Ashley Anderson’s research centers around public engagement with and public opinion of scientific issues in various communication settings (social and digital media, organizations, and news media).

One area of her work explores how various tones (incivility, sarcasm, and humor) are used in scientific discussions and how audiences respond to them in the digital media environment. For instance, she has conducted work examining the effects of nasty comments, satiric viral videos, and stand-up comedy on perceptions of and engagement with science.

Her research also examines how people communicate around extreme weather events (e.g., regional flooding events). She has analyzed social media conversations during such events for evidence of how people 1) engage with the topic of climate change around extreme weather, and 2) express resilience (e.g., emotional responses, language of the collective). This line of research points to different opportunities to communicate with populations impacted by extreme weather.

Another theme of her work explores questions of communication in the development and distribution of science and technology. She is part of a multi-year grant funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, in which she is exploring information seeking and exchange in workplaces that employ novel, small, and wearable air quality sensors to monitor risk exposures. She has also researched how individuals develop trust in and preferences for information sources for emerging and controversial scientific issues.

Dr. Anderson is a member of the Center for Science Communication at CSU and is actively engaged in grant-funded research. Dr. Anderson is Teaching Chair of the Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Prior to joining the faculty at CSU in 2013, she completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.