CARE Conversations on the Culture-Centred Approach Lecture Series | Lecture 1

The Culture-Centred Approach (CCA) is a transformative framework in communication research, emphasizing the role of culture in shaping communication practices, health outcomes, and societal structures.

This meta-theory challenges traditional top-down models of communication by centering the voices of marginalized communities in the co-construction of health and social policies. By focusing on the intersections of power, agency, and structure, CCA advances a critical understanding of how communication can address social inequalities and injustices.

The methods that anchor the CCA are grounded in ethnography, activist collaborations, creative expressions, and participatory action research, working directly with communities to co-create voice infrastructures that foreground their lived experiences and the structural barriers they face. Through collaborative processes, CCA scholars co-create solutions and frameworks that are culturally relevant and locally situated, ensuring that communication interventions align with the needs of the people they intend to serve. These interventions range from co-building hospitals and co-designing health services, co-designing architectures for sustainable living, co-designing sustainable community-grounded food systems, building cultural spaces of healing, co-creating health promotion interventions to co-creating advocacy efforts, supporting land occupations through communication plans, mobilizing social movements, and co-designing 360 degrees promotional campaigns seeking to impact upstream policies.

In practice, CCA research builds sustainable dialogues with communities at the margins that challenge dominant discourses, emphasizing community agency and empowerment. Researchers engage with marginalized groups to amplify their voices, co-produce knowledge, and effect structural change in areas like health communication, environmental justice, and public policy. This bottom-up, community-led approach ensures that communication strategies are deeply rooted in the cultural contexts of the communities involved and are owned by communities who have been historically disenfranchised.

The CARE Conversations on the Culture-Centred Approach (CCA) Lecture Series will explore the theoretical foundations, research methods, and practical applications of the CCA, highlighting how it has been used to transform health communication and create lasting change.

Lecture 1: Building, Extending, and Evaluating Culture-Centred Scholarship: Insights from a Metatheoretical Systematic Review of CCA in Health Communication

Topic: Building, Extending, and Evaluating Culture-Centred Scholarship: Insights from a Metatheoretical Systematic Review of CCA in Health Communication

Speaker: Dr. Shaunak Sastry, Ph.D., Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati

Date: Monday, 23 September,2024
Time: 7 PM NZST
Location:

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2654107148091112

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/Mnz2Aq3WLbA3WFou/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/WFOcThGWcSI?si=yZRreydXCZ0tdklm

About the Speaker:

Dr. Shaunak Sastry, Ph.D. is Professor of Communication at the University of Cincinnati and Director of The Cincinnati Project, a center for community-engaged research in the College of Arts & Sciences at UC. He is the 2024-2025 Provostal Fellow for community-engaged research at UC. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of critical health communication, globalization, and infectious disease politics. His award-winning research has been published in leading international peer-reviewed journals like Human Communication Research, Communication Theory, Health Communication, Journal of Health Communication, Communication Monographs, Culture, Health & Sexuality, Frontiers in Communication, and Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, in addition to several book chapters and more than 50 paper presentations at national and international conferences. He is a senior editor of the journal Health Communication and sits on the editorial board of several other leading academic journals. He is the Chair of the National Communication Association’s (NCA) Research Council and serves on its Executive Committee. Dr. Sastry teaches courses in health communication, globalization, and research methods at the undergraduate and graduate level in the School of Communication, Film & Media Studies at UC.


#CultureCentredApproach #HealthCommunication #CriticalResearch #Globalization #CCALectureSeries #CAREMassey #MasseyUni

World-renowned academic to join CARE on Fulbright Scholarship

Massey’s Center for Culture-Centered Approach for Research and Evaluation (CARE) is pleased to share that Professor Angela Cooke-Jackson will be joining them on a Fulbright US Scholar in 2025.

Professor Angela Cooke-Jackson is an acclaimed scholar of health communication, exploring the intersections of race, gender and reproductive health justice. She is a Professor within the Communication Studies Department at California State University, Los Angeles.

Professor Cooke-Jackson’s cross-disciplinary scholarship and applied approach incorporates digital platforms, media literacy and civic engagement to unpack health issues among at-risk urban youth and women of colour. She has worked extensively to construct theory and build research that addresses sexual health, sexuality and sexual health literacy. 

Director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach for Research and Evaluation (CARE) Professor Mohan Dutta says Professor Cooke-Jackson is a long-time interlocutor on the intersections of culture and health communication.

“I am looking forward to this opportunity for us to explore together the various threads of communication and anti-racist organising that weave across global spaces in challenging the entrenched health disparities we witness globally today. That health communication work is fundamentally anti-racist work is a concept I am looking forward to further exploring with Professor Cooke-Jackson.”

During her time at CARE, Professor Cooke-Jackson will be collaborating with Professor Dutta on a framework for anti-racist solidarities as the basis for securing health justice. 

She will be conducting a series of workshops, delivering public lectures and collaborating with Professor Dutta on writing white papers, policy briefs and journal articles on the futures of anti-racist solidarities as the basis for addressing health disparities.

