11:00-12:15

Welcome, Introductions, and Public Communication

Introduction to the Rupe Conference

Ronald E. Rice (Ph.D. & M.A., Stanford University) is the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include environmental communication, public communication campaigns, methodology, organizational and management theory, information science and bibliometrics, social uses and effects of new media and information systems, and social networks.

Co-host/Conference Assistant: Gavin L. Kirkwood (M.A, Western Kentucky University) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research centers on the social impacts of emerging technologies including algorithmic managers, AI-enabled facial recognition, and exoskeletons. Gavin has taught a variety of classes including small group communication, communication theory, and research methods. His work can be found in publications including Frontiers in Psychology and Communication Studies.

Welcome and introductions

Charles R. Hale (B.A. Social Studies, Harvard University; Ph.D. Anthropology, Stanford University) is the SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences as well as a professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Global Studies. He is a leading social science scholar whose research bridges multiple disciplines, with a focus on race and ethnicity, racism, social movements and identity politics among Black and indigenous peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is highly regarded for his innovations in collaborative approaches, which characterize not only his research and teaching, but his administrative leadership as well. Hale, who previously taught at the University of Texas, Austin, is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for research and teaching in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Keynote presentation:

Strategic public health communication about COVID-19

The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department has implemented communication strategies from the onset of the first case to engage the community in COVID-19 response efforts. The comprehensive strategies have provided timely information, promoted collaboration, built partnerships, initiated positive change, supported health equity, and fostered resiliency in our community.

Van Do-Reynoso (B.A., UC Santa Cruz; M.PH, UC Berkeley; Ph.D., UC Merced) is Director of the Public Health Department of the County of Santa Barbara. Before coming to Santa Barbara, she worked with public health departments in Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency and in Madera Country. Her office works with Emergency Operations Center, the Office of Emergency Management, the County Fire Department, and the Sheriff’s Office, among other units, in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The department’s responsibilities include inspecting food establishments, operating health clinics for the underserved, staffing medical shelters during emergency evacuations, managing the county’s animal control program, and conducting health education campaigns, among others.

The role of communications in policy-setting during a crisis for consensus-driven decision-making organizations

Universities and other consensus driven decision-making organizations present unique communications challenges. Even under the best of circumstances, these large legacy institutions are often driven by slow, bureaucratic processes more adapted to thoroughness than urgency. Crisis events, in which audiences demand immediate, clear, and decisive actions, strain this model. In a world in which social media sets the expectations for the timeliness of reactions, and in which being late is often judged more harshly than being wrong, communications offices must often work to proactively catalyze the decision-making process to ensure swift and appropriate action, as well as communication with stakeholders.

John Longbrake served as the Assistant Vice President for Communications at Harvard University before being appointed the Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs and Communications at UC Santa Barbara in 2012. He left UCSB to become the Vice President for Communications at the University of Chicago from 2015 to 2017 where he was responsible for leading the development of strategic communications and marketing in support of academic programs, university initiatives, and institutional priorities. In 2017, Mr. Longbrake returned to UC Santa Barbara as Associate Vice Chancellor for External Relations. He is currently responsible for coordinating the communications and marketing efforts across the university, and oversees government and community relations efforts as well as the Office of Event Management and Protocol, Alumni Relations, and the UC Santa Barbara Foundation. Mr. Longbrake also spent almost a decade in Washington, DC, working in various policy and communications roles including appointments with the US Congress, the Treasury Department, and a Presidential Advisory Committee.

12:30-1:45

Interpersonal

When almost all our relationships went online:

The pandemic’s stay-at-home effects on mediated interaction and relationships

One implication of the pandemic’s stay-at-home orders was the sudden migration of all relationships (other than same-household relations) to one or another form of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Theories of CMC present competing hypotheses for potential effects on relational outcomes from different media under various circumstances. A survey conducted in June 2020 examined interactive media use by university students (N = 200) in Irvine, Santa Barbara, and Davis, CA, and Seattle, WA, who faced similar stay-at-home orders and academic term timing. Results present the associations of videoconferencing, voice-calling, emailing, texting, photo-sharing, and social media use with satisfaction and relational closeness among students with their romantic partners, best friends, family members, and professors.

