Faculty

Professor McDonald’s teaching interests are primarily in the area of mediated communication. He teaches undergraduate courses in the history of communication and in industry research methods. He teaches graduate level courses in communication theory. This year, he is teaching a graduate class on media entertainment. His primary research interest is in the behavioral, cognitive and affective aspects of the audience’s experience during mediated communication.

Throughout his career, Professor McDonald has concentrated on social aspects of the audience, a narrow area of research referred to as intra-audience effects. This has taken him in a number of directions, including the study of how our conceptions of our selves may be partially determined by the media characters we enjoy watching, and the affective nature of many of the gratifications we obtain from the media. He often says that all media use is a social experience, but most recently he has been researching the explicitly social nature of the audience, centering his interest in a blend of interpersonal and mass communication processes.

His recent work has focused on social aspects of our thoughts while using media, emotional contagion (in which those other people who affect our experience are other members of the audience), affective relations with media characters (in which the other people involved are not real, but are a product of our imaginings). He has also been doing some work on the diffusion/use of new TV technologies (the OSU-CTAM project) and media multitasking/simultaneous multiple media use. Click above for a lengthier description of these research efforts.

Here's an overview of some of Professor McDonald's current projects:

Loss or Merging of Self. This ongoing project focuses on what happens to our self-concept during media use. Some researchers have suggested that we lose our self in the media world; other studies, though, suggest that we merge our self with these mediated others. It's an important distinction, because in the former, the self disappears from our thoughts; in the latter, our self is highlighted and contrasted with media characters. This project is ongoing and has been conducted with Drs. Mu Hu of West Virginia Wesleyan College, Dr. Shu-Fang Lin of National Chung Cheng Universit in Taiwan, and Melanie Sarge, a graduate student in our program.

Media Use and Rumination. In this project, Dr. McDonald worked with Jingbo Meng (currently a graduate student at USC, but formerly in our program), and Melanie Sarge (currently in our program) on how what Eric Klinger calls our "current concerns" impact our media experiences. Current concerns are things that are on our minds - they may be positive or negative - but are not directly related to what we're doing. When something reminds us of them in some way, it tends to interfere with the task at hand because it focuses our attention on our concerns. In our study, we examined what happens when TV entertainment programs cover issues that relate to people's current concerns. We relate our research to a number of applied areas where results of persuasion campaigns are not impacting the intended targets in the manner expected. We surmise that this is because the concerns have focused attention away from the persuasive message.

New Communication Technologies. Dr. McDonald is Director of the OSU-CTAM project. The project is a cooperative venture between the School of Communication and the Cable Telecommunications Association for Marketing. OSU was chosen to house datasets collected by the CTAM organization. These datasets have been collected since 2003 and focus on audience acquisition and use of new television technologies. Industry executives from CTAM, broadcast and cable networks and services visit the School once or twice each year. While here, they interact with faculty and students, exploring trends in the television industry and talking over ideas as to how the data might be used for thesis or other research publications. Current projects involving Dr. McDonald and others include work on development of a Bayesian model of diffusion of TV technologies, ethnicity and technology adoption, appointment viewing of television, coviewing of tv technologies, use of multiple media and media multitasking.