. Amid growing conversations about caste discrimination prompting U.S. institutions including Harvard University, Brandeis University, the University of California system, and the NAACP to add caste as a protected category to their policies, Dutt’s work sheds essential light on the significant influence caste-ism has across many aspects of U.S. society.
Raw and affecting, “Coming Out as Dalit” brings a new audience of readers into a crucial conversation about embracing Dalit identity, offering a way to change the way people think about caste in their own communities and beyond.
Author Bio:
Yashica Dutt, the award-winning author of “Coming Out as Dalit”, is an internationally acclaimed Dalit journalist and among the most recognized global voices on caste. Dutt’s work has been published in the New York Times, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic, and she has been featured on the BBC, The Guardian and PBS Newshour. Her writing has been part of Pen America’s India at 75 anthology that featured prominent Indian writers looking back on India’s history in its 75th year of independence, and a collection titled Our Freedoms: Essays and Stories from India’s Best Writers. “Coming Out as Dalit”, which was published in the South Asian subcontinent in 2019, quickly became a best-seller and is currently part of the curriculum in over 50 colleges and universities worldwide, including Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis. “Coming Out as Dalit” is among the first books written by a Dalit author in English to win the prestigious Indian Arts and Letters Award for young writers in 2020.
Dutt was involved in the passing of the historic anti-caste bill in the city of Seattle and her writing has been instrumental in shaping the text of the first-in-nation law. The highly anticipated, revised, and updated version of “Coming Out as Dalit” will be published by Beacon Press in February 2024, and has been called as “an elucidating history of Dalit discrimination and activism” by Kirkus Review. This new edition focuses on the ongoing struggle for caste rights in the U.S., and helps unpack its crucial and urgent history, especially in the light of the recent, historic veto of California’s caste discrimination bill. Dutt is currently working on her second book on caste in the United States, also commissioned by Beacon Press. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School and lives in Brooklyn.

Chaityabhumi Film Screening
2024-04-22 15:30 - 17:30 | DMC 5.102
Join us on April 22nd for a screening of the documentary “Chaityabhumi”, followed by a discussion with the director.
Chaityabhumi Film Description
67 min | Marathi, Hindi, Pali with English subtitles | 2023
Chaityabhumi is a holy site that holds immense importance for the Dalit movement in India, as it is where Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s last rites were performed after his passing on December 6, 1956. Dr. Ambedkar, often called the father of the Indian Constitution, dedicated his life to fighting the chains of caste oppression and bringing revolutionary change. He was a guiding light for the oppressed who dismantled discriminatory barriers and empowered them to reclaim their dignity and their rightful place in society.
This musical film will bring to light the history and cultural politics of how people commemorate December 6 at Chaityabhumi, Mumbai and what the relevance of this public event is in contemporary India. It explores how the Dalit community comes together to honor this day and the political implications it holds for their identity and empowerment.
Filmmaker Bio
Somnath Waghmare is a Mumbai-based Dalit-Buddhist film researcher and documentary filmmaker. He is the co-founder of the Ambedkarite song documentation project ‘The Ambedkar Age Digital Bookmobile,’ and founder of the film company ‘Begumpura productions.’ At present, he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
He completed his M. Phil from TISS and Masters in Media and communication form Pune University. He has previously worked at the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) and was an apprentice with Amnesty International, India. His recent documentary film Chaityabhumi was screened at London School of Economics and Oxford University in the UK, Columbia University and Stanford University in the US, and University of Gottingen, Germany. In India, the film was screened at National Film Archive of India, FTII Pune, TISS & Dr. Ambedkar Bhavan Mumbai and India International Centre, JNU, St.Stephen’s College, Delhi.

Exploring on the influence of Deepfakes and how to shield against AI-trickery
2024-04-29 12:00 - 13:00 | CMA 5.136, 2504 A Whitis Ave, Austin, TX, 78712
April 29, 2024 | 12 – 1 PM | CMA 5.136

