About

Stephanie Marita Carpenter is an assistant professor of population health at the College of Health Solutions. She studies engagement and emotions, and their impact on health behaviors, using methods that adapt to the unique needs of the individual. Her current research projects employ mixed methodological approaches to develop digital health interventions, including mobile health (mHealth) just-in-time adaptive interventions that adapt in real-time to provide the right kind of support at the right time. Carpenter incorporates wearables and ecological momentary assessment in her research, with health behavior change outcomes of interest including substance use, physical activity, weight loss, stress regulation, and more.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Media studies
• Computer Science
• Social psychology
• Business
• Pedagogy
• Advertising
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Explaining the Practice Acceptance of the Solutions Journalism Approach through an Analysis of Journalists’ Adherence to Solutions Journalism Rigors

  Journalism Practice · 2025-08-18 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Neutrality and impartiality in Midwestern U.S. newspapers: community-oriented newspaper journalists reporting of environmental water problems in agricultural and ranching states

  Journal of Communications In Healthcare · 2024-04-02 · 1 citations

  article

  BACKGROUND: U.S. journalists embedded in rural and agricultural communities could adversely affect the health of residents if they avoid alerting and engaging their readers - farmers, ranchers, and community members - on environmental and health issues. We expected reporters would maintain community status quo and inaction by framing local water pollution and quality issues neutrally deemphasizing threats and solutions to maintain their own credibility as unbiased informational sources. METHOD: In a content analysis of local water quality newspaper articles from five farming and cattle ranching states in the west central U.S. Midwest, we employed seven variables to investigate whether journalists practiced neutral, detached forms of journalism (i.e. dissemination versus interpretative role enactment, government-frame) as well as whether they deemphasized water pollution as a concerning issue (i.e. problem, threat), water pollution solutions, and readers' efficaciousness. RESULTS: The results showed these journalists relied heavily on government-driven narratives presenting water quality issues from an impartial, straight reporting lens in which they primarily followed the journalistic dissemination role enactment, while neglecting to provide readers with interpretative, threat, efficacy, or solution's information. CONCLUSIONS: The study seeks to help communicators understand the information diet people living in this part of the country likely receive on environmental and health risks in the context of water pollution. Communicators seeking to reach and affect audiences in this region should understand local information practices to navigate how to craft culturally specific public health messages.

  PublisherDOI

• A content analysis of EPPM’s threat and efficacy information in environmental news: The impact of a community of practice and topic

  Newspaper Research Journal · 2024-05-14 · 2 citations

  articleCorresponding

  The extended parallel process model summarizes the positive impact of threat and efficacy messages on behavioral intentions. In news contexts, research to date shows national journalists emphasize threat information and neglect efficacious information. Findings show U.S. university student journalists emphasized efficacy rather than threats countering past content analysis research. We also found environmental and sustainability communities of practice did not predict threat and efficacy information, but topics did.

  PublisherDOI

• The News Sourcing Practices of Solutions Journalists in Africa, Europe, and the U.S.

  Journalism Practice · 2024-08-27 · 4 citations

  article

  Solutions journalism is one of the newest alternative journalism strategies aimed at combating news fatigue through rigorous reporting on solutions to society's problems. One of the primary goals for the movement is increased source diversity that features more non-official and citizen voices, like those often used in other forms of alternative media. This study examined the types of sources journalists included in 555 text-based solutions journalism articles from the U.S., Europe, and Africa collected from the Solutions Journalism Network. The results indicate solutions stories are meeting the goals set forth by proponents of the movement, as they most frequently include nonprofits/groups and unaffiliated citizens. Solutions stories in American publications contained significantly more non-official sources than did their European and African counterparts, though these sources still comprised the majority of those used across all three continents. However, solutions stories included in the study contained fewer total sources than traditional news articles and still featured government and business sources regularly. This finding suggests solutions journalism practitioners may still have work to do to increase their use and variety of sources.

  PublisherDOI

• Improving the Creation of Social Science Theory in Journalism and Mass Communication Scholarship

  Journalism & Communication Monographs · 2023-05-08 · 1 citations

  article

  Research into journalism and mass communication (JMC) theory use and creation suggests that scholars fall short of standards required for the scientific method to perform properly. Sociologist Gerald Hage said this reflects inconsistency among scholars in the use of language and a lack of tools used to create social science theory. To address these conditions, this essay draws on three books to provide a glossary of terms about social science theory and to develop a format for presenting such theory. The aim is to improve consistency and precision in the creation of JMC social science theory.

