An Interdisciplinary Approach to Political Communication

​The Office of Politics, Communication and Media at the University of Alabama (OPCaM) was born out of a simple premise, yet one that seems radical against rigid stratifications of academic disciplines: How can politics, media, and communication be conceptualized broadly, with care to how civic life and democracy is always intertwined with the historical, cultural, and everyday?

Our researchers come from a range of theoretical and methodological backgrounds. We approach research from qualitative, quantitative, historical, computational, rhetorical, and humanistic methods invoking a range of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives from Communication Studies, Journalism, Political Communication, Information Science, Risk and Crisis Communication, Digital Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Internet Studies, Health Communication, Feminist Studies, and American Studies. 

OPCaM is housed within the Institute for Communication and Information Research in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama.
  Common themes in our research agendas include:
  • Misinformation, disinformation, and media literacy
  • Polarization, extremism, and hostility
  • Civic and political engagement
  • Public conversation, dialogue, and discourse
  • Networked publics and communication technologies
  • Emergent and digital media technologies
  • Regulation of digital media
  • The roles of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, religion, nationality in the politics of communication
Learn more about us and our leadership.