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…

Gregory Borchard and Denitsa Yotova (both Journalism and Media Studies) have co-authored Pressing Matters: A Chronicle of American Media (New York: Peter Lang), 2025; 332 pages, ISBN-13: 9781636675381. They write: "Given the highly globalized and converged sets of communication technologies in the contemporary media landscape,…

Aya Shata (Journalism and Media Studies) at UNLV and co-author Michelle Seelig from the University of Miami published an article titled, "Making the Environment Like A Cool Thing:” Exploring generation Z and Millennials’ reception of climate change videos on YouTube," in the Atlantic Journal of Communication. Guided by literature on…

Associate professor Julian Kilker (Journalism and Media Studies) co-curated and exhibited work in "At the Heart of Basin and Range." This exhibit, sponsored by Nevada Humanities, an independent state humanities council affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and exhibited at its downtown program gallery, celebrates…

Brett Abarbanel (International Gaming Institute), Benjamin Burroughs (Journalism and Media Studies), and Mark Johnson from the University of Sydney have published an article titled, "A New History of Poker Spectatorship: Table Chat, Online Forums, Television Piracy, and Twitch" in the journal International Gambling Studies. Histories of poker…

Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez (Journalism and Media Studies), with co-authors, was awarded a Top Paper Award (Runner-Up) in the Global Media Division at the 75th Annual Convention of the International Communication Association. There he presented a co-authored paper entitled "Populist Connective Memories: YouTube Users' Reactions to the Coverage of the…

Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez (Journalism and Media Studies) recently published "Laboratory of reaction: SB 17 in Texas, the anti-DEI movement, and implications for higher education" in Communication Education. The article contextualizes recent anti-DEI legislation through an analysis of the think tank networks, its ideological underpinnings,…

Patrick Blennerhassett (Journalism) has published a book on Amazon called "The Death of Birth." Blennerhassett is also completing his master's of journalism and media studies at UNLV and is a full-time journalist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book blends mystery, thriller, sci fi and speculative fiction into an action/adventure trilogy.

Aya Shata (Journalism and Media Studies) published an article titled, "Opting Out of AI”: exploring perceptions, reasons, and concerns behind faculty resistance to generative AI," at the Frontiers in Communication. Drawing on Innovation Resistance Theory and using a mixed-methods approach, the study examines faculty resistance to generative AI,…