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Elaine Yu-ning Chan |
Elaine Chan graduated from UCLA with B.A.s in Political Science and Classical Civilization. Her research interests include physically interactive video games (exergames), competence motivation, media entertainment and happiness. Visit her personal site.
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John Christensen |
John Christensen is a doctoral student in Social Psychology at the University of Southern California and currently holds a fellowship with the American Psychological Association. His research focuses on the processes that underlie the impact of emotion on decision-making in risky social situations. In one line of research, individuals are placed in interactive environments that realistically simulate the emotional and contextual features of real-life social scenarios. Virtual agents suspend the interactive narrative and interject with persuasive messages that strategically evoke emotional responses at critical “context of risk” decision points. These persuasive appeals are closely contingent and tied to the situational cues present in the environment – which enhances the association between risk-taking and the emotions that it might evoke. When the situational cues that were encountered in the virtual environment are subsequently encountered in reality, they should evoke the newly associated emotional response (e.g. fear, shame, guilt), which should then lead to the desired behavioral outcome (e.g. reduction in risk-taking). Other research interests include the development of realistic personality in intelligent virtual agents as well as persuasive health communication within ethnic and sexual minority populations.
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Carlos Godoy |
Carlos Godoy holds a B.A. in Political Science from UC Riverside, a J.D. from UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall School of Law) and an M.A. in Communication from USC Annenberg. Prior to joining the USC Annenberg School, Carlos practiced civil litigation and was a judicial research attorney extern for the Superior Courts of San Bernardino County. He studies how communication via interactive video produces change in levels of conceptual barriers thought to mediate risk-taking behavior (e.g., increasing self efficacy, changing behavioral intentions, etc.). In addition to working on the Virtual Sex: Real Risk Reduction Project since its inception, Carlos has served as a research assistant for the Student Voices Project, the Sexual Orientation in the News Project, and for the Tobacco Industry Monitoring Project. Carlos grew up in Southern California and has two brothers and a Chihuahua named Mini-Me. Visit his personal site.
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Younbo “Bo” Jung |
Bo earned a B.A. and M.A. degree in Telecommunication from Michigan State University. His interests include interpersonal and health communication with particular focus on new technologies such as computer-mediated communication and human-computer interaction. His dissertation assesses self-concept management through role-play and meta-representations in interactive media.
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Shawna Kelly |
Shawna Kelly is a PhD student at the USC Annenberg School for
Communication. Shawna's research centers on the interactions between new
communication technologies and culture and she is currently the editorial
assistant of Media Psychology. Shawna's previous academic work includes a
B.A. with a double major in Communication and Linguistics from Western
Washington University. Her minors included Teaching English as a Second
Language, Latin and African History. In the private sector, Shawna has
held such diverse jobs as grant editor for a biomedical-research company,
office manager for an environmental consulting firm and tech support
representative for a software company. She enjoys video games both as a
hobby and as an ever-changing research subject.
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Rabindra “Robby” Ratan |
Robby Ratan graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Science, Technology and Society and an M.A. in Communication with a focus in Human Computer Interaction. As a full-time research assistant at Stanford and a researcher at Toyota ITC in Palo Alto, he engaged in various research projects involving the psychology of advanced media interface design, with a particular focus on voice interfaces. Many of his projects utilized driving simulations and other virtual environments. At Annenberg, Robby is continuing his HCI/new-media work, with a particular emphasis on virtual worlds (such as second life) and video games (for education and entertainment). He is especially interested in virtual identity management, self-presence, and attention/multi-tasking. He also sporadically posts to his blog on media technology.
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Cuihua “Cindy” Shen |
Cuihua (Cindy) Shen is a second year PhD student at Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Her fundamental research interest is to understand human activities in the new social spaces created by the Internet and new communication technologies. Specifically, she studies virtual communities that are created for information sharing, collaborative production, and entertainment, from both socio-psychological and sociological perspectives. Methodologically, she employs quantitative as well as social network analytic tools. Cindy comes from Suzhou, a beautiful city in southeast China. Before coming to USC, she earned her BA in English at Zhejiang University and her MA in Communication at National University of Singapore.
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Hayeon Song |
Hayeog Song is particularly interested in how video game technologies can allow different representations of self image (i.e., self avatars), and how this in turn may have an effect on attitude or behavior change. Such changes have implications for health and consumer related communication. This interest in the potential effect of interactive new media use on how individuals manage their self concepts extends to questions about how immigrants’ sense of identity may be shaped by their use of ethnic and mainstream media, with the media acting as components of a broader communication infrastructure. She also studies how people apply social rules when they interact with media or media characters. She explored how people respond when they interact with an entertainment robot that matured differently over time and how people perceive the robot as having gender and therefore project gender stereotypes when interacting with the robot.
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Hua “Helen” Wang |
Helen Wang studied Japanese Language and Culture at Beijing University in China where she was an active student leader, planning and organizing a variety of events. Helen earned her M.A. in Mass Communication and Media Studies from San Diego State University and worked at the Social Science Research Laboratory at SDSU for three years. She is now a doctoral candidate at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, a graduate associate at the Center for the Digital Future, and a teaching assistant and course coordinator. Her current research combines her interest in media psychology, public health and educational technology, and focuses on the role of new ICTs in health promotion and social marketing, and entertainment-education interventions in East Asia.