Audiences

Danielle Robinson Bell's expertise is strategic communications with a lens on culture, community, equity, and inclusion.

Gerry Chiaro is associate professor and director of IMC Immersion Quarter with a long background in business, specifically marketing leadership. His expertise: Brand Strategy Leadership, and Consulting. Gerry has developed nearly 250 team consulting projects for our graduate students.

He joined the faculty in January 2009 and earned a full-time appointment in 2012.

Kelly Cutler has more than 20 years of experience with digital marketing and digital media. Her work focuses on the areas of search marketing, social media marketing, programmatic, retargeting and digital analytics and measurement. She works in both theory and practice.

Elise De Los Santos is an editor with experience in both traditional and new media. She was executive editor of RedEye, the Chicago Tribune’s publication for millennials, and was an editor on the Tribune's copy desk and audience team, editing stories for print and online publication.

Stephanie Edgerly's research explores how features of new media alter the way people consume news and impact engagement, particularly among youth and young adults. She is interested in the mixing of news and entertainment content, how individuals and groups create and share news over social media, and how audiences selectively consume media.

Abigail Foerstner is an award-winning reporter covering and teaching health, environment and science journalism. She teaches students how to bridge between an increasingly technological culture and general audiences who rely on science journalism to make critical decisions and understand the wonders around them. She teaches multimedia journalism.

Judy Franks' research focuses on the supply of media audience attention that flows into the advertising economy. Franks is also studying how self-serve ad portals are democratizing access for businesses of all sizes. Her book, "Media: From Chaos to Clarity" (2nd Ed) provides history and context for today's digital media world and where it's headed.

Rich Gordon launched Medill’s graduate program in new media journalism. She has spent most of her career exploring the areas where journalism and technology intersect. She was an early adopter of desktop analytical tools (such as spreadsheets and databases) to analyze data for journalistic purposes.

Ashlee Humphreys is a sociologist who examines core topics in consumer behavior and marketing strategy. Her research investigates topics in social media, market creation, language, and digital satisfaction. Humphreys is the author of "Social Media: Enduring Principles," and she is the creator of the Digital Satisfaction Index (DSI).

Candy Lee's work on leadership and the effects of voice in technology are showcased in her research. She also does work on customer retention through loyalty, membership, pricing, display, management, attrition consideration, acquisition and growth strategy. Her focus on sport marketing involves diverse arenas from fandom to sponsorship.

Edward Malthouse's research interests center on customer engagement and experiences; digital, social and mobile media; media management; big data; customer relationship management and lifetime value models; recommender systems; and predictive analytics.

Frank Mulhern does research on media economics and technology and its impact on brand communications. His work connects technology to customer data and marketing analytics; particularly with respect to retailing and e-commerce marketing.

Nguyen Chaplin conducts research in the areas of children's consumer behavior and branding. She studies how consumer values and behaviors such as materialism, brand consciousness and health knowledge develop throughout childhood.

Abe Peck has worked in magazines for 40 years as a writer/editor (Rolling Stone, Outside, etc.), an author, a consultant and as Medill's director of B2B communication. The author of “Uncovering the Sixties: the Life and Times of the Underground Press,” he curated Medill's recent series on Media and the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Michael Spikes' research is centered on the practice and pedagogy of media literacy education (MLE) and news media literacy (NML) toward encouraging critical thinking to limit the effects of exposure to mis- and disinformation. His focus is on the design, assessment, and enactments of MLE & NML in classrooms and other learning environments.

Vijay Viswanathan studies customer experience and marketing effectiveness in B2C and B2B using surveys, text analytics and machine learning. His current work is on online communities, virtual influencers, loyalty programs and governance. He has given numerous talks to industry on customer centricity, embedding AI in analytics and enabling a data culture.

Patti Wolter's background includes decades of work in consumer magazines (investigative and women's health). Her teaching centers on magazines, narrative storytelling, narrative structures, and health and science reporting. In addition, she has been working with scientists to understand consumer communication and translating science to lay audiences.

Yu Xu is an Assistant Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications and (by courtesy) Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His research interests include media industries and analytics, social and communication networks, organizational change, ecology and evolution, and computational social science. His work has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Communication Monographs, New Media & Society, the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Service Management, Political Communication, and Information Communication & Society. He serves on the editorial boards of Human Communication Research and the Journal of Service Management. He teaches courses on digital media strategies and social networks at Medill and is the recipient of the “IMC Teacher of the Year 2022” award.