Through its impact on students in their lives in and beyond college, and recognizing the porous boundary between the classroom and the "real world," SoTL can offer insights into broader societal issues, offer evidence of activities that facilitate everyday learning, promote intrinsic motivation, better support people from…

Immune literacy--the ability to hear, learn, read, write, explain, and discuss immunological content with varied audiences--has become critically important in recent years. Yet, with its complex terminology and discipline-specific concepts, educating individuals about the immune system and its role in health and disease may seem daunting. Here, we…

The practice of journalism has long been based on the premise that a receptive audience awaits the content and that citizens--as participants in a democracy--will use the news to make sound decisions. Yet mainstream journalism has lost much of its audience to purveyors of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, a situation that has…

Climate change is one of the most complex and polarizing topics to recently emerge in museum education. It is also a topic that has emerged at the precise time that museums are undergoing great transition, moving away from an authoritarian framework toward a democratic one that seeks to integrate diverse audiences and multiple perspectives.…

New communication methods and technology continue to emerge and evolve -- as do societal trends -- making it paramount that Extension professionals stay abreast with the preferred communication channels of potential clientele. By being aware of clients' preferred communication channels, Extension professionals can increase the number of…

This study analyses the role of communication in social activism from models that surpass the mere emotional reaction, prior belief reinforcement or brand identification. This paper tests the hypothesis that a message focused on the cause (and its results) will motivate a previously sensitized audience depending on their interactions with source…

During the past few decades, educators, advocates and researchers have developed initiatives to increase news media literacy. Recent surveys indicate that audiences combine agendas from various media to suit their own needs through group discussion. This process is called "agenda melding." Agenda melding includes the "need for…

In this study, we address the research question: "How might child-created billboards about HIV and AIDS help facilitate more open discussions between parents and children?" The premise of our study is that there may be considerable potential for using multimodal forms of representation in makerspaces with young children to create more…

Emerging pandemics call for unique health communication and education strategies in which public health agencies need to satisfy the public's information needs about possible risks while preventing risk exaggeration and dramatization. As a route to providing a framework for understanding public information behaviors in response to an emerging…

Cultural logics reveal a culture's way of reasoning or a belief system. When paired with International Patient Experience Design (I-PXD), cultural logics provide insight into cultural contexts to help health and medical communicators design, test, and shape health and medical information across complex, dynamic international contexts. Using a…

As previous studies suggest, titles of works of art have generally proven to be influential elements in reading and interpretation of the artworks. In the exhibition context, titles can be considered as a physical component of the museum or art gallery's space. According to the relatively new approaches, learning, being a subcategory of…

New media are having a significant impact on science communication, both on the way scientists communicate with peers and on the dissemination of science to the lay public. Science blogs, in particular, provide an open space for science communication, where a diverse audience (with different degrees of expertise) may have access to science…

The news media play a vital role in disseminating health information, yet little is known about the social characteristics of health journalists or the impact they have on the newsmaking process. This study examines how the social group influences of US health journalists impact two important aspects of news production--"media agenda-setting" and…

News stories reporting race-specific health information commonly emphasize disparities between racial groups. But recent research suggests this focus on disparities has unintended effects on African American audiences, generating negative emotions and less interest in preventive behaviors (Nicholson RA, Kreuter MW, Lapka C "et al." Unintended…

The role of new media in the Arab uprisings and the news of widespread surveillance of digital and mobile media have triggered a renewed interest in Arab audiences research, particularly as it pertains to these audiences' critical abilities and digital media literacy competencies. Taken for granted have been Arab youth's widespread use of social…