Talk summary
The emergence of deepfakes has ushered in a new era of deception and manipulation. From fabricated speeches to doctored videos or audios, the proliferation of synthetic media poses a grave threat to the integrity of information ecosystems worldwide. In ‘Exploring the influence of Deepfakes and how to shield against AI-trickery‘ we will navigate through the rise of deepfakes, examining their implications on societal trust, political discourse, and personal privacy. From the manipulation of video and audio content to the creation of convincing yet fabricated personas, deepfakes challenge conventional notions of reality and authenticity. This reflection also unveils strategies and technologies aimed at fortifying defenses against AI-trickery, empowering individuals and organizations to discern truth from fiction in an increasingly digitized world.
Speaker Bio
Since 2015, Dr. Dren Gërguri has been part of the University of Prishtina “Hasan Prishtina” in the Department of Journalism and has worked as a journalist since 2009. For a decade, he worked with the national broadcaster in Kosovo, Kohavision (KTV). After a break, he joined Paper Radio as editor-in-chief and launched his podcast, “Log me Dren Gërgurin.” Later, he returned to television with the show “EduMedia” on KTV from June to July 2022. In May 2021, he completed his doctoral studies in the “Science of Communication and Journalism” program at the University of Prishtina “Hasan Prishtina.” Currently, he is based in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Houston. Dr. Gërguri collaborates with the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) and HiveMind. He serves as associate editor at the Central European Journal of Communication. He has also lectured at various European universities, including San Pablo University of Madrid in Spain, Philipps University of Marburg in Germany, Wroclaw University in Poland, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, and Ataturk University in Turkey. Additionally, he has been a guest lecturer at universities in the United States, such as the University of Houston, Iowa State University, and Drake University. His research focuses on disinformation, political communication, media effects, and populism. In his spare time, Dr. Gërguri enjoys reading and traveling.

Interactivity and Democracy: Online Media Effects in the Age of AI
2024-09-20 13:30 - 14:30 | TX
Friday, September 20
1:30 pm, DMC 5.102

The Center for Media Engagement welcomes Dr. S. Shyam Sundar to discuss the psychology of human-AI interaction in the contexts of online political expression, fake news, and content moderation. This talk will be guided by the speaker’s theory of interactive media effects (TIME) and will provide implications for socially responsible AI media for the future of democracy.
Speaker Bio:
Shyam Sundar is Evan Pugh University Professor and director of Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence. He is also the Jimirro Professor of Media Effects and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. Prof. Sundar is a theorist as well as an experimentalist who studies the role played by technological affordances in shaping user experience of mediated communications, in a variety of interfaces from websites and social media to mobile media and smart speakers. He edited the first-ever Handbook on the Psychology of Communication Technology (2015) and served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2013-2017.

Misperceptions in Health and Politics: The Role of Trust, Networks, and Digital Platforms
2024-10-25 11:30 - 12:30 | TX
Friday, October 25
11:30 am, CMB 2.112A
The Center for Media Engagement welcomes Dr. Katherine (Katya) Ognyanova for a discussion that explores the relationship between trust in science, digital platform use, social ties, and maintaining false beliefs about politics and health. Drawing on a mix of self-reported, network, and digital trace data, we will discuss how social groups evolve accurate knowledge over time and reduce their misperceptions.
Trust in scientific and social institutions has a strong association with the accuracy of our views about the world. Misperceptions and conspiratorial thinking are often linked to lower trust in experts and people in a position of power. While we have increasingly come to examine trust in science in light of partisanship, the two have independent effects on individual information-related behaviors.
The digital platforms we use and our social environment play an important role in our exposure to new information. At the same time, they have complicated relationships with our trust in social institutions. Unpacking these associations, we will demonstrate that they operate at different stages of the process through which individuals come to accept false narratives about current events.
Author Bio:
Katherine (Katya) Ognyanova is an associate professor at the School of Communication & Information, Rutgers University. Her research examines the effects of social influence on civic and political behavior, confidence in institutions, information evaluation, and public opinion formation.
Ognyanova’s methodological expertise is in computational social science, network science, and survey research. She is the director of the Rutgers Computational Social Science Lab. Her recent work examines the association of misinformation exposure with trust in science, media, and politics. She is also investigating public perceptions and trust in artificial intelligence (AI).
Katherine Ognyanova is one of the founders and a principal investigator for the COVID States Project and the Civic Health and Institutions Project, two large multi-university initiatives exploring public attitudes to politics and health.
Ognyanova’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. Her work has been covered in news outlets including New York Times, NPR, Politico, Washington Post, and WIRED, among others.