Joseph B. Walther (Ph.D. Communication, University of Arizona) is a Distinguished Professor in Communication, the Mark and Susan Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society, and the Director of the Center for Information Technology and Society at UC Santa Barbara. His teaching and research focus on computer-mediated communication and social media in personal relationships, groups, educational settings, and inter-ethnic conflict, topics on which he has contributed several original theories and numerous experiments and surveys. Prior to joining UCSB, Prof Walther was the Wee Kim Wee Professor in Communication Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and previously at Michigan State University, Cornell, RPI, and Northwestern. He is a fellow at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), where he was a Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA), and a Distinguished Scholar in the National Communication Association (NCA).

Andy Merolla is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, UC Santa Barbara. He studies the link between interpersonal communication and well-being. Andy’s research examines topics such as conflict management, interpersonal forgiveness, relational maintenance, and individuals’ experiences following natural disasters. Some of his recent research explores the role of communication in constructing hope and the important role that hope plays in managing difficult situations. Using approaches such as experience sampling, his current research is also analyzing the interrelationships between communication, emotion, and cognition in everyday interaction within social networks, or "social biomes." At UCSB, Andy teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in communication theory, conflict management, interpersonal communication, and nonverbal communication.

The impact of COVID-19 on communication in romantic relationships over time

We will discuss some of the latest research on the impact of the pandemic on romantic relationships and mental health. We will also talk about a four-wave panel study we conducted from March-May 2020 with 3400 married individuals in the United States. Recent analyses examined the impact of COVID-related negative events on individuals' corumination (or continuous, depressive talk) with their spouse and how this simultaneously made them feel more unified against the pandemic but hurt their mental health by increasing their stress. We also investigated whether these results depended upon race, gender, and the level of emotional support provided by their spouse.

Tamara Afifi is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on family and interpersonal communication in two domains: (1) how people communicate when they are stressed and its impact on personal and relational health, and (2) information regulation (e.g., avoidance, privacy, secrets, stress contagion effects). In particular, she examines the theoretical properties of family members’ communication patterns (e.g., conflict, social support, avoidance, verbal rumination, communal coping) across a variety of stressful situations, to explain and predict biological stress responses, resilience/thriving, and personal/relational health. Much of her current research involves testing her new theory called the Theory of Resilience and Relational Load, which brings together multiple, cross disciplinary bodies of literature on stress and relational resilience. Other research focuses on the theoretical properties and functionality of communal coping, the impact of divorce on children, and investigating how and why people manage their private information and its impact on health. Her work often includes community-based populations that are difficult to access (e.g., undocumented immigrants, refugees, residents with Alzheimer’s, families with chronic illnesses).

Chantel Haughton (B.A., University of Iowa; M.A., UC Santa Barbara) is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at UCSB. Chantel’s research focuses on the intersection of racial and ethnic stigma, chronic stress, mental health, and communication. More specifically, she aims to understand how culture impacts communication and the ways minority families can foster resilience. She is working to expand the literature regarding people of color, as their experiences have traditionally been devalued in academia.

Allison Mazur (B.A. & M.A. Communication, Michigan State University) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at UCSB. Allison’s focus area is interpersonal communication with research interests in gender-based violence and how interpersonal relations can play a role in preventing sexual violence and supporting those who have experienced it.

How do I say "no"?

Rejecting invitations during the COVID-19 pandemic

The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, and restrictions put in place to limit social gatherings, was a stressful event. Given the importance of avoiding contact with others, for slowing the spread of the virus, having conversations with loved ones about comfort levels and the risk involved with certain activities is extremely important. Viewed through the lens of “difficult conversations”, we examined whether the perceived riskiness of the activity, the closeness of their relationship type (family romantic, or friends), and their location in the US (California, Oklahoma, or Ohio) affected their comfort with giving reasons for turning down an invitation and their anticipation of the effect for their future interactions. States varied widely in their response to the pandemic and our results suggest this affected participants’ responses to the activity scenarios we presented. People from Ohio and California reported less likelihood of attending the event in the high risk condition than people from Oklahoma. Participants were more likely to make up false excuses for low-risk events to avoid conflict. A three-way interaction between riskiness of the scenario, closeness of the relationship type, and location affected the effect on future interactions. Implications for the effects of difficult conversation on relationships are discussed.

