Pondering Research and Teaching: AEJMC Chicago--the rest of the story

For those of you still tuned into my conference whirlwind recap, this will be the last post and I'll use it to reflect on some of the highlights (which are hard to narrow down).

On Friday morning, I presented my research at a poster session. I presented in the PR division with research conducted with my advisor from Virginia Tech, Dr. Robert Magee (who was unable to attend this year's conference). We used Grunig's situational theory of publics and regulatory framing of video messages to understand effects on attitudes toward a brand and the brand's campaign issues (in this case the brand was Dove and the campaign was the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and Self-Esteem Fund). Our title: "Social campaigns help our image, right?: Using the situational theory to explore attitudes toward a brand and its issues." I was excited to share this research, as I've been working on it for a long time now and the results (I think) are quite interesting. Thankfully, most people I talked to thought so, as well! I was happy to meet other graduate students interested in media messages and effects, particularly in health, who use similar methodologies and I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with them as we move through our programs (particularly those from the University of Tennessee and the University of Kentucky).

This conference also taught me how much I enjoy poster sessions, both as a presenter and as an audience member. While presenting, I was able to have more in-depth discussions with passersby and make connections with people, which is more difficult in formal presentations. As an audience member, I enjoyed being able to learn about a variety of research occurring in areas of interest and being able to do this at my own pace. Some of the research going on that I found interesting included:

Using diffusion of innovations to understand the incorporation of digital technology in education as well as in health (which may speak to some of the ideas I had during the CDC conference)
The differences in cognitive and behavioral effects of expressing versus reading supportive messages in online health support groups
The effects of graphic messages in health promotion via video games
Of particular relevance to some of my current research was a study researching how science was discussed in an online debate regarding the benefits of breastfeeding

Finally, one of the more fascinating presentations came during a top paper session for the Advertising Division of AEJMC. Jorg Matthes of the University of Vienna shared his top paper regarding implicit persuasion. Due to my interest in persuasion and media messages, my interest was sparked just from his title: "Child Exposure to Food and Beverage Placements in Movies: Toward an Implicit Persuasion Model." All findings from his experiment found that for those in the experimental conditions, food and beverage product placements had a significant effect on children's choices. However, there was no effect on explicit attitudes about the products. Wow! Certainly this has both advertising and health implications. My next question is: What happens if health groups place healthy foods in these movies? By the theories and findings used in Matthes' research, children should go for the healthy food items. This I would be very interested in experimenting with. This would also utilize the lessons learned from the panel on mass communication experimental methodology .

Needless to say, it was a long and busy week in Atlanta and Chicago. Although tired, I feel a renewed energy to start the semester and get to my studies!

And just in case you think we never left the hotel...here is proof that Josh and I did do some exploring while in Chicago: