Staci Zavattaro, associate professor of public administration, has been accepted into the Social Media Lab Visiting Scholars Program at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.
Zavattaro and four other scholars from around the world have been selected for the program, which will allow them to develop and collaborate on a research project related to social media. Zavattaro’s project will focus on the use of social media within universities, particularly on how they communicate their brand identity.
As a visiting scholar, Zavattaro will also have an opportunity to participate in research discussions at the lab, and to network with other social media researchers.
The goal of the program, which will run during the summer, is to gain a better understanding of how social media is changing the way that people communicate, and how that change is impacting the social, political and economic structures of society.
Also selected for the program are researchers from Arizona State University, Hong Kong Baptist University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Zurich, and the University of Alberta and MacEwan University (Canada).
Zavattaro joined the School of Public Administration in the College of Health and Public Affairs last fall. She is also a research associate in the school’s Center for Public and Nonprofit Management. Her books include Cities for Sale, Place Branding Through Phases of the Image and Social Media to Government: Theory and Practice (edited with Thomas Bryer, also an associate professor of public administration at UCF).