无码专区

Who Gets a Say? Communicative Erasures in Rural Health Programs in West Bengal, India (Award: $5688)
Principal Investigator: Sohinee Bera, Cornell University

Global health programs are often designed with the aim of improving living conditions and health outcomes for marginalized populations, often through community-based approaches. This project builds on that premise while critically examining how such programs operate in practice, focusing on the communicative processes within India鈥檚 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) 鈥� the country鈥檚 largest community-based health initiative. Primarily serving rural low-caste, Adivasi (indigenous), and low-class communities, the ICDS relies on the labor of over a million female, community healthcare workers (ASHAs). Drawing on in-depth interviews with ASHAs, participant observation at health clinics and at-home visits, and analyses of the program鈥檚 regulations and records, this study will investigate how institutional structures and everyday practices contribute to communicative erasures for those at the margins. Unlike other forms of communicative marginalization, such as invisibility or inequalities, I refer to communicative erasures as the norms and structures that systematically deny voices from the margins from being heard. This project explores how marginalized rural villagers, as well as overburdened and underpaid ASHAs are subject to these communicative erasures by tracing health data collection practices, conversations between communities and ASHAs, and decision-making processes. Through this, this study will reveal the intersection of power, surveillance, care, and communication in rural health delivery. The findings of this study aim to inform how health communication can be used to support the agency of these communities by foregrounding their lived experiences, while interrogating the dominant, marginalizing narratives embedded within health development schemes. Ultimately, this project provides a key window into understanding the localized and uneven ways in which health systems take shape on the ground through communication processes.

Mapping Livelihoods and Communication Ecologies among Transgender and Larger Gender & Sexual Minority Populations in India: A Participatory Inquiry into Flow and Impact Analysis of Resource Narratives
(Award: $10,000)
Principal Investigator: Bidisha Chanda, Jadavpur University and Pleqsus India Foundation,
Additional Investigator(s)/Researcher(s): Avinaba Dutta, Pleqsus India Foundation and National Institute of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR),
Additional Investigator(s)/Researcher(s): Vanishree Joseph, NIRDPR, 
Additional Researcher(s): Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Pleqsus India Foundation

Across India transgender, gender-diverse, and larger gender & sexual minority (GSM) communities, popularly known as the LGBTQ+ community, have historically been excluded not only from state recognition and economic systems, but also from dominant frameworks of knowledge and communication. Where formal systems failed, communities survived鈥攂y building their own languages, professions, and support networks. From Ulti Bhasha to hijra gharanas, from badhai and challa to grassroots community-led organizations and digital WhatsApp groups & community safe spaces, these communities have developed rich, complex ecologies of meaning-making.

Rather than presuming a communication gap, our inquiry begins with a fundamental question: What types of communication actually reach the transgender and GSM populations and shape their livelihood choices? Which ones are trusted, which are ignored, and which perpetuate harm?

I don鈥檛 view this as a simple issue of outreach or awareness; hence, this project reframes it as a question of communication justice. It explores how resource narratives鈥攁bout dignity, livelihood, and identity鈥攁re created, transmitted, distorted, erased across formal-informal systems. It investigates why even the most well-intentioned schemes and digital platforms often fail to connect with their intended users.

Through ethnographic interviews, perception surveys, content analysis, and participatory communication mapping, this study will work closely with grassroots transgender-led CBOs across India, with a focus on West Bengal. It will also examine how AI-driven tools (e.g., chatbots) can be designed to reflect, not overwrite, the realities of community-based knowledge sharing鈥攎oving beyond urban, Anglicized, or elite-coded templates.

What happens when aspiration meets erasure? When survival depends not just on access, but on the trustworthiness of the message and the dignity of the messenger?

By surfacing the invisible architectures of stigma, aspiration, and resistance, this project aims to inform more inclusive, rights-affirming frameworks for livelihood development. It is not just about who gets heard鈥攂ut how, through whom, and in what language.

Credibility Work and Ethnic-Racial Identity in Patient-Clinician Interactions for Women with Autoimmune Disease: A Mixed Methods Application of the Integrative Theory of Communication Work
(Award: $7,745)
Principal Investigator: Jacqueline Gunning, University of Connecticut,

Autoimmune disease (AD) is a growing gendered and raced health disparity in the United States and globally, exacerbated by discriminatory patient-clinician interactions. Due to discursive and material histories that position women with AD as untrustworthy narrators, patients are often tasked with the labor of legitimizing themselves and their health concerns to receive the (health)care that they need, referred in the extant literature as communication work. The primary study within this proposed project adopts a mixed-methods approach to the integrative theory of communication work (ITCW) to investigate whether and how communication work in clinician interactions varies based on women with AD鈥檚 ethnic-racial identities and healthcare system access, and to what extent these factors impact their health-related quality of life. First, aligning with the post-positivist articulation of the ITCW, hypotheses will be tested using SEM in SPSS Amos 29, predicting associations between women鈥檚 ethnic-racial identities and skin tone, amount of communication work engaged in clinician interactions, and overall health-related quality of life. Second, aligning with the interpretive articulation of the ITCW and focused on credibility work specifically, the qualitative analysis will employ thematic co-occurrence analysis to identify the preparatory and enacted credibility work strategies that women with AD employ in interactions with their clinicians, and examine whether relationships exist among strategies and across ethnic-racial groups. From these findings, a secondary, cross-cultural pilot study will be conducted in partnership with scholars at University of Auckland to assess how illness experiences differ between women with AD in the United States and New Zealand (Aotearoa), due to differences in healthcare systems (i.e., public, private) and colonial histories informing ethnic-racial identity constructions. Together, this project offers theoretical and practical implications for communication research and theorizing as it relates to a globally growing gendered and raced health disparity.

