Research foci of the Department include: (1) New Media and Technology: diffusion, use, and effects of communication technology; impact of online and mobile media; computer-mediated communication; human-computer interaction; policy and regulation; business strategy; (2) Media Institutions and Society: state-society-media relationships; news production; media organizations; journalists and professionalism; social influence of media content; (3) Political Communication: public opinion, civic and political participation, political campaigns; (4) Media Psychology and Effects: cognitive processing, media effects; interactive advertising; (5) Computational Communication Research: social media/network analysis, big data mining; computational social science; (6) Health Communication: persuasion, healthcare narratives, health message processing; (7) Strategic Communication: public relations, advertising, integrated marketing communications.