About

Colleen Connolly-Ahern joined the Penn State faculty in 2004. She brings a mix of teaching, research and public service that match well with the mission of the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications to train future communications professionals for careers and for life. Connolly-Ahern is an expert in the area of applied communications research. Recent research areas include refugees and communication and science communication. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles, and her work has appeared in journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Public Relations Research, and Communication, Culture and Critique. Since coming to Penn State, she has presented dozens of papers at academic conferences. She is a former head of the Public Relations Division of AEJMC, a member of the editorial board of JPRR and JPIC, and has served as a member of the Advisory Board for the Penn State Yearbook, La Vie. Connolly-Ahern teaches a wide range of undergraduate advertising and public relations classes, and serves as the course co-coordinator for COMM 420 Advertising and Public Relations Research. She also teaches graduate seminars (COMM 511 Qualitative Research Methods and COMM 597 International and Intercultural Strategic Communications). She graduated from Georgetown University with an undergraduate degree in medieval history, but because Romanesque cathedrals are scarce in the United States, she took a job in the advertising industry. Among other positions, she worked as managing editor for Marine Log Magazine and promotion manager for USA Today before starting her own marketing communications firm, Abbey Lane Marketing.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Media studies
• Law
• Family medicine
• Public relations
• Psychology
• Medical education
• Gender studies
• Medicine
• Engineering
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Promoting Integrity in the Face of Disruption: A Case for Expanding Communication Theory

  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly · 2025-03-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The inability to anticipate and address the current disruptive onslaught in communications has contributed to the erosion of trust in journalism, given rise to social media echo chambers, spawned “infodemics” that cause confusion during health crises and precipitated the rise of “low information” voters. In 2023, The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication published a call for original research that would expand existing communication theory or borrow theory from other disciplines that would help better explain and critique the current disruptive communication ecosystem. This forum represents the collective vision of the Page/Johnson Legacy Scholars for reimagining communication theory to confront a wide range of current communication challenges: disaster communicators’ mental health; misinformation; disinformation; organization-public relationship management; and the amplification of the public voice in mass communication. The scholars make a persuasive case for the need to expand existing theory, as well as the need to integrate fresh theoretical perspectives into communication scholarship to keep communication research relevant and useful.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “Who’s Going to be a Creep Today?” Understanding the Social Media Experiences of Women Broadcast Journalists

  Social Media + Society · 2022 · 21 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Reports of the online harassment of journalists have continued to increase as more newsrooms place higher emphasis on social media engagement with audiences. However, this harassment is subject to gendered dynamics, as women journalists are most often the target of online abuse, and the attacks themselves are often gender-centric. This study employs a mixed-method approach to explore how gender influences broadcast journalists’ social media interactions with audiences. Qualitative interviews with US broadcast journalists, along with a social media discourse analysis of the journalists’ Twitter pages, reveal the sexist nature of these interactions. Specifically, findings show that women journalists are treated not only as sexual objects, but also as non-serious journalists. In response to this treatment, women journalists adjust their social media strategies by limiting what they post and blocking certain users. This puts women journalists in a difficult position: increase coveted audience engagement and deal with online harassment or block abusive social media users and suffer the career impacts of low audience engagement. Implications are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Victims or intruders? Refugee portrayals in the news in Turkey, Bulgaria and the UK

  Media War & Conflict · 2021 · 15 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  News shapes audiences’ views of people and events beyond their immediate physical environment. Since the mass migration of refugees from Syria represents one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history, its news coverage necessarily shaped the way global audiences understood the crisis. This qualitative study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA), specifically Van Leeuwen’s Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis (2008) as a social practice approach, to reveal and compare the discursive strategies used in the print media coverage of the Syrian refugees in three European countries: Turkey, Bulgaria and the UK. The findings show significant differences in the discourse used to describe the refugees and different approaches in terms of contextualization, spaces and actions depicted in the media coverage in each country. The study reveals the ongoing dialogue between journalistic practice and political decision making in three countries impacted to varying extents by the ongoing crisis.

