
Srividya Ramasubramanian- Ph.D. (Mass Communication)
- Professor & Newhouse Endowed Chair at Syracuse University
Srividya Ramasubramanian
- Ph.D. (Mass Communication)
- Professor & Newhouse Endowed Chair at Syracuse University
About
141
Publications
194,928
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2,346
Citations
Introduction
Ramasubramanian’s research focuses on media and identity, media literacy, stereotyping processes, intercultural/intergroup communication, social justice, data justice, and mindfulness. Her recent projects examine implicit racial/gender stereotypes and biases, dialogue, prejudice reduction, digital new media literacies, critical big data analysis, social media for social good, immigrant/ethnic media, communication scholar-activism, and mindful communication.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
July 1996 - July 1998
August 2005 - August 2012
August 1999 - August 2004
Publications
Publications (141)
This study focuses on the role of media in facilitating and inhibiting the accessibility of stereotypes primed by race-related news stories. Specifically, it examines experimentally the effects of two strategies for reducing stereotype accessibility: an audience-centered approach that explicitly instructs audiences to be critical media consumers, a...
This article argues that exposure to admirable media celebrities from racial/ethnic outgroups is an effective, proactive, and viable strategy for prejudice reduction and intergroup harmony. It uses mediated contact and exemplification theories to demonstrate that reading news stories about likable outgroup media personalities who serve as counter-s...
This study examines how exposure to media characters of color shapes viewers’ opinions of race-targeted policies. Exemplar-based information processing, attribution theory, and heuristic policy decision-making formed the theoretical foundation for the study. A 2 × 2 factorial experiment (N = 363) exposed participants to stereotypical or counterster...
This research examines the role of media literacy training and counter-stereotypical news stories in prejudice reduction. Research participants read either stereotypical or counter-stereotypical news stories after exposure to a media literacy video or a control video. After this, they completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire that included Likert-...
Mindfulness is defined as non-judgmental awareness in the present lived experience. Researchers find that mindfulness training has benefits such as enhanced positive emotions, reduced stress and increased well-being. However, empirical research on the effectiveness of mindfulness curricula on emerging adults in educational settings is sparse. The p...
As calls for media literacy in formal and informal learning spaces continue to grow, educators’ understanding of media literacies and their purposes remains complex. In 2021, the authors of this paper led a multi-methods research project on media literacy education in the United States, focusing on impact and equity. Findings showed that educators...
: This chapter uses storytelling and critical reflection to elaborate on the challenges, risks, opportunities, joys, and benefits of scholar-activism. It draws on the author’s lived experiences as the co-founder of Media Rise and the Difficult Dialogues Project , as a woman faculty scholar of color living a bicultural life in the United States as a...
As the internet and social media have become ubiquitous in the practices of learning about and engaging with civic and political life, we see a growing tendency towards civic and political expression described as participatory politics: decentralized practices through which individuals and groups seek to exert voice and influence on issues of publi...
The urgency and complexity of contemporary social justice issues facing the world today mean that activists, scholars, and storytellers need a readily available compendium of cutting-edge scholarship on media and social justice. This handbook represents the collective wisdom of more than 40 leading voices across positionalities and perspectives, ge...
The urgency and complexity of contemporary social justice issues facing the world today mean that activists, scholars, and storytellers need a readily available compendium of cutting-edge scholarship on media and social justice. This handbook represents the collective wisdom of more than 40 leading voices across positionalities and perspectives, ge...
The urgency and complexity of contemporary social justice issues facing the world today mean that activists, scholars, and storytellers need a readily available compendium of cutting-edge scholarship on media and social justice. This handbook represents the collective wisdom of more than 40 leading voices across positionalities and perspectives, ge...
The urgency and complexity of contemporary social justice issues facing the world today mean that activists, scholars, and storytellers need a readily available compendium of cutting-edge scholarship on media and social justice. This handbook represents the collective wisdom of more than 40 leading voices across positionalities and perspectives, ge...
We use discourse tracing analysis to examine Sikh media representations across four U.S. newspapers in the last two decades. Guided by the theory of hyper(in)visibility, our study focuses on how representations are othered and erased through various types of discursive hyperinvisibilities, such as myopic, faulty, hazy, and selective visibilities de...
The article presents a framework for equitable media literacy practice (EMLP), which changes structure, action, and agency in service of an imagined and inclusive future and makes space for equitable civic and educational experiences. We derived this framework from 28 in-depth interviews with media literacy practitioners across the US. We asked the...
For this Roundtable, we asked several leading scholars working on issues
of social justice and cognition in fi lm and media studies for a brief response
to the prompt: “Explain one current theory, approach, or research fi nding
that you think is particularly important in addressing stigma and inclusivity
in screen media.” Participants drew from the...
Mainstream news coverage in the U.S. of Indigenous people and the issues that
threaten their survival has largely validated misconceptions rooted in colonial
views and discourses dependent on harmful stereotypes. This study employs
a qualitative thematic analysis of 32 articles from the New York Times and the
Associated Press using a decolonial len...
