About

Renita Coleman is a professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. She has 15 years of experience as a newspaper journalist and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. Her research focuses on agenda-setting, race, visual communication, and ethics. She has studied the effects of photographs on ethical reasoning, the framing and attribution of responsibility in health news, and the moral development of journalists and public relations practitioners. Coleman has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in various academic journals and has authored books including 'Designing Experiments for the Social Sciences: How to Plan, Create and Execute Research Using Experiments' and 'The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics.' She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in experimental design, lifestyle journalism, and ethics. Before her academic career, she worked as a journalist at newspapers and magazines for 15 years, serving as a reporter, editor, and designer at organizations such as the Raleigh News & Observer, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Public relations
• Cognitive psychology
• Media studies
• Engineering ethics
• Demography
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Perceived behavioral control as a causal mediator for adaptive framing

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-05-06

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• Disgust in the 2024 election

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-05-06

  other1st authorCorresponding
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• Adaptive Framing of Climate Change Images

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-05-06

  otherSenior author
  Publisher

• Persuasion knowledge as a causal mediator

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-05-06

  other1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Solutions-oriented Framing and Responsibility Attribution in Urban Youth Crime: Effects on Policy Support and the Mediating Role of Emotions and Social Inequality Perception

  Journalism Studies · 2025-08-19 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
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• Watching a Show versus Being There: Embodied Gatekeeping and Visual Perspective in Congress

  Political Communication · 2025-07-14

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• Adapt and overcome: The impact of adaptive frames in news stories on climate change skeptics and acceptors

  Journalism · 2025-02-20 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  This experiment test the effects of framing of climate change and finds that news stories that do not discuss the man-made cause of climate change, and do not use trigger words such as “global warming” and “climate change” are significantly better at overcoming climate skeptics’ resistance to them, leading them to agree with the story’s perspective and feel optimistic about a community’s efforts to deal with climate impacts. This process is mediated by increased perceived credibility of the story and journalists.

  PublisherDOI

• The Power of Visual Framing in the Age of AI

  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly · 2025-11-30

  article

  This invited forum explores the complexity and power of visual framing in the field of journalism and mass communication. The forum brings together leading visual communication scholars who offer insights into how images continue to shape meaning and audience interpretations in an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven social media landscape. Contributions discuss framing as a constructive act of power, the interpretive agency of audiences, the interplay between text and visuals, adaptive framing strategies, and image creation and accountability challenges introduced by AI technologies. The forum calls for renewed theoretical rigor, transparency, and interdisciplinary collaboration to advance visual framing research in the digital era.

  PublisherDOI

• Improving Our Conclusions About Visual Media Effects

  2025-07-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Research in visual media relies heavily on observational designs with good reason. It’s important to understand what images people see, what they think about them, how these images are made, and what meanings people make of them. Yet these methods are not well suited to establishing cause and effect the way experimental designs are. Experimental designs offer a promising way to assess the effects of visuals on audiences in a valid and reliable way. With improvements in statistical software, subject panels, and survey software, there has been a resurgence in visual research using experimental designs. This chapter will help visual scholars improve their conclusions about the effects that images have on audiences. Specifically, this chapter covers the often-overlooked issue of internal validity via message variance, which involves showing participants more than one visual image, and the correlational nature of causal mechanisms studied as mediators.

  PublisherDOI

• But Is That Mediator Really the Cause? An Experiment Manipulating Persuasion Knowledge as a Mediator for How Adaptive Frames Create Positive Responses to Climate Change News

  Science Communication · 2025-01-26 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Most mediation studies do not provide evidence that mediators are causal, only correlational. This is one of the first in the field to use concurrent double randomization to test causality of a mediator. Previous research showed adaptive frames that do not trigger skeptics’ anti-climate change schemas improve responses to stories and identified the activation of persuasion knowledge as the mediator. In this experiment, persuasion knowledge activation is causal for two of three outcomes, but only correlational for a third. We also report an inconsistent mediation effect, whereby persuasion knowledge activation has a positive direct effect but a negative indirect effect.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• H. Denis Wu

  Boston University

  10 shared

• Lee Wilkins

  10 shared

• Lesa Hatley Major

  Indiana University

  5 shared

• Anne C. Osborne

  4 shared

• Carolyn Yaschur

  Augustana College

  4 shared

• Ben Wasike

  The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

  4 shared

• Angela M. Lee

  3 shared

• Aimee Meader

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Top Faculty Paper in Scholastic Journalism Division, AEJMC,…
• Named 1st out of 35 for AEJMC top paper convention productiv…
• Top Faculty paper, third place, Communication Theory & Metho…
• Top Faculty paper, first place, Minorities & Communication D…
• Top Faculty paper, first place, Minorities & Communication D…