Honors and Awards

Department of Communication’s Scharrer, Goldman and Gazia Receive Highly Regarded Fellowships

Two members of the faculty of the Department of Communication and one of the program’s doctoral candidates have all recently received highly regarded fellowships in their field.

Erica Scharrer, professor and department chair of communication, was officially inducted as a fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) at the ICA’s annual conference in Paris in May. The highest honor in the field of communication, the ICA Fellowship is primarily a recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication. Candidates are nominated by ICA members and must receive both a majority affirmative vote from current fellows and approval by the Board of Directors to achieve fellow status. As of August 2021, living ICA fellows account for 4.5% of the organization’s overall membership.

Scharrer’s research involves the study of media content, opinions of media, media effects and media literacy, particularly regarding gender and/or aggression. She also studies the role of the media in the lives of children and adolescents, and young people’s responses to media literacy education. Her most recent book is “Quantitative Research Methods in Communication: The Power of Numbers for Social Justice” (2021).

Seth Goldman, honors associate professor of communication, was selected to be a fall 2022 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School (HKS). Joan Shorenstein Fellows join the center for a semester of research, events and engagement with HKS students, faculty and the wider university community. This semester’s fellows are working on research related to media coverage of international crises, minority groups and social movements, and its implications on policy, equity and democracy. As a Shorenstein Fellow, Goldman will examine whether media portrayals of minority groups suffering from bias, discrimination and violence produce empathy – reducing prejudice and increasing support for minority rights – or whether victim narratives produce pity, thus increasing prejudice among majority group members and internalized stigma among minority group members.

Goldman’s research and teaching investigates the effects of mass media and political communication on stereotyping and prejudice, particularly around public opinion about race, gender and sexuality. He is the co-author of “The Obama Effect: How the 2008 Campaign Changed White Racial Attitudes” (2014, Russell Sage Foundation), winner of the 2014 Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for the best book on journalism/mass communication.

Finally, Ifat Gazia, a Ph.D. student in communication, was named part of the 2022/23 cohort of Civic Media Fellows at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab. This fellowship brings together scholars and activists from around the world who are using media, technology and culture to bring about change in the world. Gazia’s work broadly looks at the intersection of technology and social justice. A self-taught filmmaker, she directed her first widely acclaimed documentary, “Long ago I died,” at the age of 19, and she also co-produced “Here Still,” an award-winning short documentary on Kashmir, which was named Asia’s Best Independent Documentary Film at the All Asia Independent Film Festival 2020 and screened at festivals across US and Asia. Gazia reported from Kashmir for many years as a journalist on issues of social justice and human rights, working with local and international publications. The founder and host of “The Kashmir Podcast,” she holds an M.A. in Media and Development from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. She is also the recipient of the Shuttleworth Foundation flash grant 2021, The Unicorn Fund 2021, Muslim Women in Media fellowship 2020 and the Research Enhancement and Leadership Fellowship from 2019-24.