In The News: Department of Communication Studies

NBC News

It's November, 1996, and I'm 13 years old. My father and I are sitting court-side at the Los Angeles Forum as the Lakers take position.

Medium

Everyone knew the question of “electability” was going to come up at last night’s Democratic presidential debate.

Canada's National Observer

Pope Francis is not your average pope. He’s weighed in on prison reform and women’s rights, and he wrote a whole encyclical on climate change in 2015. On Friday, at the 20th World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Francis waded into the climate change debate again with an unusual idea: perhaps environmental destruction should be classified as an official sin.

Yahoo!

More and more people are questioning the value that social media brings into their lives, with many users choosing to disconnect and trading in blue screens for blue skies, or at least, a life less dependent on checking notifications every three seconds.

Hello Giggles

Signing off from social media due to depression, stress, and anxiety is common, says University of Nevada, Las Vegas communication studies professor and social media researcher Natalie Pennington.

Rewire

Are you one of the millions of younger people quitting Facebook? For more than a decade, we’ve used Facebook as a way to keep up with friends.

Grist

The holidays just aren’t complete without a little drama for dessert. And what’s more dramatic than a planet in crisis?

Mother Jones

It’s his form of environmental justice.

Grist

Pope Francis is not your average pope. He’s weighed in on prison reform and women’s rights, and he wrote a whole encyclical on climate change in 2015. On Friday, at the 20th World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Francis waded into the climate change debate again with an unusual idea: perhaps environmental destruction should be classified as an official sin.

Las Vegas Review Journal

Today is National Unfriend Day.

CNET

There's a holiday for practically everything -- even pruning your collection of friends on social media. Sunday is National Unfriend Day, which was started in 2010 by late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel. Shrinking your social circle has a number of benefits, according to Natalie Pennington, a communications professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose dissertation, cited in a university release, focuses on the effects of unfriending and unfollowing through social media.

KLAS-TV: 8 News Now

The holiday encourages users of Facebook and other social networking platforms to examine how close or superficial their online relationships are, and unfriend those who ignore a status update pleading for volunteers to help move.