Eryn N. Bostwick (Ph.D.) is an Assistant College Lecturer at Cleveland State University. Her research interests focus on the implications of harmful communication processes within interpersonal relationships. For example, her published scholarship includes exploring reasons why people keep secrets from their parents, the influence of trait aggressiveness during conflict, and family conflict surrounding the 2016 US presidential election. Her work has been published in such journals as the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and the Journal of Family Communication.

Amy Johnson (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is a Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Oklahoma. She has also served as Graduate Liaison for the department. Her area is interpersonal communication. Her research interests include long-distance relationships and computer-mediated communication, friendships, stepfamilies, and interpersonal argument. She has published in such venues as Communication Monographs, Journal of Communication, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and Personal Relationships.

Norah Dunbar is a Professor of Communication, and current Department Chair, at UC Santa Barbara. She teaches courses in nonverbal and interpersonal communication, communication theory, and deception detection. She is also Affiliate Faculty in the Center for Information, Technology & Society; the Center for Digital Games Research; and the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences program. She has received over $13 Million in research funding from agencies such as the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Center for Identification Technology Research. She has published over 65 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and has presented over 100 papers at National and International conferences. Her research has appeared in top journals in her discipline including Communication Research, Communication Monographs, and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication as well as interdisciplinary journals such as Journal of Management Information Systems and Computers in Human Behavior. She has served on the editorial board of over a dozen disciplinary journals and as the Chair of the Nonverbal Division of the National Communication Association in 2014-2016.

2:00-3:15

Messages

Behind the mask:

 A moral foundations theory perspective

Based on moral foundations theory (MFT; Haidt & Joseph, 2004), we examined reasons people report for wearing or not-wearing protective masks. Study 1 was conducted in July 2020 and Study 2 in early October, right after President Trump tested positive for COVID-19. Both studies found different ideological beliefs and moral foundational (MF) concerns to be instrumental in motivating decisions to wear or not-wear masks, with a shift in certain attitudes and beliefs following Trump’s infection. For reasons to wear masks, conservatives, moderates, and liberals each used a mix of individualizing (care, fairness) and binding (ingroup, authority, and purity) MFs with certain characteristic differences, particularly regarding reasons to not-wear masks among conservatives. Across both studies, President Trump’s perceived authority was associated with conservatives’ decisions based on binding MFs, but not with liberals’ or moderates’, which were based more on individualizing MFs. Our findings indicate the reasons for wearing or not wearing masks during the pandemic are ideologically charged such that people with differing ideologies base their choices on different moral foundations, for which the acts of wearing or not-wearing masks appear to have ideologically symbolic significance.

Claude Miller (M.A. Film and Video, American University; Ph.D. Communication, University of Arizona) is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. He has published in the areas of persuasion, social influence, emotion, motivation, disaster preparedness, and health communication, and currently serves on the editorial boards of Human Communication Research, Health Communication, Social Influence, and Communication Monographs. His work investigates human affective responses to influences messages in various contexts applying psychological reactance, vested interest, and terror management theories to health promotion and risk prevention message design and crisis and disaster-related communication.

Haijing Ma is a fourth-year Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests are health communication and social influence. She is interested in the emotional and cognitive processing of messages dealing with health-relevant issues and risks (e.g., COVID-19, vaccination, obesity, tornado, climate change, etc.). She has published in the areas of health communication and social psychology. She currently serves as a reviewer for a peer-reviewed journal and national, international conferences.

Yifeng Wang is a Doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Her area of research interest is in intercultural and interpersonal communication. She currently serves as a reviewer for the International Communication Association conference.

Doris Acheme is a Doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. Her area of research interest is in intercultural and intergroup communication. Specifically, she investigates the role of identity and psycho-social responses in intergroup and intercultural communication. She currently serves as a reviewer for the International Communication Association conference.

Coping with pathogens:

The influence of collectivism on self and group protective responses

Threats from contagious diseases naturally increase people’s motivation to protect themselves. Individuals, however, vary in how they try to protect themselves and their groups. In the present research, we investigate whether the cultural value of collectivism plays a role in shaping how individuals respond to threats of diseases, using national and international datasets collected during the scares of Ebola in 2014 and COVID-19 in 2020. We focus on two types of disease responses: xenophobia (e.g., prejudice) and compliance with community protective recommendations (e.g., opting in for digital contact tracing). The results show that collectivism reduces xenophobic reactions to perceived threat and increases compliance. This research also identifies psychological mechanisms (e.g., trust in institutions and perceiving greater social consensus) for the role of collectivism.

Heejung Kim (B.A. Psychology, University of Southern California; M.A., Ph.D. Social Psychology, Stanford University) is a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, UC Santa Barbara. She is primarily interested in cultural psychology, looking at how culture influences psychological processes to understand why and how people engage in a range of everyday behaviors, such as pro-environmental actions, social support use, and consumer decision making. Her research has been funded by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. She has served as an editor for Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, and Personality & Social Psychology Review.

Message designs for the COVID-19 pandemic:

Who to blame?

This research compared people’s responses to two different messaging approaches: one assigning blame to human agency for the pandemic, and a second assigning blame to the novel coronavirus itself. In both approaches, official recommendations to contain the virus were included with reference to either human or virus agency. Our results found participants to be more defensive, angrier, and hostile toward the message source in response to virus agency, with more negative thoughts about the message, and greater likelihood to support opposing arguments. In contrast, receivers responding to messages assigning blame to human agency were more receptive to the message and expressed a greater willingness to adopt official recommendations for combating COVID-19. These findings offer important, practical considerations for health campaigns seeking to quell the pandemic.

Haijing Ma and Claude Miller (see bio statements and photos above)

3:30-4:45

Media

Coping with COVID-19:

The role of media in reducing stress and enhancing well-being in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

In face of the community shut-downs at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, US adults turned to media at unprecedented rates. Yet little research has addressed how media is effectively used to address life stressors. We report on two datasets – one cross-sectional (March 2020) and the other longitudinal (April-May 2020) – of US adults to assess how stress impacted media selection and how those choices influenced coping with the COVID-19 crisis. 

Robin Nabi is a Professor of Communication at UC Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on the role of emotion in media processes and effects, with particular emphasis on the persuasive effect of emotion-based messages and the use of media for coping with stress. She has served as a managing editor of Media Psychology, as associate editor of the Journal of Communication, and on the editorial board of numerous top communication journals. She is a past chair of the Mass Communication Division of the International Communication Association as well as the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association, and she is the current Chair of the ICA Publications Committee. She is a recipient of the 2018 Innovation in Theory Award from the Mass Communication Division of ICA, and is a 2017 inductee as an ICA Fellow.

Lara N. Wolfers (M.A. Communication Science, University of Hohenheim, Germany) is a Ph.D. student working in the social media lab at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien in Tübingen, Germany. Her research focuses on the use of mobile and social media for coping with stress and media use in the family context. Her current work addresses the role norms about media use play when parents and children use media. She received several scholarships and awards including the Paul-Lazarsfeld-Scholarship of the methods division of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) and the Deutschland-Stipendium. Her work has been published in Communication Research, Information, Communication & Society, and Computers in Human Behavior.

Nathan Walter (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, and a faculty member in the Center for Communication and Health, Northwestern University. Walter’s research concerns the evaluation of strategic health messages, media psychology, communication ecologies, and correction of misinformation, including cognitive, metacognitive, and emotional processes at the heart of misinformation and its correction. His studies have been published in a number of leading outlets, including the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Human Communication Research, and Communication Monographs. His most recent work, which is supported by the FDA, focuses on novel methods to debunk tobacco-related misinformation. Nathan’s overarching research agenda revolves around the development of multilevel and ecological models that provide a nuanced approach to the study of communication-related phenomena.

Li Qi (B.A. Journalism, Zhejiang University, China; M.A., Tsinghua University, China) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication, UC Santa Barbara. Her research interests focus on how message-relevant emotions affect individuals’ information processing, attitude formation, and behavioral intentions.

How U.S. nonprofit organizations’ media use

influences their responses to the COVID-19 crisis

How has the varied use of media by U.S. nonprofit organizations influenced their responses to the COVID-19 crisis? We report on a unique and unfortunate opportunity to answer this question, studying 578 U.S. nonprofit organizations before and during the pandemic. It applies the discourse of renewal theory of crisis communication, which argues that organizations that communicate ethically and effectively, while also learning vicariously and from failure, are more likely to achieve post-crisis renewal (Ulmer et al., 2019). Initial orientation toward renewal, communication staff, use of external communication channels, use of four social media for three purposes, and both frequency and sentiment of Twitter posts affect whether NPO responses are more reactive or proactive.

