PCI Staff
Institute Leadership
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Dr. Ben Warner is Director of the Political Communication Institute. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri. His areas of research include political extremism, political polarization, and group homogeneity.
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Dr. Mitchell S. McKinney is Co-Director of the Political Communication Institute. He is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Communication. His areas of research include presidential debates, political campaigns, media and politics, and presidential rhetoric.
Institute Faculty
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Dr. J. Brian Houston is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri. His areas of research include strategic communication, public opinion, media effects, and information processing particularly in contexts of politics, crisis, and public health.
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Dr. Guadalupe Madrigal is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Communication. Using quantitative methods, she researches topics related to political communication with a particular interest on media, race, information, social identity, and immigration. She also has a vested interest in Chicana/o and Latina/o studies.
Affiliate Faculty
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Dr. Wm. Bryan Paul is the Director of Alumni Advocacy at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). His political communication research seeks to identify best practices for democratic leadership, news / entertainment media, and civil discourse.
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Dr. Calvin R. Coker (PhD, University of Missouri, 2018) is an Assistant Professor-Term at the University of Louisville. His research focuses on the intersection of marginality, politics, and public policy.
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Dr. Freddie J. Jennings is a Teaching Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on social identities, cognitive processing of mediated messages, and political communication in the evolving media landscape.
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Dr. Iuliia Alieva is a Post-Doctoral Associate at Carnegie Mellon University (Center for Informed Democracy & Social - cybersecurity). Her research focuses on media effects in data journalism and political communication.
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Dr. Jihye Park is a Senior Research and Teaching Associate in Communication and Media Research Department at the University of Zurich. Her research centers on intergroup bias in political context, specifically partisan media and presidential debate effects on affective polarization.
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Dr. Joel Reed is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Illinois State University. His research focuses on political public relations and the rhetoric of intraparty political conflict with a special focus on the role of identity cross pressures in shaping and challenging political partisanship.
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Dr. Josh C. Bramlett is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the Eastern New Mexico University. His research focuses on political comedy, political campaign communication, and the political uses of social media.
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Dr. Joshua Bolton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Salisbury University. His research revolves around political public relations, with a particular focus on candidate branding, the nominating conventions, and issue campaigns.
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Dr. Lingshu Hu is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Washington and Lee University, teaching data analytics. His research focuses on computational methods and social media analytics.
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Dr. Michelle Funk is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication at the Penn State University. Her work examines the effects of digital communication on social cognitive processes, perceptions and attitudes toward outgroups, and online political deliberation.
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Dr. Molly M. Hardy, PhD is an Associate Instructor of Communication at Maryville University. Her research interests include political polarization, political uses of social media, and gender in political communication.
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Dr. Rocío Galarza Molina is a visiting researcher at the Political Communication Lab at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Léon in Monterrey, Mexico. Her research is focused on political communication, the use of social media for political protests, and the role of media in a democracy in transition.
Research Associates
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Alyssa Coffey is a first-year doctoral student studying political communication. Her research interests include the effects of media and group identity and their relationships to partisanship and polarization. She received her Master’s in Communication from Saint Louis University where her thesis focused on Fox News consumption and its relationship to political tribalism including partisan identification, partisan affect, and perceptions of polarization. She currently serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Communication for Public Speaking (COMM 1200).
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Go-Eun Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri. Her research interest lies in affective polarization, misinformation regarding scientific facts, and intergroup contact.
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Makenzie Schroeder is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri. She received her M.A. in Communication from the University of Missouri, and her B.A. in Communication and Political Science from the University of Michigan-Flint. She currently teaches COMM 1200 — Public Speaking. Makenzie’s research interests lie at the intersection of mediated communication and identity. With a focus on media effects, her research explores stereotypes perpetuated by media, and how the portrayal of different identities influences their treatment within society. Often, her work falls into various research foci, including political, interpersonal, family, and health communication. Specific interests include the impact of media and family on eating disorders and attitudes about body size, as well as the role of media in cross-partisan families.
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Steven Gardiner is a first-year doctoral student studying political communication. His research interests include the perception of third parties in the media and the resultant effects on society. He also hopes to explore the challenges third parties have with the development of communication plans and assess the need for differential communication models for third parties in a predominantly two-party status quo. Mass Media, social media, and Political Parties will therefore be of great interest to his research plans. He received his Master of Science in Government from the University of the West Indies, Mona where his thesis focused on the advancement in technology and the emergence of social media as a communication tool, and how politicians, especially those at retirement age, have been able to adapt to and change the way they communicate with constituents. It further looked at the challenges that would have been realized from the shift in mass communication to social media for these mature politicians.
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Xavier Scruggs is a PhD student and Graduate Instructor for the Department of Communication. His research focuses on the communicative processes that constitute political, social, and health-related trust.
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Xu Cen is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri. Her research focuses on media effects, intersectionality, and intergroup relations.
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