Media Engagement Lab Open House Welcomes New Student Researchers

By College of Communication / November 7, 2019 / Posted in: Faculty, Student / Twitter / Facebook

The Media Engagement Lab (ME Lab) recently hosted an open house to showcase some of the hands-on research opportunities available to students and faculty at DePaul, with more than 40 College of Communication students in attendance.

Launched in 2018, the ME Lab gathers data on how audiences interact with a variety of media, such as online ads and social media. Students involved in the ME Lab work with faculty to conduct audience, brand and content analyses, and then apply their skills by working with clients in the Chicago community.

Students watch a technology demonstration — Students and faculty watch a demonstration for the eye-tracking technology, which analyzes a person's eye movements as they look at an ad. (Photo by Nur Uysal)

At the open house event on November 5, attendees had the chance to try out some of the cutting-edge research technology in the ME Lab, such as virtual reality eye tracking. Faculty also shared their current research with students to give a sense of the projects they could work on in the ME Lab. Research topics included:

Digital public diplomacy, analyzing the communication of states and non-state actors with the foreign public via social media channels (led by Assistant Professor Nur Uysal)
The effects of geography-based marketing on food access and behavior (led by Assistant Professor Juan Mundel)
How branding affects marijuana evaluation, which includes qualitative interviews on the effects of marijuana promotion, research on predicting marijuana use among college students, marijuana companies’ social media strategy, and factors affecting consumer engagement with edible cannabis products (led by Instructor Juliet Stantz, Assistant Professor Tony Deng and Assistant Professor Hyejin Kim)

Students who are currently involved with the ME Lab also shared the research they conducted and presented at the Global Fashion Marketing Conference in Paris last July.

As the communications industry requires more data literacy from employees, the ME Lab is an ideal environment to help students build foundational research skills for the future. ME Lab co-founders and directors Nur Uysal and Juan Mundel explained that the lab's ultimate goal is “to create a collaborative community of researchers" for DePaul and beyond.

Interested in getting involved in the ME Lab? Email melab@depaul.edu for more information.

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