Four University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications faculty have received a combined $16,000 in seed funding for new or extended research.  Dean Diane McFarlin awards seed funding annually to support research initiatives.

Following are the winners and a summary of their research proposals.

Dr. Huan Chen, assistant professor, Department of Advertising

The proposed research will explore how Chinese immigrants use mobile social media applications to garner social capital and facilitate their acculturation process into the U.S. The study will examine how use of social messaging groups on WeChat, the most popular social media platform among Chinese immigrants, affects their acculturation process.

Dr. Yu-Hao Lee, assistant professor, Department of Telecommunication

This project seeks to investigate the effects of news headline framing on selective exposure and elaboration of news through a motived processing perspective. This project is intended to expand 1) our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of news headline framing, 2) our understanding of selective exposure to news through examining how people use their intuitive feelings as information cues to assess their motivations, and 3) our knowledge of how to frame news headlines based on user’s psychological traits and increase news engagement.

Dr. Jasmine McNealy, assistant professor, Department of Telecommunication

This study extends investigations at the intersection of privacy, technology, communities, and culture. The research will examine the need for understanding online community privacy standards on social networking sites; describe the use of community-based standards in legal considerations of information that may serve as a basis for creating online community privacy standards; and calls for the creation of a typology of online social media communities based on privacy norms.

Dr. Yulia Strekalova, director of grants development, Division of Graduate Studies and Research

This project is an extension of previous research on health information behavior and health communication on social media. The main goal is to assess how information sharing and seeking on social media supports health self-management and affects perceived well-being. This project also has a secondary, methodological goal to assess whether qualitative data collected online is comparable to data collected through traditional, face-to-face methods (i.e., focus groups).

Posted: October 26, 2016
Category: College News, Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project News
Tagged as: Huan Chen, Jasmine McNealy, Yu-Hao Lee, Yulia Strekalova