  PublisherDOI

• HPV prevention is not just for girls: an examination of college-age-students’ adoption of HPV vaccines

  Health Marketing Quarterly · 2020 · 2 citations

  • Family medicine
  • Medicine
  • Medical education

  This study identifies source(s) of information young adults found to be persuasive in choosing/declining HPV vaccines. The results indicate that males are not getting HPV vaccination information from either their physician, parent, or DTC advertising. Females reported that physicians and their mothers were the most influential sources of information. Additionally, females found that risk message frames focusing on empowerment, reduced dread, control and benefit in the DTC HPV vaccine advertisements were persuasive; males did not. With the rapid rise of HPV related cancers found in males, there is a need to inform males and their parents about for HPV vaccines.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding and managing mass media effects on public perceptions of science issues such as invasive species management

  2019-06-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Cost of the Veil: Visual Communication Impacts of<i>Hijab</i>on News Judgments

  Mass Communication & Society · 2019-11-02 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Using disposition theory as a framework, this 2 (headscarf vs. no headscarf) by 2 (US citizen vs. refugee) experiment sought to elucidate the impact of visual and verbal cues in mediated messages on conclusions drawn from a television news package about a woman accused of consorting with a known terrorist group in the US, in terms of parochial empathy for and perceived innocence of the woman. Parochial empathy measures the difference between ingroup and outgroup empathy; higher levels indicate ingroup empathy is greater than outgroup empathy, meaning the individual’s empathy is very narrow in scope or “parochial.” Political identity was a measured independent variable. The data supported a model in which political identity was a significant moderator of the headscarf’s effect on parochial empathy, and that parochial empathy mediated the relationship between the manipulated and measured predictor variables on perceived innocence. Details of the relationships among variables are reported and the implications for theory and journalism practice are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• On the Border of the Syrian Refugee Crisis: Views From Two Different Cultural Perspectives

  American Behavioral Scientist · 2018-02-27 · 37 citations

  articleSenior author

  Since the Syrian refugee crisis represents the worst humanitarian crisis in modern history, it is critical to examine how global media covered this issue. Focusing on two nations significantly affected by the refugee crisis—Bulgaria and Turkey, this study employs a content analysis to examine differences in refugee portrayals in national media. The results show that Turkish media coverage was more personalized and more likely to emphasize the victim frame. In contrast, Bulgarian coverage was less personalized and more likely to emphasize the administrative frame. The findings are placed within national context and their implications for media framing of refugees are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Refugee Communications: Defining the Discipline

  American Behavioral Scientist · 2018-04-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Connecting Homeland and Borders Using Mobile Telephony: Exploring the State of Tamil Refugees in Indian Camps

  Journal of Information Policy · 2017-02-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This article attempts to explain how mobile phones influence how Sri Lankan Tamil refugees perceive cultural, psychological, and physical borders. Grounded in the information and communications technology (ICT) literature and diaspora communications, the lead author conducted twelve in-depth interviews with Mandapam camp residents in Tamilnadu, India, during Summer 2013. Results indicate that while camp refugees considered Sri Lanka their “motherland,” fear of government surveillance coupled with skepticism regarding the peace process impedes their return, even though official hostilities have ceased. However, mobile communications allow them to create a virtual community, which is important because camp life essentially separates them from both India and Sri Lanka.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Connecting Homeland and Borders Using Mobile Telephony: Exploring the State of Tamil Refugees in Indian Camps

  Journal of Information Policy · 2017-02-01 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This article attempts to explain how mobile phones influence how Sri Lankan Tamil refugees perceive cultural, psychological, and physical borders. Grounded in the information and communications technology (ICT) literature and diaspora communications, the lead author conducted twelve in-depth interviews with Mandapam camp residents in Tamilnadu, India, during Summer 2013. Results indicate that while camp refugees considered Sri Lanka their “motherland,” fear of government surveillance coupled with skepticism regarding the peace process impedes their return, even though official hostilities have ceased. However, mobile communications allow them to create a virtual community, which is important because camp life essentially separates them from both India and Sri Lanka.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lee Ahern

  Pennsylvania State University

  9 shared

• Daniela V. Dimitrova

  Iowa State University

  4 shared

• Susan Grantham

  Griffith University

  3 shared

• Antoni Castells i Talens

  2 shared

• Julio César Herrero

  2 shared

• Emel Özdora-Akşak

  Bilkent University

  2 shared

• Lynda Lee Kaid

  2 shared

• Nan Yu

  Anhui Normal University

  2 shared