Influencing Indigeneity: Impacts of Social Media in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Award: $9,912)
Principal Investigator: Georgia Ennis, Western Carolina University,
Additional Investigator(s)/Researcher(s): Vincent Russell,
Western Carolina University

Influencing Indigeneity is a collaborative, community-engaged, ethnographic project theorizing social media production as a method for Indigenous cultural and environmental activism. The impact of social media technologies on human social interaction and culture remains one of the most widely debated questions in both popular discourse and communication research. Do algorithmic logics flatten culture and further oppression (Chayka, 2024; Noble, 2018)? Can social media provide spaces for self-representation and cultural activism (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015; Calhoun, 2019; Nartey, 2023; Udupa & Dattatreyan, 2023)? In the Ecuadorian Amazon, loss of Indigenous languages is linked to the loss of Indigenous territories and the reordering of local ecologies in the face of colonial settlement and agricultural development. Social media production can provide a focal activity for multigenerational communities to transmit environmental and cultural knowledge to internal and external audiences, thereby contributing to cultural and environmental conservation.

To investigate the role of social media in cultural and environmental activism, this project engages in collaborative social media production with a group of Indigenous Amazonian women, combined with an analysis of the broader ecology of Amazonian social media. The Association of Kichwa Midwives of the Upper Napo (AMUPAKIN) is an association of 14 Kichwa midwives who provide medicinal and cultural services in the province of Napo, Ecuador, where environmental and cultural changes are ongoing. AMUPAKIN currently has a limited social media presence managed by a non-Kichwa person. Members of the organization wish to gain skills to direct their own social media accounts and expand their organization鈥檚 presence online. As an example of communication activism for social justice research (CAR; Frey & Carragee, 2007), during the project period, we will partner with AMUPAKIN to train their members in social media production and strategy, while also co-analyzing the content they create and its links to the broader ecology of digital Amazonian media. This international, community-based, ethnographic project serves both a documentary and analytical role by promoting Indigenous cultural activism and social media production through collaborative digital content creation and scholarly publications with Indigenous co-authors.

State(s) of Emergency: Decentralizing Federal Disaster Communication and Response, Its Consequences for Environmentally and Socially Marginalized Communities (Award: $9,750)
Principal Investigator: Max Erdemandi, University of Maryland,
Additional Investigator(s)/Researcher(s): Lahne Mattas-Curry,
University of Maryland

This project examines the potential consequences of dismantling federal disaster communication and response infrastructure and shifting these responsibilities to state and local governments. Prompted by recent proposals under the current U.S. administration to reduce or eliminate the role of agencies such as FEMA, EPA, NOAA, and CDC, this research investigates how such decentralization may exacerbate existing social and environmental inequalities鈥攑articularly in structurally marginalized regions like Central Appalachia.

We argue that the erosion of federal coordination in disaster contexts is not merely an administrative restructuring but a communication crisis with high stakes for equity and public trust. Drawing on and critically extending the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model, we interrogate how risk messages are produced, received, and contested in communities long excluded from federal support systems. We integrate this framework with political psychology, co-cultural communication, and scholarship on epistemic injustice to examine how perceptions of institutional legitimacy, risk, and responsibility are shaped by lived experience, ideology, and structural inequities.

Using a three-study, mixed-methods design, the project foregrounds the perspectives of two key groups: (1) federal, state, and local emergency management professionals and (2) residents of disaster-prone, underserved communities. Study 1 consists of interviews and focus groups to explore knowledge systems, institutional trust, and gaps in intergovernmental coordination. Study 2 is a nationally representative survey analyzing public knowledge, trust, and support for decentralization policies. Study 3 uses a survey experiment to test how informational interventions about agency roles affect support for federal involvement.

This project contributes to urgent scholarly and policy debates on communicative equity, crisis governance, and institutional erosion. It aligns with the Waterhouse Family Institute鈥檚 mission by centering community voices and addressing the structural consequences of communication system failures. Outputs will include peer-reviewed publications, policy briefs, and community-centered dissemination efforts鈥攊ncluding a webinar and accessible public summary. By treating structurally excluded communities as co-producers of knowledge, this project challenges deficit-based models of risk communication and offers actionable guidance for strengthening public institutions in times of crisis.

