Interview with Researcher: Dana Al Ghusain

Interview with Rachel Gross: Professor of Public Health at American University

Rachel Gross has been teaching at AU for one year as term faculty on administrative track. She has teaches introduction to Public Health, the Senior Capstone and overlooks internships.  Before coming to AU she studied psychology and public health and also did extensive research in evaluation. Specifically she conducted evaluations of HIV and influenza health and intervention programs to see if they were actually effective. She also did a lot of research on the tobacco industry and how it markets to women.

Gross had always been interested in issues of body image and first wanted to study body disturbance in Amish communities- she found that that would be extremely hard. Instead, for her senior dissertation, she decided to study the effects of media on body image and how other variables mediated the relationship.

The two main methods she used surveys and an index in a cross-sectional study.  Going into the study Gross had the theory that although girls’ exposure to the thin ideal in the media was a factor that lead to body image disturbance, there were other mediating variables that caused disturbance and eating disorders. She also tested for self-esteem, depression and family dynamic. She found that depression was a major mediating variable as well as self-esteem.

A list of some of her work is here:

Gross, R.C. (2002). The Media and Body Image Disturbance: How psychological mediate and moderate their relationship. Doctoral Dissertation.

Gross, R, Kmeic, J; Worell, J; Crosby, F. (2001). Institutional affiliation and satisfaction among feminist professors. Is there an advantage to women colleges? Psychology of women quarterly. 25(1). 20-26.

Frost, R.O & Gross, R.C. (1993). The Hoarding of Possessions. Behavior Research Therapy, 31, 367-381.

Interview with Lauren Feldman: Professor of Communication at American University

Lauren Feldman has been assistant professor at American University for 4 years. She is interested in political communication and the media’s effect on the issue climate change. She has done many research programs on the relationship of the media and climate change.

Right now she is working on a research program in which she is using three main research methods: Content analysis, surveys and experiments.  When doing content analysis she is looking to see if more articles show the threat of climate change or are more efficacy based. Through surveys she is looking at the affects of the media on people’s views and attitudes towards climate change. Most experiments were manipulation of content in terms of how efficacy-focused they were. Surveys after the experiment would show their response t o the different articles, specifically how empowered they feel about being apart of the solution to climate change, willingness to read the article and also their overall attitudes toward the issue.

Going into the program Feldman holds a theory called the “Extended Parallel Processing Model.” This theory says that if an article or piece of media contains both the threats of climate change and also reasonable action to solve the problem are more effective in affecting an audience than articles that just present on or the other.

So far she has found that most articles talk about the threats of climate change, less, but still some are efficacy-focused and few talk about both efficacy and threats.

Some of her works includes:

Feldman, L. (forthcoming). Partisan differences in opinionated news perceptions: A test of the hostile media effect. Political Behavior.

Feldman, L. (forthcoming). The effects of journalist opinionation on learning from the news. Journal of Communication.

Feldman, L. (forthcoming). The opinion factor: The effects of opinionated news on information processing and attitude change. Political Communication.

Nisbet, M. C., & Feldman, L. (in press). Political communication. In D. Hook, B. Franks and M. Bauer (Eds.), Communication, culture and social change: The social psychological perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Price, V., & Feldman, L. (2009).  News and politics.  In R. L. Nabi & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), The Sage handbook of media processes and effects (pp. 113-129).  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Feldman, L., & Young, D. G. (2008). Late-night comedy as a gateway to traditional news: An analysis of time trends in news attention among late-night comedy viewers during the 2004 presidential primaries.Political Communication, 25(4), 401-422.