In recent years, young people engaged in political discourse and civic action online. U.S.-based social movements centered on equity issues, such as Black Lives Matter, Dreamers, and March for Our Lives, engaged young people in shaping and publicizing the goals of these movements through digital platforms. Increasingly in communities at the margins...
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to captivate the collective imagination through the latest generation of generative AI models such as DALL-E and ChatGPT, the dehumanizing and harmful features of the technology industry that have plagued it since its inception only seem to deepen and intensify. Far from a “glitch” or unintentional error, t...
In this article, we present an alternative framework that resists hegemonic social sciences within data-driven communication theorizing through a culture-centered approach (CCA). Building on the CCA in co-creating voice infrastructures at the margins, we argue that data justice requires transforming interpretive data framings, disrupting the hegemo...
This essay is an introduction to the special issue on “Difficult Conversations Concerning Identity and Difference.” The essay begins with our argument that inquiries into difficult conversations are important as these interactions are key to addressing social inequities, creating and/or maintaining community and relational solidarity, amplifying vo...
p>
In the age of AI, when models like DALL-E and ChatGPT impact countless aspects of our lives, the dehumanizing and harmful features of AI that have plagued data science since its inception continue resulting in the routine erasure, exploitation, and subjugation of people of color, Indigenous people, women, queer, non-binary, immigrant, dis/able...
p>
In the age of AI, when models like DALL-E and ChatGPT impact countless aspects of our lives, the dehumanizing and harmful features of AI that have plagued data science since its inception continue resulting in the routine erasure, exploitation, and subjugation of people of color, Indigenous people, women, queer, non-binary, immigrant, dis/able...
This chapter focuses on the role of community-oriented art and storytelling interventions relating to migrant health and healing. With the COVID-19 pandemic, confinement at home, social and physical isolation, homeschooling by parents, and fear due to lack of physical safety have led to heightened emotional responses, anxiety, depression, and PTSD...
There is a long history of scholarship documenting the prevalence of racial and ethnic stereotypes in media and popular culture. This body of literature demonstrates that media stereotypes have changed over time across specific racial/ethnic groups, media formats, and genres. Historically, the bulk of this research has focused on representations in...
The U.S. population is becoming more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality. In some ways, television, film, video game, and news content reflect that reality. Yet, in other ways, such content falls short, in terms of underrepresenting particular social groups and/or depicting those groups in a limited manner. The curr...
Embodied transnationalism is characterized by intimate experiences of human-made political borders that define, limit, and restrict flows of the “Other.” In the Quarantined Across Borders collection, contributors from immigrant and diasporic backgrounds address the material and discursive differences in how they experience the pandemic in terms of...
Meditation is a mind–body practice that involves turning one's attention inwards to anchor one's attention to still the mind and relax the body. Rooted in Indian yoga and Buddhist contemplative traditions, meditation has now been adopted across various cultures and contexts for holistic health, healing, and spiritual well‐being by reducing stress a...
The role of trauma and its consequences for health have led to greater awareness on this topic in the recent past. A trauma‐informed approach to healthcare systems, healthcare, and health communication informs us about the need for such systems to understand the impact of trauma, especially complex and chronic forms, on physical, emotional, mental,...
Guided by the theory of planned behavior and the science communication learning goals model, we conducted a survey to identify science communication training needs of university scientists (n = 266) at a large US land-grant university. Results indicate that most respondents believed scientists and media relations offices were most responsible for c...
We investigated how to improve PSC at a large, public university with high research activity by examining scientists’ interest and enjoyment in PSC, their perceived aptitude of PSC skills, the channels they use for PSC, their reasons for choosing to participate in PSC, and the tools they need to engage effectively. We conducted a case study and col...
Investigating the role of identity in mediated experiences involves a great deal of complexity. However, media psychologists all too often explore the antecedents and consequences of identity in ways that less than optimally grapple with this complexity. In this essay, we build on the critical media effects (CME) approach to offer innovative ways t...
It is often assumed that media literacy serves to protect and uphold democratic practice and that media literate citizens are the best safeguards for democracy. However, little attention is paid to defining this practice and its relationship to ongoing inequities within democratic societies. In this essay, we argue media literacy operates from thre...
This paper describes the Trauma-informed Equity-minded Asset-based Model (TEAM) framework for social justice-oriented educators. We draw on trauma-informed approaches to illustrate how systemic racism as systemic trauma and normative whiteness as dominant ideology are embedded in the U.S education and media institutions. From an equity-minded persp...
Hegemonic Open Science, emergent from the circuits of knowledge production in the Global North and serving the economic interests of platform capitalism, systematically erase the voices of the subaltern margins from the Global South and the Southern margins inhabiting the North. Framed within an overarching emancipatory narrative of creating access...
This paper presents an empirically grounded conceptual framework for the various dimensions of scholar-activism based on 15 in-depth interviews with prominent communication scholar-activists. It theorizes about the meanings, practices, challenges, and opportunities encompassed by this type of scholarship from the perspective of those in the field....
