research

The Kennedy Center for International Studies has chosen its Kennedy Research Fellows for fall semester 2022. This program has for some time provided research funding for students doing research on international topics; Fall 2022 is the first time the fellowships have also been made available to faculty as well. …

Irvine looks fondly back on her years at BYU and notes how they prepared her for her current career as a professor and author

Professor Brubaker and her graduate students found that Twitter users were able to build their own supportive community during the early stages of the pandemic

Dance education major Daylin Williams shares how her experience with serious injury has made her stronger

Shill — a native of Cottonwood Heights, Utah — will graduate with a BFA in dance on April 24, 2020

Disney princesses excite and inspire young girls all over the world, captivating them with beauty, bravery and royal status. This princess frenzy — a hallmark of the childhood experience — also fuels passionate debates about the unrealistic expectations these characters set, especially concerning body image and romantic relationships. BYU communications professors Tom Robinson, Clark Callahan and Scott Church, along with graduate students Mckenzie Madsen and Lucia Pollock, recently published their research paper “Virtue, royalty, dreams and power: Exploring the appeal of Disney Princesses to preadolescent girls in the United States” which investigates the topic through the eyes of the girls themselves. “This study is unique because it’s talking about Disney princesses, but it’s not an adult talking about them,” Robinson said. “We’re showing what the young girls themselves think and discovered that they do not all think alike.” Read the full article at comms.byu.edu

With so many avenues and options to get the latest information on sports, why do fans visit online forums, such as team message boards? Recent research from BYU communications professors found the reason many fans get online to read and post about their favorite sports team tells a lot about the type of fan they are. As part of the study, a group of sports fans who visit sports forums at least weekly ranked a series of statements. These included things like “I feel a sense of community with the other users of sports forums,” or “I like to visit sports forums for entertainment when I’m bored.” Researchers then interviewed participants to obtain a better understanding of their rankings. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data lead to the classification of three different types of online sports fans: tailgaters, trivia seekers and bandwagon fans. Read the full article at news.byu.edu

11 Department of Dance students and nine faculty members attended the National Dance Education Organization’s annual conference in Miami

The School of Music will present BYU’s first ever movie in concert with “King Kong” (1933). The BYU Philharmonic — under the direction of Kory Katseanes — will perform Max Steiner’s landmark score as the film plays on the big screen in the de Jong Concert Hall Nov. 2. The concert also marks the first time the score has been performed live since its reconstruction from Steiner’s original sketches by film composer John Morgan. Music theory professor Brent Yorgason worked behind the scenes with BYU students, faculty and staff as well as industry professionals to transcribe and polish the reconstructed score, coordinate media elements and create click tracks to keep the live music in sync with the images on the screen. Yorgason discusses the importance of Steiner’s legacy — and BYU’s unique connection to it — in a Q&A on the School of Music website.

BYU communications professor uses passion for flying drones — both personally and professionally — as inspiration for award-winning research paper

Scott Haden Church has a confession: At the start of the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” he rolled his eyes. The opening scene — a person running down a hallway of flickering lights, reaching an elevator and frantically pushing the buttons to escape a mysterious creature — wasn’t anything new. That the person ends up getting demolished by the creature anyway was even more predictable. Despite his initial hesitation, Church finished the first season of “Stranger Things” in three days. Aside from wondering what happened to Eleven and how being in the Upside Down would continue to affect Will, Church had another question on his mind: Why did he like the show so much? He wasn’t alone. In 2017, Netflix ratings confirmed that during the first three days season two of “Stranger Things” was made available on Netflix, 15.8 million people watched the first episode. As a whole the season averaged 8.8 million viewers per episode, and 361,000 people watched all nine episodes of the season within the first 24 hours of its release. Church soon after began his “Stranger Things” research — which he first presented last year at the Pop Culture Association in Indianapolis — by closely watching the show and picking apart the episodes to find how the Duffer brothers had remixed elements of ‘80s pop culture to create a new story. Read the full Deseret News article.

Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the United States. If you could visibly see signs of skin cancer on your body, would you be more likely to visit the doctor? A group of professors from BYU and the University of Utah asked that exact question as they looked for the most effective ways to influence people to screen themselves for cancer. The team found that visual stimulation had a significant impact on those whom they studied, a group of more than 2,200 adults ages 18-89 from across the country. The results demonstrate that UV skin damage visuals can cause viewers to feel fear, which then made these individuals more likely to participate in positive sun-safe behaviors such as wearing sunscreen or protective clothing. “Just talking about skin cancer, being inundated with facts and mortality rates, all of that is fear-inspiring language, but the images were so powerful that they moved people to intend to take action,” said Kevin John, an assistant professor in BYU’s School of Communications and study co-author. Read the full story at news.byu.edu.