Ryan Fuller (Ph.D. Communication, UC Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Organizations at California State University, Sacramento and Assessment Director for the College of Business Administration. His research interests are crisis preparedness and crisis response. He has published his recent crisis-related work in Management Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Business Communication, and the Handbook of Applied Communication Research.

Ronald E. Rice (see bio statement and photo above)

Andrew Pyle (Ph.D. Communication, George Mason University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Clemson University. His research interests are organizational responses to crisis, with particular focus on social media messaging and engagement. He has published recent crisis-related work in Public Relations Review, Journal of Applied Communication Research, International Journal of Business Communication, and the Handbook of Applied Communication Research.

Does regional variation in pathogen prevalence predict the use of moralizing language in COVID-19 news?

Musa Malik (B.S. Neuroscience, New York University) is a graduate student in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara, and a researcher in the Media Neuroscience Lab. He is passionate about the development of algorithmic tools that facilitate research in computational communication science. He is also interested in leveraging advancements in natural language processing and computer vision to study phenomena such as prejudice, xenophobia, and conflict on social media.

Frederic R. Hopp (B.A. Media and Communication Studies, University of Mannheim, Germany) is a M.A./Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara and researcher for the Media Neuroscience Lab. His work as an undergraduate research assistant focused on (political) entertainment, cyberostracism, and determinants of permanent mobile connectedness. Currently, he is interested in exploring how neural responses to morally-laden media content predict real-world outcomes, such as media preferences or political judgment and decision making.

Yibei Chen is a graduate student in the Department of Communication at the UC Santa Barbara, and a researcher in the Media Neuroscience Lab. She is interested in all kinds of computational methods and combining those with neuroscience research. Currently, she works on how latent moral content predicts real-world behaviors and whether moral values could be used to predict communities in a network.

René Weber (Ph.D. Psychology, University of Technology Berlin, Germany; M.D.. Medicine, RWTH University Aachen, Germany) is a Professor in the Department of Communication, UC Santa Barbara, and the Director of the department’s Media Neuroscience Lab. At UC Santa Barbara. His lab investigates complex cognitive responses to mass communication and mediated narratives with an emphasis on the neural mechanisms of moral conflict, persuasion, media violence, cognitive control, and flow experiences. Current projects focus on the relationships between media-multitasking and attention disorders (ADHD) and on the analysis of moral narratives and moral conflict in global news and entertainment. He was the first communication scholar to regularly use fMRI to investigate various media effects, from the impact of violence in video games to the effectiveness of anti-drug PSAs. He has published four books and more than 140 journal articles and book chapters (March, 2021). His research has been supported by grants from national scientific foundations in the United States and Germany, as well as through private philanthropies and industry contracts. He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association.

5:00-6:15

Organizations

Communication challenges of reporting on COVID-19 in New York City

Justine will describe some of the communication challenges she and other journalists face reporting on Covid-19 in America's largest city. These include keeping coverage engaging, spreading information instead of panic during dramatic situations (giant freezer trucks used as make-shift morgues, mass burials on a nearby island, months-long toilet paper shortages) and staying safe as a field reporter. Particularly challenging has been the constant effort to discern what the actual facts are from officials at many levels of government. The simplest example is that New York City and New York State calculate daily infection data differently so their numbers never align and often offer very different pictures about what's happening. They have given conflicting dates for vaccine eligibility for different groups, and a long-running feud between the mayor and governor doesn't help. In New York City, it seems that no greater pressure has been put on officials than from the restaurant industry and teachers' union. Because of this, the state has flip-flopped many times in their messaging about dining and school restrictions, causing mass protests, petitions and widespread anger. The quest to accurately and meaningfully convey what is happening continues as Justine reports on the vaccine rollout and the continued effects of the pandemic on restaurants, schools and every other aspect of life.