Solidarity Reporting Beyond “The Latino Vote” and “The Arab Vote”
2024-11-20 17:00 - 18:00 | TX
What just happened and where does journalism go from here? As news media organizations across the United States face the facts of the 2024 election, many journalism discussions have highlighted flawed assumptions about “the Latino vote” and “the Arab vote.” At a moment when US journalism seeks ways to regain credibility and move forward, join us for a virtual workshop on how solidarity reporting can help. By starting with people’s basic needs, representing division and disagreement within the same demographic group, and pushing for policy over personality politics, solidarity reporting provides a framework for a discussion that journalism sorely needs to have about how to serve the public, and who the public includes.
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/solidarity-reporting-beyond-the-latino-vote-and-the-arab-vote-tickets-1079967324339?aff=oddtdtcreator
Speakers:
Anita Varma, Solidarity Journalism Initiative
Anita Varma leads the Solidarity Journalism Initiative at the Center for Media Engagement in Austin, Texas. Her work focuses on helping journalists improve coverage of marginalized communities. Anita’s first book, Solidarity in Action: How Ethical Journalism Fights for Social Justice, is expected in May 2025.
Azeta Hatef, Emerson College
Azeta Hatef is a media researcher and award-winning instructor of journalism studies, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Her research focuses on social media as activism for underrepresented groups, gender and identity, and representation, with a specific focus on media and Afghanistan.
Briana Ureña-Ravelo, educator, organizer, reporter
Briana Ureña-Ravelo is an educator, organizer, cultural critic and semi-retired punk scenester from Michigan, currently based in the West Side of Chicago. Her interests include the Midwest, Afro-Latine culture and histories, Black and Indigenous resistance and futures, abolition, sweets, underground and DIY music scenes and her cat.

What’s the Impact of Social Media on Youth Well-Being?
2025-03-24 17:00 - 18:00 | TX
The news is rife with breathless headlines about the risks of social media for teens, feeding into growing parental concern about digital media’s impact on their children. In response, legislators are moving to curtail or block young people’s access to social media; e.g., in 2024, Australia’s parliament approved a social media ban for youth under 16, and other countries are considering doing the same. Meanwhile, kids and teens report mostly positive experiences with social media and overwhelmingly want the freedom to access it. Is the public concern about social media justified, or is this a moral panic? What does research say about the impact of social media on youth well-being?
Speaker Bio
Vani Henderson first joined Google in 2007, and now heads the User Experience Research team for Kids and Families at YouTube. Her work directly influences how hundreds of millions of families interact with YouTube. Over the course of her career at Google, Vani has led research on a range of products, including Maps, Identity, and ads. Vani completed her PhD in Communication at the Annenberg School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, focusing on media effects on teen health outcomes, and was a post-doc at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. She holds an MS from Cornell University and a BA from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Her academic background in communication psychology continues to inform her human-centered approach to product research. When not at work, you can find Vani working with local dog rescue organizations, hiking in the San Francisco Bay area, and spending time with her husband and two teenagers.

Do Your Own Research? How Searching Online to Evaluate Misinformation Can Increase Belief in its Veracity
2025-04-14 17:00 - 18:00 | DMC 5.208, 300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to understanding belief in online misinformation, with a particular focus on social networks. However, the dominant role of search engines in the information environment remains underexplored, even though the use of online search to evaluate the veracity of information is a central component of media literacy interventions. Although conventional wisdom suggests that searching online when evaluating misinformation would reduce belief in it, there is little empirical evidence to evaluate this claim. Here, across five experiments, we present consistent evidence that online search to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing them. To shed light on this relationship, we combine survey data with digital trace data collected using a custom browser extension. We find that the search effect is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information. Our results indicate that those who search online to evaluate misinformation risk falling into data voids, or informational spaces in which there is corroborating evidence from low-quality sources. We also find consistent evidence that searching online to evaluate news increases belief in true news from low-quality sources, but inconsistent evidence that it increases belief in true news from mainstream sources. In the presentation, I will also present findings from a new in-progress study in which participants utilize an LLM Chatbot (Perplexity) instead of search engines.
Join us for this discussion on April 14 at 5:00 pm in DMC 5.208!
Speaker Bio:
Joshua A. Tucker is Julius Silver, Roslyn S. Silver, and Enid Silver Winslow Professor Julius Silver Professor, Director of the Jordan Center for Advanced Study of Russia, co-Director of the Center for Social Media and Politics, and Professor of Politics at New York University. His research focuses on the intersection of the digital information environment, social media, and politics. He is the co-chair of the external academic team for the U.S. 2020 Facebook & Instagram Election Study, serves on the advisory board of the American National Election Study and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and was the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Experimental Political Science. An internationally recognized scholar, he has been a keynote speaker for conferences in Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Brazil, the Netherlands, and the United States, and has given over 250 invited research presentations at top domestic and international universities and research centers. His research has been published in top general scientific journals, including Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and political science journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics. His most recent books are the co-authored Communism’s Shadow: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Political Attitudes (Princeton University Press, 2017) and the co-edited Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In 2024, he was included in Clarivate’s 1% Top Cited List for the top cited researchers globally by field.