Amber Richardson uses art as a means of exploring her questions. She began to develop questions about the doctrine of Heavenly Mother — one unique to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while studying theater at BYU. “I wanted to know who I was,” said Richardson, who graduated from BYU in 2013. “If some aspect of my femaleness is an eternal part of my existence, how do I know who I am if I can’t see who (Heavenly Mother) is?” Richardson and photographer Anna Killian are looking for answers to this question through their collaborative project, “Woman, Crowned.” The project, which the pair said they hope to publish as a book in 2020, combines research, prose and photography to explore how scriptural queens act as archetypes for Heavenly Mother. Richardson said she hopes this project will be an “access point” for anyone looking to learn more about Heavenly Mother. Read the full story at universe.byu.edu.

School of Communications Professor Kevin John used eye tracking technology to map how men process body image differently than women. Read more about his research here.

Scott Church presented on media and politics to the National Communications Association.

Design Professor Doug Thomas goes to San Francisco as a TEDx speaker to talk about the ideas in his new book “Never Use Futura”

Priscilla Stewart will present her research on place and ecology based education at the National Art Education Association’s National Convention, the premier conference for K12 art educators and university researchers

Newspapers have shifted from strongly favoring Republican candidates in the 1950s to dividing their editorial endorsements almost equally In the 1948 U.S. presidential election, republican presidential candidate and Governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey was heavily favored and endorsed by more than 80 percent of America’s newspapers. Journalists at the Chicago Tribune were so sure of Dewey’s win that the newspaper printed its morning edition early with the now infamous headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” What was predicted to be an easy win for Dewey is now considered to be the greatest election upset in American history as presidential incumbent Harry S. Truman swept the polls. It’s scenarios like the 1948 presidential election that have Journalism Professor Joel Campbell taking a closer look at the effectiveness of editorial endorsements of presidential candidates. “It’s difficult to say if there is any strong correlation between endorsements and how people vote,” Campbell said. “But more often than not, presidential candidates with the largest percentage of newspaper endorsements have won since 1940, the notable exceptions being Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.” According to Campbell’s research published in The 21st Century Voter: Who Votes, How they Vote, and Why They Vote, there was a substantial shift in how the news media endorsed candidates throughout the last 50 years: Newspapers have shifted from strongly favoring Republican candidates in the 1940s and 1950s to dividing their editorial endorsements almost equally between the two major parties. Democratic candidates are about 10 percent more likely to receive an endorsement than Republican candidates six decades earlier. Incumbents today receive an editorial endorsement about 90 percent of the time, up from 60 percent of the time in the 1940s. In the 2012 presidential election, 77 of the top 100 U.S. newspapers endorsed candidates: 41 papers endorsed President Barack Obama, 35 endorsed GOP candidate Mitt Romney and a single paper registered a split decision. Another 23 papers did not endorse any candidates, including the two largest newspapers, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Even though the candidate with the most endorsements has traditionally won the election, Campbell predicts that editorial endorsements won’t make any difference this fall. “In this year's election there is so much information available on so many platforms, any media endorsement is likely to be drowned out by the din of voices,” Campbell said. “In the era of social media, the endorsement of those within one's circle of friends is likely to carry much more weight than that of a news organization.” It’s not just the endorsement and election result relationship that interests Campbell, but also the ethical practice of news media favoring a candidate. As a professor, Campbell teaches his students that journalists are supposed to be objective observers, but the long-standing tradition of editorial endorsements often gets in the way. The Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Committee encourages editorial pages to promote thoughtful debate and let readers know through endorsements which candidates share the newspaper’s vision, while also taking every opportunity to explain the firewall between news and opinion. But in an era of social media and frequently blurred lines between news and opinion, Campbell urges his fellow journalists to be more careful. “Most people say ‘journalism ethics’ is an oxymoron,” Campbell said. “The distrust of the media and the feeling of bias in the media is greater than ever. Newspapers and news media endorsing candidates probably feeds into that.” The College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences and the Office of Civic Engagement Leadership are partnering with Turbovote to facilitate online voter registration. If you are not registered tovote, but are eligible, or if you wish to obtain an absentee ballot, please visit the booths in and around the Wilkinson Student Center during the week of September 26 to register to vote or to get an absentee ballot. September 26, 2016 | Natalie Tripp