Current Projects

The following details a number of the current projects that lab members are focused on. Please contact the lead lab member for more information.

Community Media and Local Infrastructure

The Community Media and Local Infrastructure Project is funded by the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation and the Department of Energy. This initiative focuses on examining the mechanisms by which local community media and local infrastructure interconnect with one another. A core question for this research is to better understand how and why information received via community media connects with and impacts community resources. Examples include prior instances where misinformation disseminated online triggered physical offline reactions (such as a buying spree of bottled water based on a rumored leak from a nearby chemical plant).

Project Lead: Matthew Weber

 

Project ASPEN

Project ASPEN is a collaboration between a team of researchers from Rutgers University and the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New Jersey (NAMI NJ) that is funded by a grant from the William T. Grant Foundation (Active Surveillance of Policy Ecosystems and Networks [ASPEN] to Enhance Brokering of Research Evidence into State Policymaking). The big idea behind Project ASPEN is that building a robust infrastructure for producing and disseminating research that is relevant to the implantation of evidence-based guidelines will increase the likelihood that such guidelines are adopted and implemented by policymakers.

Project Lead: Matthew Weber

 

Return to Office and the Future of Work

This project aims to understand how lower-level employees manage their uncertainty during an organizational change event. This study will look at how employees navigate mode of work transition due to the issuing of return-to-office policies following the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown of in-person operations. This study will enhance our understanding of how communication practices and information-seeking behaviors support employee uncertainty management strategies during an organizational change event. This study will advance uncertainty management theory as well as function as a pilot study for understanding the broader impact of remote work and the impact of organizational policy in a change event.

Project Lead: Rachel Acosta