Doctoral Student Profiles

Brittaney J. Bethea has worked in public health for over a decade in chronic and infectious disease education and wellness promotion using health communication strategies. At leading agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Banyan Communications, she’s collaborated with colleagues from various backgrounds— health scientists, policy advocates, technology enthusiasts and visual creatives—to translate complex health information into digestible and action-inspiring content across various mass media channels (magazines, newspapers, PSAs, video games, web and mobile apps). She’s currently the Director of Marketing and Communications for Research and Community Engagement at Morehouse School of Medicine.
Her research interest include evidence-based health communication and entertainment-education, a research-based communication strategy that involves formative research with potential audiences before traditional and mass media products are created and mixed methods summative research to measure the effects of messages on the intended audience’s perceptions and behavioral intent.

Recent publications:

• ‘The lesser devil you don’t know’: a qualitative study of smokers’ responses to messages communicating comparative risk of electronic and combusted cigarettes
• A Description and Evaluation of the Concussion Education Application HEADS UP Rocket Blades

Conference presentations:

Bethea, B.J., Allen, C., McKinney, L., Escoffrey, C., McCray, G., McBride, C., Akintobi, T. (2019, August). Family Health History: CHWs Definitions, Patient Conversations and Potential Role in Digital Documentation. National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media​Allen, C., McKinney, L., Bethea, B.J., Escoffrey, C., McCray, G., McBride, C., Akintobi, T. (2018, November). Exploring the Roles of CHWs in Improving Uptake of Family Health History Assessment among Patients and Providers: Implications for Cancer Risk Reduction and Prevention among Minority Populations. 11th American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved. New Orleans, LA and Atlanta, GA"

Morgan received her BS and MS in Criminal Justice and MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests include the representation of marginalized groups on television, as well as how women are depicted committing violence on television. Recently Morgan presented on a panel at the National Women’s Studies Association national conference, titled “That’s Queer: Healing & Creative Resistance in Response to ‘Bury Your Gays’”.

Katherine Kountz earned her B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and her M.A. in Communication from Georgia State University. She has been a member of the Film and Stage Mechanics Union, I.A.T.SE Local 479 since 2010. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Public Communication in the Rhetoric and Politics track at Georgia State University. Her current research interests include the politicization of public health communication, ‘yellow peril’ discourse, and the discursive responses to nationalist rhetoric.

Lauren Lane received her BA in English and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and MS from North Carolina State University in Communication. Broadly, she is interested in studying mass media uses and effects and how those aspects vary across identities. Her more focused research interest is the exploration of media portrayals of African Americans across various mediums (music, television, social media) and employing mixed methods to do so.

Davia Rose Lassiter is a 2004 graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi (BA, Journalism: News-Editorial + Business Administration minor) and 2006 graduate of the University of Georgia (MA, Journalism & Mass Communication). She also holds multiple professional certificates in areas such as business and professional writing, social media marketing, and graphic web design. Davia’s research interests include media effects, identity development, intersectionality, and marginalized groups (particularly Black women). Her previous research includes a content analysis of European standards of beauty in Ebony magazine and investigating evidence of parasocial interaction among African-American “tween” viewers of Disney’s That’s So Raven. She is an award-winning media professional who currently works full time as the Director of Marketing & Communications for the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.

Virginia Massignan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication. Her primary research area focuses on ICT affordances and their influence on online activism (more specifically on feminist rhetoric and intersectional mobilization), for which she has also pursued a graduate certificate in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (at GSU). She is interested in social media platforms as places where women form new meanings based on their own life experiences and transform these into political action.

Virginia has moved to the United States in 2017, after earning an M.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures and a B.A. in Classics from Università Cattolica in Milan (Italy). Her experience with motherhood influenced her research interests deeply and led her to examine the rhetoric surrounding breastfeeding in public and the “motherhood penalty” in academia.

Pauline is a doctoral student in the Media and Society concentration. She earned her BA (09) and MA (13) in Communication Studies from Eastern Illinois University. Before starting her Ph.D. at Georgia State in 2019, Pauline worked as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication at Clemson University. While there, building off previous research and prison volunteer work, she developed and implemented educational programs, including a communication curriculum and a theatre group, for incarcerated students. Applied prison work has been at the heart of her research interests throughout her academic career. Specifically, Pauline is interested in issues related to higher education in prison, media narratives of prison, self-disclosure of invisible stigmatized identities by formerly incarcerated individuals, etc. She has published a chapter, “Volunteering behind bars: Negotiating roles, resources, and relationships,” in Demystifying the Big House: Exploring Prison Experiences and Media Representations.

Angie McAdam is graduated with a B.A. in Communication and a minor in Gender Studies from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2015 and a M.A. in Communication from Georgia State University is 2018. Currently, she is pursuing her Ph.D. in Communication on the Media and Society track. Her research interests include environmental communication, ecofeminism, critical animal studies, and death studies. Her current research is focused on examining the death positive movement and environmental activist groups. In June 2019, she presented a paper titled “Finding Hope in the End: An Ecocritical Analysis of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” at the Conference on Communication and the Environment.

My name is Bobbi K. Otis. I earned a B.A. in Mass Communication with a minor in Political Science from Georgia College & State University in 2013. Following a period of working in both the newspaper industry and in higher education, I completed a Master of Public Administration degree at the University of North Georgia in 2018. My research explores political communication with a particular focus on structural inequality and the diverse communicative environment surrounding state voting rights policies. I presented a paper analyzing the narrative of political advertising in support of expanding voting rights to individuals convicted of felonies in Florida at the 2019 National Communication Association convention. At the Southern States Communication Association convention in 2020, I presented a paper exploring the media coverage of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Drawing on what he calls his “discursive experience” as a cancer patient several years ago, Christopher Wernecke is a doctoral candidate studying American cancer discourse, collective memory, and presidential rhetoric here in the Department of Communication. Originally from the Chicagoland area, Christopher has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from DePaul University and a master’s degree in Communication Studies from Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. At the 2019 Southern States Communication Conference in Montgomery, Alabama, Christopher won the Robert Bostrom Young Scholar Award for his essay “‘Through this Sign, You Shall Conquer:’ The Warrior-Priest Archetype in American Cancer Rhetoric.”

Allen’s work focuses on researching the optimal ways to communicate the negative impacts of factory farming on animals, people and the environment in order to inspire more informed individual food choices.  Prior to joining Georgia State, he had a 15-year career in the advertising industry working with both consumer and healthcare clients.  He received a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and an MBA in marketing from the George Washington University, Washington, DC.
More recently, he spent 5 years teaching undergraduate courses in advertising, communication and applied ethics at the University of San Francisco, the University of Tampa, and the Honors Program at the University of South Florida; including 2-years as a full-time visiting assistant professor.  He has presented papers on factory farming at the NCA Annual Convention and at a workshop hosted by the NYU Animal Studies Program.

Wendy Zhou is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communication and graduate research assistant at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on public discourse, digital journalism, and transnational/diasporic journalism. Her research has been presented on annual conferences of International Communication Association (ICA) and National Communication Association (NCA).