Join us for an event showcasing USC Annenberg PhD student research, listed below. 

Kirsten Crowe, Valorant Americas’ League: Collapsing Fan/Player Hierarchies
This project examines Valorant Americas’ League fandom through participant observation at games this past June and July. 

Yvonne Gonzales, Queering the Third Place: Dungeons & Dragons at Your Friendly Local Game Store
This paper explores the early findings of a multi-year ethnography project on D&D nights at local game stores, with a focus on the historical transformation of game shops from historically white, male, cis-gender spaces, into ones in which queerness is the norm.

Fiona Li, Persuasive Messages with Compliments: Effects on Compliance and the Role of Mindfulness
This study examines how compliments embedded in persuasive messages influence compliance behavior, with a focus on mindfulness as a covariate. By conducting a survey experiment and analyzing responses from individuals with varying levels of mindfulness, the research explores the complex effects of mindfulness and different types of compliment-embedded persuasive messages on compliance behavior across different types of requests.

Kedi Zhou and Yuqi Yang, Narcissistic My God I Love It: Understanding fans’ subjective well-being in K-pop random play dance
This research adopts ethnography and interviews to understand how K-pop random dance functions as a form of fan engagement and cultural expression and analyze how the components of random dance events — such as mastering choreography, connecting with fellow fans, and expressing oneself through dance — contribute to their well-being.