David Ewoldsen, Ph.D., is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in psychology, speech communication, and cognitive sciences. His research explores communication and media, focusing on racism and the media, media message comprehension, cooperative video game play, entertainment, and the role of attitudes in risky health behavior. Dr. Ewoldsen earned a joint Ph.D. from Indiana University and held faculty positions at the University of Alabama and Ohio State University before joining Michigan State University.

Dr. Nancy Rhodes is a social psychologist and a faculty member at Michigan State University, formerly of the Ohio State University School of Communication. Her research interests center on persuasion and social influence, with a particular focus on health and safety behaviors. Dr. Rhodes has published works on the effects of attitudes and norms on cigarette smoking, risky driving behavior, substance use, and resistance toward health-related messages, and has ongoing projects in these areas.

Skylar studies small group interactions in virtual environment with game-like rules and systems. She draws from media psychology, social and cogntive psychology, game theory, and game studies to examine how people interact with each other under different settings as well as how they cooperate, compete, become prosocial or antisocial with each other. She is also interested in the psychological processes and outcomes of social interactions in online multiplayer video games. Needless to say, she is also a big video game fan.

Elisavet Averkiadi is a doctoral student in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University, with bachelor’s degree in Information Technology with a specialization in Software Development from Deree – The American College of Greece (2018), and her master’s degree in Media and Information from Michigan State University (2020). Her research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, and Software Development, exploring the persuasive effects of AI technologies and their ethical and effective use. Elisavet also studies user behavior in online group settings using machine learning, focusing on creativity, productivity, and collaboration in Enterprise Social Media platforms.

Faith Delle is a doctoral student in the Department of Advertising + Public Relations with a background in Professional Communication and Psychology. Her research focuses on individuals' cognitive processing and meaning-making of mediated messages, examining the role of storytelling, message content, and emotion in persuasion. Through a media psychology lens, she investigates grief, trauma, and loss, utilizing quantitative methods such as eye-tracking, psychophysiology, and real-time response measures to understand and predict behavior.

Hanjie Liu is a doctoral student in the Department of Media and Information, focusing on technological platforms, psychological wellbeing, and mental disorders. Her research investigates how individuals with mental disorders use social media and their differences in online information consumption. Approaching this from an empirical social science perspective, she employs quantitative surveys and experimental designs to better assist individuals with mental disorders in computer-mediated communications and understand the roles of negative moods and emotions in online message consumption. 

Emily is a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism, researching how technology mediates people's needs, motivations, and behaviors in the context of collective online phenomena. Her areas of study include social media user behavior, AI-human interaction, civic participation, digital application design, and gender-focused digital content. Employing a diverse range of methods, such as experiments, surveys, computational and mixed-method approaches, Emily is passionate about advancing scale-development methodology within the communication discipline.

Taenyun Kim is a PhD student in the department of Media and Information. He earned his dual bachelor's degree in Psychology and Informatics (2019) and master's degree in Interaction Science (2021) at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. He is interested in interdisciplinary fields such as Human-Agent Communication based on Social Psychology, Computer Science, and Robotics. He is interested in how people perceived newly imerging non-human agents (e.g., artificial intelligence (AI), and robots), especailly in terms of trust repair and moral judgment.

Catherine (Cassie) Marple is a doctoral student in the Department of Media and Information. She earned an interdisciplinary B.A. in Communication, Philosophy, English, and Film & Digital Media from Baylor University and an M.A. in Communication from Wake Forest University. Working in the realm of positive media psychology, she studies the study the psychological processes by which audience members can use narrative entertainment media (e.g., Game of Thrones, Tangled, or Dilwale) to develop positive and prosocial patterns of perception and response. Specifically, she explores the textual features that influence moral perception of story characters and situations, and the processes by which short term patterns of perception influence the chronic accessibility of moral and prosocial concepts.

Laila Kunaish is a master's student in the department of Media and Information. She completed her undergraduate degree at Florida State University with a primary focus in Psychology and a second focus in Media & Communication studies (2019). Her current research explores the effects racial minority representation in entertainment media and how effects may vary by type of narrative.