Chair & Professor, Communication and Media
Academic Director of the BDC Program
Through my research, I focus on the nexus between communication and culture. I am especially interested in using social-scientific methods to understand how communication technologies (like televisions, computers and smart phones) mediate enculturation and impact psychosocial processes such as identity formation and the construction of personal worldviews. Whether my research deals with the sports media, popular music and how it manifests on television or communication patterns among Jews, Christians and Muslims, I am always interested in issues of power, oppression, (in)equality, otherness and how people who live at the margins of a given culture are represented symbolically and semantically in media messages.
Tollison, A. T., and Turner, J. S. (2017). “Cooperating Across Classrooms: Cooperative-Experiential Learning Through Design and Implementation of Health Campaign Messages.” Pedagogy in Health Promotion.
Turner, J. S. (2015). “The Semiotics of a Native American Sports Logo: The Signification of the Screaming Savage.” Journal of Sports Media, 10(2), 89-114.
Turner, J. S. (2014). “A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Gender and Ethnicity Portrayals on ESPN’s SportsCenter from 1999 to 2009.” Communication and Sport, 2(4), 303-327.
Turner, J. S. (2014). “This Is SportsCenter: A Longitudinal Content Analysis of ESPN’s Signature Television Sports News Program from 1999 and 2009.” Journal of Sports Media, 9(1), 45-70.
Wide receiver and kick return specialist Donovan Wadley ’26 was named to the preseason watch list for the 2024 Walter Payton Award. He becomes the first player in Merrimack College history to be named to the preseason list for the award presented annually to the national offensive player of the year in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision.