Empowering Young Adult Vapers Through Critical Thinking: A Novel Intervention to Disrupt Tobacco Use Escalation and Promote Message Responsiveness (Award: $9,990)
Principal Investigator: Jiaying Liu, University of California Santa Barbara

Young adult (YA) vaping has reached alarming levels in the United States. Fueled by manipulative marketing strategies, appealing flavors, and misinformation on social media, vaping has become the most common form of tobacco use among YAs, threatening to reverse decades of public health progress. Traditional anti-vaping public service announcements (PSAs), often employing cognitive, emotional, or social appeals, have yielded mixed results鈥攆requently hindered by low engagement, psychological reactance, and industry-led counter-campaigns. This project proposes a novel, theory-driven intervention that integrates critical thinking training with anti-vaping digital messaging to reduce substance use vulnerability and enhance YA responsiveness to health communication. Grounded in the Message Impact Framework and the Brain Disease Model of Addiction, the study will examine both behavioral and neurobiological outcomes. Forty young adult vapers will be randomly assigned to either a PSA-only condition or a critical thinking + PSA condition. Over a one-month intervention, participants will receive regular PSA exposure, with half also completing weekly online critical thinking training adapted from evidence-based media literacy curricula. Outcomes will be assessed through weekly self-reports and a follow-up fMRI scan measuring neural responses to PSAs and vaping cues. The primary goals are to determine whether critical thinking training enhances message engagement, reduces vaping behavior, and alters neural activation in brain regions associated with cognitive control, emotion, and reward. fMRI outcomes will offer insight into the neural mechanisms that underlie message effectiveness, including increased activation in prefrontal areas and reduced activity in craving-related regions. By equipping young adults with tools to critically evaluate persuasive content, this project aims to reduce susceptibility to pro-vaping messaging and promote cognitive agency. The findings will inform the design of more effective, equity-oriented public health interventions for substance use prevention targeting younger populations.

Resilience Reporting Model in Action: The Case of School Mass Shooting Coverage (Award: $9,971.50)
Principal Investigator: Shuning Lu, University of Maryland

News media play an important role in disseminating information about mass shootings to the public and shaping the way that mass shootings are perceived and interpreted by the public. However, there has been widespread distrust and criticism toward media coverage following mass shootings.

To address the problem, this project draws on insights from constructive journalism and communication theory of resilience and proposes the Resilience Reporting Model to examine the patterns and effects of resilience reporting following mass shootings. By highlighting recovery, adaptation, community solidarity, resilience reporting is an important vehicle for healing oriented public discourses, community resilience, and social cohesion, which are key conditions for sustainable and positive social change after major disruption.

Through content analysis of news coverage of five high-profile school mass shootings, the project seeks to identify the components and patterns of resilience reporting. Building on results from the content analysis, the project will develop prototypes of resilience reporting and conduct survey experiments to gauge audiences鈥� evaluations of resilience reporting. Furthermore, the experiments will also tease out the psychological mechanisms through which resilience reporting will prompt news engagement and civic engagement among audiences.

In sum, the project bridges theory and practice by illustrating how the interpersonal communication principles laid out in the communication theory of resilience can be scaled to mass communication contexts. The findings of the project provide guidance for newsrooms on covering mass shootings and incidents alike. It also has the potential to enhance journalist audience relationship by identifying what audiences need from resilience-focused reporting. Ultimately, given the influence of news coverage of mass shootings, the project bears broader social implications for gun-related public discourses and policy development.

鈥淲e鈥檙e going extinct鈥�: Documenting Narratives of Climate Change, Cultural Extinction, and Community Resettlement on Three Coastal Communities in Sierra Leone (Award: $9,759)
Principal Investigator: Shaunak Sastry, University of Cincinnati,
Additional Investigator(s)/Researcher(s): Usman Bah, University of Cincinnati

The proposed research project seeks to address an urgent and highly understudied social problem 鈥� the immense impact of climate change on the lives of coastal community residents in the global South. While climate change is a planetary problem with systemic impacts on ecology, agriculture, health, livelihood, and resilience, communication perspectives help highlight the lived experiences and meaning-making processes of those that bear the brunt of such impacts. We use a Communication-based theory, viz. the culture-centered approach, to study the immediate and future impacts of climate change in three coastal communities in Sierra Leone. The impacts of climate change are exacerbated in the global South, where coastal communities are rendered much more vulnerable to sea-level rise, pollution, and extreme weather. The three communities at the heart of the study are all in imminent danger of ocean encroachment, and one has already been physically moved several times on account of high sea water levels. Using a conceptual framework grounded in Communication (i.e. the culture-centered approach (Dutta, 2008)), our project seeks to document how local community members make meanings around what they refer to as 鈥渆xtinction鈥� or the loss of cultural and social ways of life, as well as their accounts of having to relocate as climate refugees, away from their homes. We plan to collaborate with community residents in three communities: Plantain Island, Nyangai Island, and Shenge, across two phases, from December 2025 to June 2026. Through a participatory collaborative method, we will co-define the problem with these residents and help facilitate locally produced video documentaries on the lived experiences of climate change. Thus, we will engage in a co-creation model of problem definition, based on the lived experiences of these residents. The research team brings considerable experience in conducting ethnographic fieldwork-based communication research. We hope to use the data to develop long-term co-partnered solutions and tailored strategy scripts that can inform funding patterns and policy briefs for the area and the region.