Makana Chock

Makana Chock is the David J. Levidow Endowed Professor and has conducted internationally recognized research in the area of media psychology. She studies the ways in which people process and respond to persuasive messages in mass media, social media and extended reality (virtual, augmented, and mixed reality) contexts.

Much of her research is in the areas of risk communication and health information and has used to help design and implement educational campaigns concerning HIV-awareness, drug-use, binge-drinking and environmental risk campaigns. She has also examined the ways that media content and social and psychological factors apply to news media use.

She has published in such journals as Communication Research, Media Psychology, Computers in Human Behavior, Health Communication, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Telematics and Informatics, Computers in Human Behavior, Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, Journal of Health Communication,the Newspaper Research Journal and the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. She also presents papers regularly and has won top paper awards at the annual conferences of the International Communication Association, the National Communication Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

She teaches courses in research methods, communication theory, extended reality research, media and diversity and media and society.

Chock held the Newhouse Endowed Chair of Public Communications from 2013 to 2016. She previously served as the interim director of the media studies master’s degree program. She is the former chair of the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association.

Previously, Chock taught and conducted research at Indiana University and its Institute for Communication Research. She also worked as an audiovisual librarian for the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Hawaii Public Library.