Tiananmen Tonight Screening
2026-02-03 15:30 - 17:30 | DMC 5.102
Join us for a screening of the documentary Tiananmen Tonight, with co-directors Bestor Cram and Michael Streissguth. Hosted by the Center for Media Engagement and the School of Journalism & Media.
Content Warning: Depictions and discussion of political violence and historical trauma.
Documentary Synopsis:
In these perilous times for American journalism comes a story of truth-telling in service to democracy. Tiananmen Tonight reveals the powerful human drama of Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News team battling for life and reputation while courageously reporting the extraordinary student uprising in 1989 that brought China to the brink of democratic reform.

Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online
2026-02-09 12:00 - 13:30 | DMC 5.208, 300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
People 60 and over are the internet’s fastest-growing demographic. Many myths surround older adults’ online behavior, such as a lack of skills and being constantly duped. Yet, research shows that many in this age group are savvy and are, in fact, less likely to fall for online scams than younger adults. In this talk, Eszter Hargittai shares insights from her book Wired Wisdom (co-authored with John Palfrey, University of Chicago Press, 2025) about how older adults are incorporating digital media into their lives and what they, their support networks, journalists, policymakers, and companies can do to make these experiences more beneficial. The Wall Street Journal selected the book as a Best Book of 2025 on Health Aging, and the New Scientist included it among its Best Popular Science Books of 2025. Food will be provided.
Event Location:
UT Austin Campus
G.B. Dealey Center for New Media, Room 5.208 (5th Floor)
300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX 78705
Closest Parking
San Antonio Garage: 2420 San Antonio Street. San Antonio Garage, between 24th and 25th Streets
27th Street Garage: 109 W. 27th Street, on the corner of University Blvd. and 27th St.
Speedway Garage: 105 E. 27th Street, on the corner of 27th and Speedway.
Nueces Garage: 2400 Nueces St.
Speaker Bio:
Eszter Hargittai is a Professor and holds the Chair of Internet Use and Society at the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. She is Fellow of the International Communication Association and an External Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is a past Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Hargittai’s research looks at how people may benefit from or be left behind as a result of their varied digital media uses, with a particular focus on how differences in people’s digital skills influence what they do online. She has looked at these questions in the domains of information seeking, health content (including Covid-19), political participation, job search, the sharing of creative content, and privacy management. Hargittai is author of Connected in Isolation: Digital Privilege in Unsettled Times (The MIT Press, 2022) and co-author of Wired Wisdom: Aging Better Online (with John Palfrey), which was published last year by the University of Chicago Press and called a “Best Book of 2025 on Healthy Aging by the Wall Street Journal and a Best Popular Science Book of 2025 by New Scientist. She holds a BA in Sociology from Smith College and a PhD in Sociology from Princeton University.

The Dangers of Focusing on the Danger of Digital Media Use
2026-03-10 12:00 - 13:00 | DMC 5.208, 300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
Extensive attention has been paid to the potential harms of media consumption generally, and social media use in particular, with relatively little consideration given to the potential psychological benefits of media use. This talk will address why this bias exists and its potential for unintended negative consequences. Evidence of how self-selected and prescribed digital media content can support desirable outcomes, including reduced stress and procrastination, increased goal motivation and pursuit, and increased empathy and relational satisfaction, will be shared to highlight the need for better understanding of how to empower media users to make media choices that can support their psychological well-being.
Pizza will be provided at the event.
Event Location:
UT Austin Campus
G.B. Dealey Center for New Media, Room 5.208 (5th Floor)
300 W Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX 78705
Closest Parking
San Antonio Garage: 2420 San Antonio Street. San Antonio Garage, between 24th and 25th Streets
27th Street Garage: 109 W. 27th Street, on the corner of University Blvd. and 27th St.
Speedway Garage: 105 E. 27th Street, on the corner of 27th and Speedway.
Nueces Garage: 2400 Nueces St.
Speaker Bio:
Robin L. Nabi is a Professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. With degrees from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, she has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters investigating the effects of media use on emotional experiences, decision-making, and well-being. She is the co-editor of two volumes: The SAGE Handbook of Media Processes and Effects and Emotions in the Digital World (Oxford University Press). She is a Fellow of the International Communication Association, and her research has been featured in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, NPR, CBC/Radio-Canada, and the Harvard Business Review.