Professor Cooke-Jackson will be hosted on Massey’s Manawatū campus in early 2025. 

Earlier, CARE had hosted the health communication scholar Professor Barbara Sharf as a Fulbright Scholar.

Article Source: Massey News

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CARE | Future Directions Of Applied Communication Research Lecture Series | Leveraging Network Science to Address Grand Societal Challenges

The Second Lecture:

Leveraging Network Science to Address Grand Societal Challenges with Professor Noshir Contractor, Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioural Sciences, Northwestern University.

This second lecture in the Future Directions of Applied Communication Research Lecture Series is from Professor Noshir Contractor from Northwestern University. It centres around network science and how it can support applied communication scholarship.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1548409152440542

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbyRrGhqcTc

Noshir Contractor is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering, the School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He investigates how social and knowledge networks form and perform. He is the former President of the International Communication Association. He is also a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association and a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Network Science Society, and the International Communication Association. He received the Lifetime Service Award from the Communication, Digital Technology, & Organization Division of the Academy of Management. Additionally, he received the Simmel Award from the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA). He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. He has a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California.

#NetworkSCience #SocietalChallenges #NoshirContractor #NorthwesternUniversity #AppliedCommunicationResearch #CARELectureSeries #CARECCA #CAREMassey #MasseyUni #Aotearoa #NewZealand

Future Directions of Applied Communication Research Lecture Series | Strategies for Conducting Applied Communication Research that Can Make a Difference

Lecture Topic: Strategies for Conducting Applied Communication Research that Can Make a Difference with Distinguished Professor Gary Kreps, George Mason University

Tuesday, 3rd September 2024 @ 10 am NZST on Facebook LIVE & YouTube LIVE!  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/RMBrKaZwjuCLG5XZ/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/H-KCN0hnwuU

About the Lecturer: Prof. Gary Kreps is completing his 20th year on the faculty at George Mason University, where he currently serves as a Distinguished University Professor of Communication and Founding Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication.   Prof. Gary teaches courses concerning Communication Research, Health Communication, Risk Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Consumer-Provider Health Communication, Health Communication Campaigns, and Digital Communication.  

Prior to joining the faculty at Mason, he had the pleasure of serving as the Founding Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NIH), where he planned, developed, and coordinated major new national research and outreach initiatives concerning risk communication, health promotion, behavior change, technology development, and information dissemination to promote effective cancer prevention, screening, control, care, and survivorship.

Prof. Gary also served as the Founding Dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University, Executive Director of the Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, and in faculty and administrative roles at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue Universities.  

Read more here

Read more about the CARE Lecture Series:

https://www.massey.ac.nz/about/news/care-to-host-renowned-academics-in-its-applied-communication-lecture-series/

#AppliedCommunicationResearch #CARELectureSeries #CommunicationResearch #GaryKreps #CAREMassey #MasseyUni #GeorgeMasonUniversity #CARECCA #Aotearoa #NewZealand

CARE Talk | The Far-right and Islamophobic Hate: Lessons from the United Kingdom

19 August 2024 @ 8 pm NZST on Facebook LIVE!

Link to Facebook LIVE: https://www.facebook.com/share/dPPADYQYVEuT5yMo/

The Far-right and Islamophobic hate: Lessons from the United Kingdom

Abstract:

This panel, bringing in leading global anti-racist activists challenging Islamophobia, will address the nature of Islamophobia in white supremacist hate. It will explore the drivers of Islamophobic hate, intersections with rise of fascism, and the threat to democracy. 

Panelists:

Prof. Mohan J Dutta, Director, Center for Culture-Centred Approach to Research & Evaluation (CARE), Massey University.

Mohammed Owais, Director of the United Kingdom Indian Muslim Council (UKIMC)

Imam Waseem Razvi, Chair of the Alliance Against Islamophobia

Dr. Haroon Kasim, Ani Caste/Anti Racism Activist

#AntiRacism, #Islamophobia, #FarRight, #WhiteSupremacist, #UnitedKingdom, #UKRiots, #Fascism,

Prof. Mohan Dutta ranked in the Top 10 scholars globally for his research in Cultural Studies

The Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) congratulates Professor Mohan Dutta for being ranked among the Top 0.5% of all scholars worldwide by ScholarGPS.

ScholarGPS “provides rankings of individuals and institutions Overall (in all Fields) in 14 broad Fields and in 350,000+ Specialities.

Professor Dutta is ranked 12 worldwide in his field of Journalism for his research accomplishments over the prior 5 Years and is ranked 30 worldwide in Journalism in the Lifetime.

In his specialisation area of Cultural Studies, he is ranked  number 7 worldwide for prior 5 Years. During the same period, he is ranked 4 worldwide for the quality of his scholarship. He is ranked 17 in the area of Cultural Change.

For his accomplishments in the area of Social Change, he is ranked 35 worldwide in the Lifetime. He is ranked 18 worldwide over the prior 5 Years for his productivity in the scholarship of Social Change, and 24 for his productivity in area over Lifetime.