In The News: Department of Communication Studies
The holidays just aren’t complete without a little drama for dessert. And what’s more dramatic than a planet in crisis?
It’s his form of environmental justice.
Pope Francis is not your average pope. He’s weighed in on prison reform and women’s rights, and he wrote a whole encyclical on climate change in 2015. On Friday, at the 20th World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Francis waded into the climate change debate again with an unusual idea: perhaps environmental destruction should be classified as an official sin.
There's a holiday for practically everything -- even pruning your collection of friends on social media. Sunday is National Unfriend Day, which was started in 2010 by late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel. Shrinking your social circle has a number of benefits, according to Natalie Pennington, a communications professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose dissertation, cited in a university release, focuses on the effects of unfriending and unfollowing through social media.
The holiday encourages users of Facebook and other social networking platforms to examine how close or superficial their online relationships are, and unfriend those who ignore a status update pleading for volunteers to help move.
Former Las Vegas resident and comedian Jimmy Kimmel has created a holiday to help you end superficial relationships online. National Unfriend Day is Nov. 17 and a UNLV professor agrees with Kimmel.
Simply look at the reaction environmental activist Greta Thunberg received after speaking at the Climate Action Summit at the United Nations (or really, when she does anything) and you’ll see how heated things can get when people talk about climate change.
National Unfriend Day is Nov. 17 and a UNLV professor says that getting rid of toxic people on social media could help your mental health.
You’ve got plenty of friends on social media until … there’s one less friend. In other words, you’ve been “unfriended.”
It’s the Girl Scout mantra: Make new friends but keep the old. However, according to UNLV communication studies professor and researcher Natalie Pennington, that may not be the best advice for your mental health.
A unique class at UNLV simulates crime scenes to give students real-world experience. The program is relatively new and aims to build confidence and introduce potential career choices.