Justine Miller (B.A. Communication, UC Santa Barbara; M.S. Journalism, Columbia University) is an Associated Press-award-winning journalist who has covered stories from the streets of the Bronx to the waterways of Myanmar. The native-Californian is currently a TV reporter for News 12 in New York City. She reports on politics, criminal justice, education, healthcare and the community. She is also the co-owner of Jetset Journalists, producing video stories from Varanasi, India to Lalibela, Ethiopia. Justine has lived in Paris, Bangkok and Moscow and is halfway done visiting every country in the world, telling stories along the way. She is an active member of the Communication Alumni Association.

How mental health is associated with work disruption, change communication, identity threat, and work meaning after COVID-19 policies distinguish between essential and non-essential professions

This study examines employee sensemaking processes when COVID-19 policies recategorize their professions into those who conduct essential or non-essential work. Respondents include 623 Dutch employees, about half categorized as essential and half as non-essential. These categorizations had a wide array of implications from work guarantees to insurance coverage. We investigate the extent to which these new distinctions and the quality of change communication about these changes trigger identity threats or affect the meaningfulness of work amidst a complex global crisis, consequently affecting the mental health of workers during the pandemic. Higher-quality organizational change communication reduces identity threat, while increasing meaningfulness of work, for both groups of workers. However, the disruptions increase identity threat for non-essential workers. In turn, identity threat decreases mental health while meaningfulness of work alleviates two of the mental health issues.

Ronald E. Rice (see bio statement and photo above)

Ward van Zoonen (Ph.D., University of Amsterdam) is an Assistant Professor in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research at the University of Amsterdam where he is part of the Corporate Communication Department. Ward is also affiliated with the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, as post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Language and Communication. He is part of an international research group called communication and collaboration on digital platforms. Broadly, his academic research focuses on organizational communication. His research interests include the relationship between information and communication technology use and work outcomes. Specifically, his work explores how technological advancements shape and change the nature of work. This relates to how the implementation of technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, affects the nature of work and employees’ work experiences.

Claartje L. ter Hoeven is Full Professor at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She is the scientific director and coordinator of the interdisciplinary research and master program “Organizational Dynamics in the Digital Society”. Professor ter Hoeven’s scholarly interests encompass organizational communication, digital technologies, occupational psychology, and employee well-being. Her current research and teaching focuses on how digital technologies reconfigure work for different people in different occupations. In 2020, she received an ERC (European Research Council) grant for the project ‘The Ghostworker’s Well-being: An Integrative Framework’ on the work conditions and well-being of crowdworkers in Europe. Together with the municipality of Rotterdam and colleagues from Public Administration and Organizational Psychology, she is involved in a collaboration labelled “Organizations in a Smart City”.

Employee wellbeing during COVID-19:

How companies communicate employee care during a pandemic

In a time of uncertainty and change, it is essential that companies genuinely connect with and demonstrate care for employees. The emphasis for these activities is on how to approach, engage and learn with employees. Jamie will share examples from two different companies of effective employee messaging and support and discuss how they have been received by employees. From her time at Microsoft, she will illustrate a structured team conversation model designed to for managers to help teams share experiences and support one another. In her current role at Cruise, she will describe the implementation of "Cruise COVID Rest Days" as a way for employees to recharge and step-away from work.

Jamie Morgan (B.A. Communication, UC Santa Barbara; M.A. Organizational Management). She has been working in talent acquisition for 20 years and specializes in building teams and in candidate generation strategy. Her background in recruiting for technology and infrastructure roles spans both Fortune 100 companies, as well as small organizations. Jamie was recently the Director or Sourcing Channels Strategy for Microsoft. In this role, she drove Microsoft's global talent sourcing strategy to optimize candidate generation efforts and she lead a global team that delivered market insights and intelligence, diversity programs, storytelling strategy, channel performance, and HCM innovation. Currently she is Head of Technical Recruiting at Cruise. She maintains that the best outcomes derive from a human, unguarded approach; and that doing the right thing, over the easy thing, is in the best interest of all parties. While at UCSB, Jamie served as Panhellenic President, Rush Chair for Alpha Chi Omega, and Patient Advocate for the Student Health Center. She resides in Northern California with her husband (also a UCSB grad), her two kids, and a spoiled dog. Her whole family enjoys travel, new restaurants and spending time on their boat. She is an active member of the Communication Alumni Association.