2024-25 Political Communication Division Officers

DIVISION HEAD

Oluseyi Adegbola is an assistant professor in the Tombras School of Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research includes political communication and public relations/strategic communication within the context of politics.

E-mail address: oadegbol@utk.edu

DIVISION VICE HEAD

Josephine ("Jo") Lukito (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. She is also the Director of the Media & Democracy Data Cooperative and a Senior Faculty Research Affiliate for the Center for Media Engagement. Jo uses machine learning and longitudinal modeling to study political language in the digital information ecosystem. She also studies research infrastructure, data collection ethics, and scholarly solidarity.

E-mail address: jlukito@utexas.edu

SENIOR RESEARCH CHAIR

Bingbing Zhang is an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on media effects, media psychology, political communication, and health and science communication.

E-mail address: bingbing-zhang@uiowa.edu

JUNIOR VICE CHAIR

Nana Kwame Osei Fordjour is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Maryland, College Park. His research revolves around political communication, public relations, crisis, and media studies. Dr. Osei Fordjour investigates politicians’ strategic messaging from perspectives like image construction, impression management, and authenticity. He studies contexts such as governance and elections.

E-mail address: nkoford@umd.edu

TEACHING CHAIR

David Lynn Painter (Ph.D., University of Florida) is an Associate Professor of Communication at Rollins College. His research has been published in the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, American Behavioral Scientist, Public Relations Review, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, and Howard Journal of Communications. He has also been featured on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and NPR News.

E-mail address: dpainter@rollins.edu

PF&R CHAIR

Joshua Cloudy (PhD, Texas Tech University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Georgia. His research falls broadly under the umbrella of political communication. More specifically, his research focuses on political advertising, (mediated) intergroup contact, and (digitally-enabled) violent extremism.

E-mail address: joshua.cloudy@uga.edu

DIVISION MIDWINTER CHAIR

Heesook Choi is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Mississippi State University. She is interested in audience selectivity in media consumption in the high-choice media environment, specifically related to political and civic effects of news media, political entertainment programming and new communication technologies.

E-mail address: hchoi@comm.msstate.edu

DIVISION NEWSLETTER & WEBSITE

Shannon Zenner is an assistant professor in the communication design program at Elon University. With a background in advertising, her research explores the intersection of visual communication, political identity, and artificial intelligence, focusing on how visual aesthetics and AI-generated designs influence advertising persuasiveness and visual taste.

E-mail address: szenner@elon.edu

DIVISION COMMUNICATIONS

Yuanliang “Leo” Shan is a PhD candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is interested in media bias perceptions in the context of political polarization. He will be joining the Department of Communication, Media, and Persuasion at the Idaho State University this Fall.

E-mail address: yshan7@wisc.edu

PAST DIVISION HEADS

2023-2024