

Affiliate Faculty

Dr. Jiyoung Lee
Dr. Jiyoung Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media. She graduated her Ph.D. in S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications from Syracuse University. Her research projects using POL resources include how misinformation and corrective information in health risk settings spread on social media spaces. In addition, her current project examines how individuals engage in, and react to misinformation and corrective information on social media. Her recent publication studied the effects of misinformation labels on misperceptions in a public health crisis.

Dr. Elliot Panek
Elliot Panek studies the uses and effects of digital media from sociological and psychological perspectives. He has published research in top-tier academic journals on the topics of social media and narcissism, texting while driving, media addiction, and media use and political polarization. In 2015, Dr. Panek founded the Alabama Reddit Research Group (ARRG), a research team at the University of Alabama dedicated to improving our understanding of the social dynamics and impact of Reddit. The team develops, tests, and implements tools for analyzing group and individual behavior on Reddit as well as characteristics of Reddit’s discourse. These tools are used to study a variety of outcomes, including health outcomes, civility in public discourse, and social dynamics in large groups over time.

Dr. Rebecca Britt

Dr. Matthew VanDyke
Matthew S. VanDyke (Ph.D., Texas Tech University) is an assistant professor and graduate program coordinator in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at The University of Alabama. His research examines processes, effects, and problems associated with the public communication of science and environmental risk information. Most often his projects seek to understand how organizations communicate about science and environmental risks, and the effects of science/environmental risk communication strategies on audiences. His research has been published in leading scholarly journals, including Risk Analysis, Environmental Communication, Science Communication, Journal of Risk Research, Public Relations Review, Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education and Politics and the Life Sciences.

Jay Waters
Jay Waters is a senior instructor at the University of Alabama in the Advertising and Public Relations Department, teaching classes in media, strategic thinking, and agency management. This is his seventh year at the University of Alabama.
Jay joined the A+PR Department full-time in the fall of 2015 after 24 years with Luckie and Company, a full‐service advertising agency headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Just before joining the faculty, Jay’s most recent position at Luckie was SVP, Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for brand strategy, account planning, media planning, and media buying.
Jay has a B.S in Management and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Jay is a life-long resident of Central Alabama, is married with one daughter and one grand dog.

Dr. Kenon Brown
Kenon A. Brown (Ph.D., The Univ. of Alabama, 2012) is an associate professor and director of online programs for the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at The University of Alabama. He is also the programming director for the Alabama Program in Sports Communication, responsible for stakeholder communications and event planning for the program. Prior to his academic appointment, Kenon worked for eight years in restaurant management and marketing. His research and consulting expertise lies in strategic planning, image and reputation management, and minority recruitment in mass communication. During his academic career, Kenon has worked with several organizations in consulting and advisory roles, including FOX Sports, Advocate Health Care and the Country Music Association.

Dr. Gregory Bott
Dr. Gregory J. Bott, CISSP, holds the Marilyn Hewson Chair Professor of Cyber Security in the Department of Information Systems, Statistics, and Management Science at the University of Alabama. He is also a Cyber Nexus Distinguished Fellow and his primary research areas are cybersecurity, human trafficking, and information privacy. He has published in the Productions and Operations Management Journal, the Journal for Management Information Systems, Computers and Security, and Communications of the AIS, and several academic conferences. His research on sex trafficking has been directly applied by the West Alabama Human Trafficking task force help locate victims of sex trafficking and capture sex offenders who target minors. Dr. Bott and his colleagues work closely with other law enforcement agencies in the state of Alabama and with Homeland Security. He is a certified digital forensic examiner and serves as an expert witness in civil and criminal cases. Previously, Bott worked in technology for PwC, Microsoft Corporation and served as chief technology officer for three organizations.
Affiliate Graduate Students

