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Introducing the BCaT Lab Mural: Black Homeplaces!

Artist in Residence Maïa Walcott led a collaborative mural-making project in the BCaT Lab

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Our COMMunity Excelled at the National Communication Association Conference

Congrats to all who presented research and won awards at NCA 2025!

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The CHRC 2025 Mini Conference was a Success!

Students and faculty presented their incredible research to the Department

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Celebrating our 2025 Alumni Award Winners!

We love to celebrate our COMM alumni!

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Dr. Xiaoli Nan Awarded Impressive Grant from NIH

Congratulations to Dr. Nan and colleagues on this incredible accomplishment!

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Explore Communication at UMD

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The Department of Communication at the University of Maryland offers a B.A. in communication, a rhetoric minor and an oral communication program. Communication is a Top Ten major at the University of Maryland and has been for ten years.


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Search our directory to learn about our faculty and staff, or access resources relevant to faculty and staff.


Balancing the scale: A critical discourse on feminist resistance movements in Ghanaian and Nigerian media

New Study in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication

Communication

Author/Lead: Felicity Dogbatse
Dates:

This study examines how feminist activists in Ghana and Nigeria utilize digital media to challenge gender inequality and reframe public discourse. Drawing on African feminist theory and employing Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), the research examines case studies of digital activism campaigns, online discourse, and health advocacy initiatives that mobilize resistance against gender-based oppression. Data were collected through scraping of social media posts on digital feminist discourses via screen captures and archiving. Findings show that Ghanaian and Nigerian feminists strategically use digital media to amplify women’s voices, confront sexual violence, and advocate for reproductive and health rights. These communicative practices disrupt patriarchal discourses, reimagine African womanhood as politically active and self-defining, and facilitate intercultural communication by translating global gender justice narratives into localized forms of resistance. Overall, the study demonstrates how feminist resistance in these contexts is historically grounded, socially transformative, and expands African feminist scholarship by highlighting digital media as a tool for agency, solidarity, and social change.

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Communication for social change: The importance of NGO–community collaboration in supporting social transformation

UMD grad student published in Canadian Journal of African Studies

Communication

Author/Lead: Felicity Dogbatse
Dates:

Despite a growth in scholarship on feminist and gender advocacy in Ghana, little attention has been paid to how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have leveraged digital platforms to communicate. Using African technocultural feminist theory (ATFT), we analyse NGOs’ digital communications, paying attention to how they use these platforms to define their organizational identities while challenging gender stereotypes. We argue that although NGOs use digital platforms to communicate, their praxis may not necessarily be accessible to the communities with which they work; these platforms enable them to share their women’s empowerment programmes with other stakeholders while bringing awareness to issues affecting marginalized people in these communities. This study presents practical strategies for effectively communicating gender advocacy in the Ghanaian context and beyond.

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YouTube as a Tool of Soft Power in the Digital Age

USC Center on Public Diplomacy Blog on YouTube's Power in the Digital Age

Communication

Author/Lead: Lamia Zia
Dates:

In this blog post, Zia explores how "YouTube travelers practice a quiet kind of people-to-people diplomacy, drawing thousands of viewers with each video uploaded reshaping perceptions more effectively than any official campaign. What’s more, though, they also construct new illusions: realities filtered through framing and imagery where the line between representation and reality begins to blur as without a single policy statement, YouTubers have reframed the post-conflict country as a destination of beauty and normalcy." 

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