  PublisherDOI

• A review of U.S. tenure and promotion guidelines in media and communication and their support for engaged scholarship

  Communication Education · 2023-01-02

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sustainability and Environmental Communities of Practice’s Impact on News Content Diversity

  Journalism Practice · 2023-09-06 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACTCommunities of practice (CoP) are distinct community groups that share a common interest in which they interact with one another to address problems and reach goals. In the present study, we investigated one niche community—sustainability and environmental communities of practice—to determine whether stronger communities of practices differed from weaker ones. We developed a summative index rating each sampled university student news publication with a single score ranging from 0–3 to represent community of practice strength: (a) universities with a sustainability ranking, (b) student publications with an environmental specialization, (c) universities with an environmental journalism specialization, and (d) no CoP to determine whether university students situated in stronger communities practiced journalism differently. Data from a content analysis of sustainability and environmental news articles showed the strongest sustainability community of practice was related to more topic diversity, but source affiliation diversity levels appear to continue to remain mostly constant across contexts and time. Implications concerning environmental journalism training and university outreach are discussed.KEYWORDS: Communities of practiceuniversity and college newspaperssource affiliation diversitytopic diversitysustainability and environmental beatsustainability ratingsenvironmental journalism programsengaged journalism Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Michigan State University's Office of Sustainability.

  PublisherDOI

• Reimagining tenure and promotion for creative faculty: the <i>Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework</i>

  Review of Communication · 2023-04-03 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Faculty members interested in creating creative scholarship face advancement obstacles due to few known tenure and promotion standards. This study involved qualitative semistructured interviews with U.S. communication and media creative faculty members producing scholarship spanning multiple mediums. Interviewed scholars primarily expressed their scholarship's contributions involved local community engagement. Yet creative scholars perceived departmental leadership preferred to rely on artistic and professional standards to evaluate the quality of their work rather than engaged criteria. Participants felt such criteria too narrowly constrained them and delegitimized the value of their work. The results provide evidence that creative scholars struggle when communicating their work's value and documenting their scholarship achievements. Guidance is provided through the formalization of a Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework conceptually made up of four evaluation concepts rooted in the engaged and creative scholarship literature: (1) collaboration, (2) outreach, (3) peer review, and (4) innovation.

  PublisherDOI

• The Tenure and Promotion Standards Used to Evaluate Creative Scholarship in the Media and Communication Fields

  Journalism & Mass Communication Educator · 2022-08-12 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The tenure and promotion system influences whether, how, and the extent faculty members produce creative scholarship. A thematic analysis of 69 media and communication departments’ documents was carried out to systematically assess creative scholarship standards. The results showed most documents formally recognized creative scholarship and equated it to traditional research. Results showed less concreteness in comparison with traditional research standards. Artistic and professional peer review criteria such as securing awards, exhibitions, and festivals were the primary evaluative approaches. One implication is that leadership and senior faculty members need to rethink how to evaluate impact because scholars often seek to engage local nonacademics.

  PublisherDOI

• Reimagining tenure and promotion: The Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework

  2022-03-08

  preprint1st authorCorresponding

  Faculty members interested in creating creative scholarship often face advancement obstacles due to few known tenure and promotion standards. This study involved 15 qualitative semi-structured interviews with media- and communication creative faculty members living in the United States producing scholarship spanning multiple mediums (e.g., robotics, video games, documentary, mobile apps, theatre, training materials). Interviewed scholars primarily sought to contribute to knowledge by engaging local community members. Creative scholars perceived tenure and promotion departmental leadership, however, preferred to rely on artistic and professional standards such as festival acceptances and awards to evaluate the quality of their work rather than engaged criteria. The participants felt such criteria too narrowly constrained them and delegitimized their intellectual and community contributions. I provide guidance to academic communities by presenting a Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework conceptually made up of four evaluation concepts rooted in the engaged and creative scholarship literature: 1) collaboration, 2) outreach, 3) peer review, and 4) innovation.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• F A Scholte

  's Heeren Loo

  9 shared

• Marijke Meijer

  Ipse de Bruggen

  9 shared

• Anne Hoag

  Pennsylvania State University

  6 shared

• August E. Grant

  University of South Carolina

  6 shared

• Frederick Fico

  5 shared

• Deborah S. Chung

  University of Kentucky

  5 shared

• Seungahn Nah

  University of Florida

  5 shared

• Alisa P. Lertpratchya

  Michigan State University

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology and Business Administration

  University of Michigan

• M.S., Psychology

  University of Oregon

• B.A., Psychology

  University of Oregon