Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez (Journalism and Media Studies), earned a Top Paper Award (Runner-Up) in the Communication Theory and Research Interest Group at the 2026 Western States Communication Association. The paper was titled, "Etiological Myth in U.S. Right-Wing Politics." The paper advances an etiological approach to studying political rhetoric and…

Aya Shata (Journalism and Media Studies) and her interdisciplinary team won the UNLV President’s Interdisciplinary Research Challenge, receiving an equivalent of $20,000 of research development support. The project examines faculty AI competencies and develops an evidence-based, discipline-informed AI training program to support more…

Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez (Journalism and Media Studies), with co-author Andres Bernal (CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies), recently published "Like, subscribe, profit? Personal finance influencers on YouTube under neoliberalism" in Consumption Markets & Culture. In the article, the authors use natural language processing methods and…

Julian Kilker (Journalism and Media Studies) and Yvonne Houy (Fine Arts) presented at the University of Amsterdam’s December 2025 GenAI & Creative Practices: Past, Present, and Future conference, as part of that university’s innovative "Responsible Digital Transformations" initiative. The research panel focused on international partnerships to…

Julian Kilker (Journalism and Media Studies) was an invited presenter at the Desert Studies Institute’s Nov. 5 Curiosity Lab event “The Possible Unknown: Stories about Exploring the Unreachable.” In his Outdoor Night Lab presentation, he showed how the Nevada desert is an ideal environment for research and creative practice with demonstrations of…

On Oct. 27, Julian Kilker (Journalism and Media Studies) was awarded a Black Mountain Institute Faculty Research Award funding his research on "Creative Labor in the Age of AI." He plans to interview and document participants in the Las Vegas creative economy, building on his previous projects exploring emerging technologies, labor, and creative…

Professor Gregory Borchard (Journalism and Media Studies) was re-elected by acclamation for a second term as President of the Society of Nineteenth Century Historians during the 33rd Annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press at Augusta University on Nov. 14, 2025.

Yvonne Houy (Fine Arts) and Julian Kilker (Journalism and Media Studies) gave a presentation at the Elsevier Impact Conference in Cascais, Portugal, on Nov. 6, 2025. The presentation, “Zero Budget by Design: Lessons learned engaging a global community without a budget," was based on their experiences editing the open-access journal Tradition-…

Aya Shata (Journalism and Media Studies) was a speaker and moderator for a panel titled "AI in Advertising: How It’s Changing the Creative Workflow," organized by the American Advertising Federation. It was a thought-provoking discussion on how AI is transforming ideation, design, copywriting, production, and execution in the creative industries,…

Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez (Journalism and Media Studies) was elected vice-chair of the Popular Media and Culture Division in the International Communication Association. He will serve as vice-chair beginning in 2026 through 2028. He will then serve as chair of the division from 2028 to 2030. 

Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez (Journalism and Media Studies) recently published "Border and Immigration as Etiological Myth in U.S. Right-Wing Politics" in Communication Studies. In the article, the author examines how causal arguments related to borders and immigration are deployed to diagnose a wide range of social ills, including housing…

Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez (Journalism and Media Studies), with co-authors Rasika Muralidharan (Indiana University), María Montenegro (Rutgers University), and Danny Valdez (Indiana University), recently published "Analysis of Breast Cancer Information on Facebook Using Neural Network–Based Topic Modeling and Metadata Analysis of English and Spanish…