To provoke outrage is the point of rage bait. Research in communication is starting to explain how rage bait hacks the way our brains decide what we choose to read, watch and even click and swipe online. What’s more, the worse we feel, the more we seem to prefer it.
The 2025 Comm Horizons conference at UC Davis, hosted by the Department of Communication from May 16-18 2025, covered some of the most pressing issues about media and society. The conference showcased visiting luminaries in the field with the deep and diverse expertise of faculty in the College of Letters and Science.
The UC Davis Department of Communication rose to #13 among its peers globally in 2024, ranking 11 spots higher than just a year ago. This year’s rankings, released in November, recognize UC Davis faculty’s outsized impact compared to much larger departments.
A UC Davis research team in the Department of Communication is studying how children learn in a virtual reality environment. They recently opened this research to public participation at the Museum of Science and Curiosity, or MOSAC, in Sacramento, where undergraduate research assistants played a key role in making this research possible.
Thirteen faculty members from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis were recently awarded Revitalization Research Program Grants. Intended to support faculty whose research programs have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the college-funded grants support the continuation or completion of stalled, high-priority projects. The selected faculty members represent the breadth of research conducted at the College of Letters and Science.
