Musa Malik, Kylie Falcione, Brittany Wheeler, and Rene Weber’s study The ecological determinants of morality: A global analysis of news media content has been awarded Top Paper at the 8th meeting of the Moral Media (2025) conference, held in Buffalo, NY. 

Abstract. This study examines the influence of ecological factors on representations of morality in global news media. Using Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD), we analyze textual data from the Global Database of Event, Language, and Tone (GDELT) to assess how climate, resource availability, parasite stress, disaster impacts, and population density shape moral language across cultures. We included a total of 15,068,000 records from 200 territories across 1,369 unique dates, spanning from June 15, 2020, to August 31, 2024 in our analysis. Findings show that higher daily temperatures are associated with reduced use of both individualizing and binding moral language, with this effect more pronounced in historically warmer regions. Elevated precipitation is associated with decreased emphasis on binding moral foundations. Additionally, increased disaster-related injuries amplify both individualizing and binding moral expressions, while high population density uniquely heightens the emphasis on binding foundations. Altogether, we believe our findings contribute to the emerging literature on ecological determinants of morality, offering future research an empirical foundation for understanding how ecological contexts shape global moral narratives.

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The Communicative Constituion of Organizations: The Four Flows Model (McPhee, R. D., Myers, K. K., & Iverson, J. O. (2025) illustrates how communication makes an organization what it is, presenting in-depth information on the Communicative Constitution of Organizations. Written by a team of renowned experts in the field, this comprehensive resource is designed for all those involved in the study of organizations, particularly advanced students and researchers in Business, Sociology, Communication Studies, and the subdiscipline of Organizational Communication.

Click below to download the detailed book flyer.

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Graduate student Hannah Overbye-Thompson, Professor Kristy Hamilton, and former graduate student now Assistant Professor at Michigan State University Jacob Fisher won a Top Paper Award from the Communication Science and Biology Interest Group for the 75th International Communication Association Conference, Denver, CO, June 2025. Their paper is “Expectation of algorithm bias increases caution: Implications for human-in-the-loop decisions.”

Here’s the abstract: Algorithms increasingly mediate our interactions with the world. Growing evidence indicates that these algorithms are prone to bias, favoring certain outcomes over others. Recent legislation mandates human oversight of algorithmic decisions to mitigate biases, but the effectiveness of such “human-in-the-loop” (HITL) interventions remains uncertain. This study investigates how individuals perceive and respond to potential algorithm bias in a simulated loan approval process, employing drift-diffusion modeling (DDM) to analyze decision-making. Our findings reveal that the expectation of bias increases caution in decision-making as well as heightened participant sensitivity to information. Intriguingly, individuals were more likely to perceive bias against female loan applicants, even when no actual bias was present. These results highlight the complex interplay between human judgment and algorithmic decision-making, suggesting that societal awareness of real-world disparities shapes perceptions of algorithm bias.

UC Santa Barbara undergraduates now have a class to help them process some of the troublesome issues related to those divisive and derogatory comments: Perspectives on Online Hate Speech, developed and taught by Department of Communication Professor Joe Walther, and Mark and Susan Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society. This upper-division communication course delves into the research and theory behind online hate messages, which include racist and sexist postings, harassment and toxicity. Students dissect online hate as an interactive social process, uncovering what drives it and examining what can and cannot be done to stop it. For full story, see https://magazine.ucsb.edu/index.php/fall-winter-2024/critical-look-inside-back-room