Editor's note: This is the first in a series of articles profiling the research of our department's faculty and graduate students.

By Brian Hallett
Professional writing, senior

Would you take health advice from Bart Simpson? Or your favorite rock or TV star? A research group in the department would like to know.

The group is conducting research in the area of parasocial interaction. Parasocial interaction describes a relationship in which one person knows a lot about the other, while the other may know much less or nothing. It is commonly used to describe the relationships between fans and celebrities, or even fans and television show characters.

The group is led by Assistant Professor Hyunyi Cho, whose research focuses on Health communication, and graduate students Jen Hall, Katie Wiesner and Kari Wilson. Wilson, a master's student in Media, Technology and Society, said the team wants to look specifically at how parasocial relationships might affect teens' consumption of health information on popular television shows.

For example, she said, a show might have an embedded issue, such as a pregnancy scare, for one of its characters. The group wants to look at whether the way the character dealt with the issue would influence how the teen watching the show might respond in a similar situation, based on their "relationship."

Right now, though, said Wilson, the team is focusing on redefining parasocial interaction.

"We want to come up with a solid explanation of what it is," she said. "Right now, it's very confusing. But it's hard to do, because parasocial interaction is a one-sided relationship."

Ralph Webb, Professor, presented a 2007 Books and Coffee series on Deborah Tannen's "You're Wearing That?: Mothers and Daughters in Conversation."

Charles Stewart, Professor, has been named to fill the vacant "Margaret Church Distinguished Professorship." Also, Stewart and alums Craig Allen Smith and Robert E. Denton Jr. authored the 5th edition of their book, "Persuasion and Social Movements." Two new chapters, "Justifying Violence Through Good Reasons" and "The Use of Terrorism by Social Movements," reflect the times in which we live.

Brant Burleson, Professor, received a "Faculty Fellowship for Study in a Second Discipline" award. He will pursue research with colleagues in social psychology in the 2007-2008 academic year. Burleson and doctoral students Amanda Holmstrom, Graham Bodie, and Jessica Rack received a "Top Four Paper Award" from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the Central States Communication Association for their paper, "What counts as effective emotional support? Three studies exploring individual and situational differences," presented at the CSCA convention in Minneapolis in March. Burleson also authored or co-authored the following articles or chapters: "Constructivism: A general theory of communication skill" in "Explaining communication: Contemporary theories and exemplars," Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; "Bereaved adolescents' evaluations of the helpfulness of support-intended statements: Associations with person centeredness and demographic, personality, and contextual factors" in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Robin Clair, Associate Professor, students in her COM456, Advertising Writing, awarded three engagement grants to work with area nonprofit organizations.

Glenn Sparks, Professor, elected to 3-year term on University Senate. Sparks also taught at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia in spring 2007.

Jay Wang, Assistant Professor, invited by the U.S. Department of State and the Public Relations Coalition to participate in the "Private Sector Summit on Public Diplomacy" in Washington, D.C. The summit brings together a small, select group of the nation's private sector leaders to discuss strategies to improve perceptions of the U.S. globally.

Tyler Harrison, Assistant Professor, elected vice chair of the Peace and Conflict Division of NCA. Harrison also led an "Organization and Change: Lunch & Learn" session for Deloitte, Touche and Tohmatsu in Chicago.

Mohan Dutta, Associate Professor, $15,000 grant from International Programs to support international graduate student recruiting efforts in India and China next fall.

Patrice Buzzanell, Professor, has been invited to teach at the Aarhus School of Business Summer University in August.

Steve Wilson, Professor, published "First and second-order changes in a community's response to a child abuse fatality" in Communication Monographs. In addition, a chapter from his 2002 book titled "Seeking and Resisting Compliance: Why do People Say What They do When Trying to Influence Others" has been adapted and reprinted under the title "Communication theory and the concept of goal" in a 2007 book titled, "Explaining communication: Contemporary theories and exemplars," published by Lawrence Erlbaum. The book is edited by Professor Bryan Whaley (University of San Fransicso) and Wendy Samter (Bryant University), both of whom received their Ph.D. degrees at Purdue. Also, Wilson and alumna Meina Liu had the "top paper" in the interpersonal communication division at the upcoming 2007 International Communication Association conference in San Francisco. The paper, based on her dissertation research, is titled "A cross-cultural investigation of intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of anger and compassion on multi-stage negotiation performance." He also received a $2,500 PLACE grant to support work focused on how the experiences of Spanish-speaking families in Lafayette are similar to/different from those of other families with special needs.

Jennifer Zeigler, Assistant Professor, received $850 from the PLACE grant fund to support her work on firefighters.

Marifran Mattson, Associate Professor, received a $695 "Teaching Development Incentive Grants for Spring 2007" for "Health communication: Developing a team-taught class."

Jim Tyler, Assistant Professor, received a "Teaching Development Incentive Grants for Spring 2007" for $750 for his proposal of "Web-based applets to enhance statistical comprehension."

Robert Ogles, Associate Professor, to be honored in August at annual AEJMC convention for past contributions as division head and journal editor.

Pat Rochon, Assistant Professor, is the recipient of a Community of Service Learning Faculty Fellows Grant of $5,000.