About Me

Lake Superior during fieldwork
Hiya! My name is Ava Francesca and I'm an Information and Media PhD Candidate and University Enrichment Fellow in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Michigan State University. I am advised by Dr. Kjerstin Thorson.

Research Interests

My work focuses on how residents in rural, remote, and post-industrial North American communities learn about public issues amidst changing technology, digital access disparities, and declining local news. This includes how critical information is produced and circulated by non-news actors, like non-profits, local governments, and municipal services, alongside news media.

My research highlights the role of place identity in critical information access and dissemination, particularly in the northern Great Lakes region. My dissertation examines this within the regional context of Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula(UP) and critical health and safety information.

I love mixing ethnographic and computational methods to tackle these questions. I have been conducting fieldwork in the UP since Summer 2022. I pair these insights with textual analysis of digital trace data, such as Facebook posts, as well as spatial visualization (using R and ggplot) of public datasets and trace data.

Professional Affiliations and Service

Since 2021, I have been the graduate student lab manager in the Civic Infrastructure Lab . I am also an affiliate with the Rural Computing Research Consortium , as well as a Research Fellow with the Quello Center .

Outside of Michigan State, I am an affiliate with the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life . I also serve as a graduate student liaison to both the AEJMC History Division and AEJMC Communication Theory and Methods Division.

Pre-PhD Program

I’m a non-traditional student from a low-income background. After three attempts at community college in two states, I earned my associate degree in 2015 from Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 2017, I moved from Duluth, Minnesota to Chicago and was Loyola University Chicago’s School of Communication’s first dual-degree student. I concurrently completed my Bachelor of Arts in Advertising (2019) and Master of Science in Global Strategic Communication (2020) while juggling between two and four jobs. (I would say that my stints as a chandler (aka candlemaker) and a chicken-sitter provided the best perks during this period).

Previous creative and activist work includes collaborating with and coordinating distribution for a feminist Zine collective; designing, producing, and managing a size-inclusive, femme vintage reproduction apparel line; and several years, on-call overnight, as a crisis hospital advocate for survivors of sexual violence.

Hobbies

"The Grandparents"
Pushkin (aka Grandpa) is 20 (right) and Captain (aka Grandma) is 16 or 17 (left)
When I'm not studying, my interests include reading, public history and industrial heritage(think “grains and trains”), learning Brazilian Portuguese and practicing with my friends, being in nature, film photography, and listening to music (which includes building A LOT of Spotify playlists).

I really enjoy tinkering around with computers and programming languages when I'm not using them for work. If given the chance, I will heavily proselytize R while trying to convince you to convert to a Zotero-Rmarkdown/Quarto note-taking workflow and to turn that old MacBook into a dedicated Linux machine (sorry in advance). I've been really into building Apple Shortcuts lately.

I also spend a lot of time in "The Retirement Community" which consists of 2 sassy geriatric cats, nicknamed "The Grandparents", and the botanic garden in my house.