Two faculty members earn Fulbright Scholar Awards

Two faculty members from the College of Communications at Penn State have earned grant support through the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program to lecture and conduct research abroad during the next year.

Associate professor Anthony Olorunnisola, a member of the Department of Film-Video and Media Studies, will be based at Lagos State University in Nigeria starting in July. His yearlong visit will allow him to assess media contribution to public discourse in a post-militarized Nigeria and to teach a seminar on global communications. In addition, he will work closely with administrators and faculty members to help shape the curriculum of the media studies program at the growing university.

Professor Mary Beth Oliver, also a member of the Department of Film-Video and Media Studies and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, will conduct her research on the effects of media content on ethnic and racial stereotyping. She will work from the University of Otago in New Zealand during a semester-long stay beginning in January.

Olorunnisola's major area of research is political and development communication. His work has focused on Africa's democratization processes and media transformations. He has traveled abroad to study in the past, but never for more than a few months at a time.

"Shorter visits were challenging because it seemed it was time to leave right after we got there," Olorunnisola said. "With so much time on this visit, it will be more productive in terms of primary research. Plus, my host department and college are both new, which provides the opportunity to develop long-term collaborations beyond the term of my grant."

While the Internet allows Olorunnisola to access print media from Africa while here in the United States, his time abroad will allow him to listen and watch radio and television -- and to meet members of the media and government officials who are impacted by media output. Instead of content analysis, he plans to focus on interviews, participant observations and surveys.

In addition, his Fulbright support includes a $1,000 stipend with which to provide books for the host institution. While $1,000 might not sound like much to a book-buying undergraduate or parent in the United States, it converts to $140,000 of the Nigerian currency, the Naira.

"Not many individuals or departments have such a sizable budget donated to books," Olorunnisola said. "Beyond what the grant is able to provide, I also plan to donate journals and textbooks that the faculty in our College of Communications have devoted to my 7-year-old book initiative program."

Currently Olorunnisola is editing a book and co-editing another on media transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. He frequently teaches world media systems and graduate seminars on communications pedagogy and news and public opinion. In the spring 2002 semester, he led eight students on a study tour of South Africa with visits to numerous media outlets and communications programs in the country.

In New Zealand, Oliver plans to focus on how exposure to media stereotypes in news impacts stereotyping of Maoria populations and of African-Americans. Through her research, Oliver hopes to examine how existing models of media and stereotyping apply in an international context. She also intends to examine how imported media, in this case U.S. television programs, impacts the perceptions of groups with which the audience has little direct contact.

"Scholarship on media influence has grown tremendously and has provided a greater and more nuanced understanding of the variety of roles that media play in contributing to stereotyping, but the literature in the area is limited in its scope," Oliver said. "Although noteworthy scholarship has been conducted in a variety of countries, the majority of social scientific research on media stereotyping has been conducted within the United States, exploring the role of media images on whites' stereotyping of African-Americans."

In her research, Oliver specializes in media and psychology, focusing on both the psychological effects of media, and on viewers' attraction to or enjoyment of media content. Her research includes studies pertaining to media portrayals of racial groups and the effects of such portrayals on viewers' racial attitudes, media and perceptions of social reality, and viewers' emotional responses to media entertainment.

Oliver has presented her scholarly work in Canada, Germany, Ireland and Mexico, and will be presenting research this summer in Israel. She teaches media effects, quantitative research methods and data analysis.

Each year the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program sends approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals to 140 countries to lecture, conduct research or participate in seminars. At the same time, nearly 800 foreign faculty come to the United States.