Melissa
Aronczyk

Melissa Aronczyk’s research and teaching address critical issues in promotional culture, global media and politics, and environmental communication.

For questions or issues concerning the PhD program, please email PhDDirector@comminfo.rutgers.edu

Melissa Aronczyk's current research and teaching address issues related to media and political communication; media theory; critical methodologies; promotional cultures; and writing as craft and as profession.

Her new book, co-authored with Maria I. Espinoza, is A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism (Oxford, 2022). It critically examines public relations as a social and political force that shapes both our understanding of the environmental crises we now face and our responses to them.

She is the recipient of a Climate Social Science Network grant (2021-2023) to critically inquire into the mobilization of industrial influence resources and their bearing on collective decision-making around climate change action in the United States. This two-year project will combine theoretical perspectives on elite political and communication networks and the nature of influence with empirical research on interorganizational dynamics and public promotional/advocacy activities among corporate, government and non-governmental actors.

• Co-chair, Digital Ethnography Working Group
• Affiliated Faculty, Rutgers Climate Institute
• Affiliated Graduate Faculty, Rutgers Department of Sociology