Communication lies at the center of scholar-activism, community initiatives, and social movements. With the re-emergence of authoritarianism, threats to academic freedom, and widening socio-economic inequalities in a global pandemic, balancing the tensions between activism and scholarship is becoming increasingly challenging for communication schol...
This paper describes the Trauma-informed Equity-minded Asset-based Model (TEAM) framework for social justice-oriented educators. We draw on trauma-informed approaches to illustrate how systemic racism as systemic trauma and normative whiteness as dominant ideology are embedded in the U.S education and media institutions. From an equity-minded persp...
The role of trauma and its consequences for health has led to greater awareness on this topic in the recent past. A trauma-informed approach to healthcare systems, health care, and health communication informs us about the need for such systems to understand the impact of trauma, especially complex and chronic forms, on physical, emotional, mental,...
Meditation is a mind-body practice that involves turning one's attention inwards to anchor one's attention to still the mind and relax the body. Rooted in Indian yoga and Buddhist contemplative traditions, meditation has now been adopted across various cultures and contexts for holistic health, healing, and spiritual well-being by reducing stress a...
The role of media use on mental health distress is particularly concerning during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The vulnerabilities to and experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States are greatly influenced by racial/ethnic inequalities. The COVID-19 pandemic may present unique mental health challenges for Asian Americans because of ra...
The ubiquity of digital and social media has led to considerable academic debate regarding their role in the lives of children and adolescents. The Global North, especially United States and Europe, has largely led this discussion in matters of research methods and approaches, as well as on conversations around screen time, wellbeing, media literac...
Amidst all the negative stereotypes rightly advanced in the preceding chapters of this book, a look at the positive seems an important and necessary coda to encompass the full picture of media stereotyping as we enter the 2020s. As we navigate a global COVID-19 pandemic, outbreak inequalities, discrimination and stigma (based on various identities...
Media psychologists need to reflect on what is considered ethical research in an increasingly complex digital media and sociocultural landscape by asking questions about whose interests are served through research and the purposes that research is used for. Ethical values such as truth, equity, justice, and inclusion should govern all aspects of re...
Intergroup contact is defined as interactions between members of different social groups. Contact is essentially a communicative process. Empirical evidence suggests that positive intergroup contact can lead to prejudice reduction, especially for members of the dominant group. Although intergroup contact is typically defined as face‐to‐face contact...
In this essay, we advance the Critical Media Effects (CME) framework as a way of bridging two major subfields of communication that seldom speak to one another: media effects scholarship and critical cultural communication. Critical Media Effects is situated within the dominant mode of social scientific theorizing within media effects scholarship a...
Amidst all the negative stereotypes rightly advanced in the preceding chapters of this book, a look at the positive seems an important and necessary coda to encompass the full picture of media stereotyping as we enter the 2020s. As we navigate a global COVID-19 pandemic, outbreak inequalities, discrimination and stigma (based on various identities...
That this special issue has seen the light of day is primarily due to the vision of Todd Sandel, the outgoing editor of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, who readily identified the relative lack of visibility of South Asia focused intercultural communication research, suggested a special issue, and offered us total edito...
Connecting media literacy to the ethical, social, and emancipatory aspects of information societies within media-saturated convergence culture is an essential task in conceptualizing active digital citizenship. In this chapter we argue that media literacy’s full potential cannot be expressed unless the transformative power of digital new media is g...
Intergroup contact is defined as interactions between members of different social groups. Contact is essentially a communicative process. Empirical evidence suggests that positive intergroup contact can lead to prejudice reduction, especially for members of the dominant group. Although intergroup contact is typically defined as face-to-face contact...
Media psychologists need to reflect on what is considered ethical research in an increasingly complex digital media and sociocultural landscape by asking questions about whose interests are served through research and the purposes that research is used for. Ethical values such as truth, equity, justice, and inclusion should govern all aspects of re...
This chapter examines ideas of Rajarshi leadership, derived from Indic traditions, through a feminist critical sociological lens. Traditional Western norms about leadership are associated with masculine values such as power, dominance, violence, and authority that reinforce hierarchies and patriarchal structures. Feminist perspectives provide subst...
Media and popular culture often serve as sites for the creation and perpetuation of negative ethnic stereotypes. Social cognitive theory, priming, and script theory explain that repeated omission, misrepresentation, and trivialization of minorities in the media have important implications for identity formation and intergroup relations. Biased medi...
Politicians within the United States and across many Western societies are concerned about the extent to which Muslims are successfully integrating within their countries. The present research examined how interpersonal (discrimination) and mediated (negative news coverage of Muslims) social identity threats dynamically change young Muslim American...
Media are a ubiquitous and integral part of everyday living in this networked, interactive, and global world. The digital revolution has dramatically changed how we experience life, what we know about ourselves, how we spend our leisure time, how we connect with others around us, and what we learn about the world around us. This rapid diffusion of...
Questions
Question (1)
Participants will be debriefed at the end of the session so that they are aware of the manipulation.