Haseon Park
Haseon Park (M.A., University of North Dakota) is a 2nd year doctoral student from the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. Her research interests primarily focus on examining consumer-brand relationship building on emerging media platforms and interactive advertising effectiveness by incorporating computational research methods, such as text mining, computational textual analyses as well as social network analyses. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Interactive Advertising, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Marketing Communications, International Journal of Mobile Communications, and Cyberpsychology. Several research projects conducted in the Public Opinion Lab include “Exploring Twitter Conversations around Four Brand Categories: A Computational Approach to Identify Dominant Topics and Content Characteristics,” presented at the AEJMC 2020 annual conference, and a co-authored project “Too Big to Sell? A Computational Analysis of Network and Content Characteristics among Mega and Micro Beauty and Fashion Social Media Influencers,” published in the Journal of Interactive Advertising. Both research projects utilized social media data scraping services (e.g., Crimson Hexagon, Brandwatch) and computational textual analyses tools (e.g., LIWC, Leximancer) offered by the Public Opinion Lab, and provided valuable insights to advertising practitioners on how to strategically target consumers in the fast-developing emerging media environment.

Marie Neubrander
Marie Neubrander is a senior at the University of Alabama. She is finishing her undergraduate degrees in mathematics and computer science with minors in economics and the Randall Research Scholars Program. Additionally, she is finishing her M.A. in mathematics via the Accelerated Master’s Program. In the POL, Marie works on the online brand relationships project, focused on studying various brands’ Twitter communication. Upon graduating, she aims to pursue her Ph.D. and complete research at the intersection of data science and social good.

Khadiza Tul Jannat
Khadiza Tul Jannat is a third-year doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama, specializing in health and organizational communication, and public health. Jannat completed M.A. in Communication Studies at Minnesota State University- Mankato where her thesis examined the connections between doctors’ self-disclosure, gender, and patient satisfaction in doctor-patient interactions.

Josh Jackson
Josh Jackson (M.A., Louisiana State University) is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alabama in the College of Communication and Information Sciences. His research interests focus on the relationship between the use of social media in branding and activism by athletes and the response by the average user. He has used POL tools like Crimson Hexagon to conduct research on large data projects and looks forward to utilizing these tools for academic journals and conferences.

Courtny Franco
Courtny Franco (MA, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) is a doctoral student in the Communication and Information Science program at the University of Alabama. Her research interests lay at the intersection of health communication, social perception, and new media. In the Public Opinion Lab, Courtny works with a research team to examine Twitter and Reddit data to understand discourse around and perceptions toward various stigmatized health topics such as end-of-life decision-making and mental health issues. Her research in the POL utilizes computational textual tools (e.g., LIWC and Leximancer) and social media scraping services (e.g., Brandwatch, Sprinklr). Courtny has articles under submission at Health Communication, Environmental Communication, and the Journal of Health Communication. She also has publications in the Journal of Nonverbal Communication and Frontiers in Psychology.

Yuanwei Lyu
Yuanwei Lyu a Ph.D. Candidate from the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. She received her master’s degree in public relations from Ball State University. Her research is at the heart of emerging media effects on strategic communication. She studies media technology effects in the context of public relations, how the emerging media affect polarization primarily through emotions and sentiment on social media, and how strategic communication plans should be designed to address these issues. Her work has been featured in the International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Media Business Studies. Several research projects collaborated with Public Lab team members Dr. Hayes and Dr. Britt include “The cause effect: the impact of corporate social responsibility advertising on cause consumer engagement behavior after brand affiliation ceases,” presented at the 22nd IPRRC annual conference and published in the International Journal of Advertising, and a leading research project “A Computational Analysis of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick Campaign.” Both research projects utilized social media data scraping services (e.g., Crimson Hexagon), and computational textual analyses tools (e.g., LIWC, Leximancer) offered by the Public Opinion Lab, which showed the insightful value and sophisticated understanding of big data and social media or online behavior data in public relations field.

Suyu Chou
Suyu Chou is a graduate student in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media. Her research interests lie in the intersection of public anxiety on social media, risk perception, and crisis management. Her current studies include observing the dynamics on subreddit related to losing weight topics during Covid-19, and influencers’ crisis management related to how they interact with people online and their image repair strategies