معرفی
Melissa Aronczyk is a Professor of Media Studies at the School of Communication & Information, Rutgers University. She is a Faculty Associate with the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Affiliated Graduate Faculty with the Department of Sociology at Rutgers, and holds affiliations as a Faculty Fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology and a Research Affiliate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center on Digital Culture & Society. She also serves as an Adjunct Research Professor in Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University and has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics and the University of Helsinki.
Her research focuses on the intersection of public relations, climate change discourse, and corporate political power. Key projects include analyzing greenwashing strategies, climate disinformation, and the role of PR in shaping environmental narratives. Her book A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of Environmentalism (Oxford University Press) has garnered multiple awards, including the 2023 Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award and the 2022 PRIDE Award.
Recent publications and public talks examine how PR firms and corporations manipulate climate communication through tactics like net-zero pledges and fossil fuel advocacy. Her work has been featured in outlets such as The Nation, Financial Times, and The Washington Post, with podcast appearances on DRILLED and the New Books Network.
- 2023 Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award in Political Communication
- 2022 Outstanding Book Award in Public Relations, Innovation, Development and Educational Achievement (PRIDE)
Melissa co-hosts the Digital Ethnography Working Group at Rutgers and contributes to interdisciplinary research on digital culture and corporate media strategies. Her advocacy for critical approaches to promotional culture is evident in her edited volume Blowing Up the Brand and her prior book Branding the Nation.
