Afrooz Mosallaei

I am a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. My research focuses on visual communication, particularly on using imagery to enhance public awareness of climate change and social movements through the strategic dissemination of news on social media platforms. My doctoral dissertation explores climate-related news platformization, examining how news outlets selectively adapt and produce content in alignment with social media platforms’ logic and the contemporary gatekeeping practices of newsroom editors. As a mixed-methods scholar, I employ a variety of methodologies tailored to each research question, with expertise in experimental survey research, qualitative and quantitative content analysis, computational techniques such as topic modeling and sentiment analysis, and in-depth interviews.

I was awarded the COMPASS (Consortium on Media Policy Studies) fellowship, a program from the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University’s Media, Inequality & Change Center. This fellowship allowed me to spend the summer of 2024 at Free Press, a media advocacy non-profit, gaining firsthand experience in U.S. federal policymaking and contributing to the policy process through my research and writing. Additionally, I am a research affiliate at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC), where I collaborate with the experimental research team.

My work has been published in top-tier journals such as Digital Journalism and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and earned national recognition with an academic award from the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in 2022. I have also presented my research at notable conferences such as the National Communication Association (NCA) and the Canadian Communication Association (CCA).

Before joining Rutgers, I earned my M.S. in Communication, Culture, and Media from Drexel University and hold a B.A. in Photography from the University of Tehran, Iran.