Recent News:
January, 2018 Lauren's co-authored piece "They’re not looking at what you think: An examination of framing and visual attention." has been awarded a top 3 faculty paper award in the Sports Communication Interest Group at ICA, and will be presented in May, 2018 at the convention in Prague.
March, 2016 Lauren has accepted a position with The Media School at Indiana University and will begin serving as an assistant professor of sports media in Fall 2016.
April, 2015 Lauren's co-authored paper "The Canadian state of mind: Coverage of men and women athletes in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations primetime broadcast of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games" will be awarded second place paper in the Gendered Studies Division at BEA.
March, 2015 Lauren received the news that she will receive tenure and promotion, and will assume the rank of Associate Professor in August, 2015.
February, 2015 Lauren's article "What's the Best Exposure? Examining Media Representations of Female Athletes and the Impact on Collegiate Athletes' Self-Objectification" was accepted for publication, and will appear in 2015 in the Communication & Sport Journal.
December, 2014 Lauren's co-authored article "I'm going to Instagram it!: An analysis of athlete self-presentation on Instagram." was accepted for publication, and will appear in 2015 in Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media..
December, 2014 Lauren's co-authored article "Form or function? A five-year examination of ESPN The Magazine's "Body Issue." was accepted for publication, and will appear in 2015 in Visual Communication Quarterly.
July, 2014 Lauren was elected to the position of Vice-Chair of the International Association for Communication and Sport. She will serve a 4-year appointment, taking over as chair after two years.
November, 2013 Lauren was named the incoming Associate Director for the Public Relations program at Auburn University in the School of Communication and Journalism, and will begin serving in that position in the Spring of 2014.
November, 2013 Lauren's co-authored article "Missed programs (There is no TiVo for this one): Why psychologists should study the media" was accepted for publication, and will appear in 2014 in the journal of Perspectives on Psychological Science.
September, 2013 Lauren's co-authored article "Fanfare for the American: NBC's primetime broadcast of the 2012 London Olympiad" was accepted for publication, and will appear in 2014 in the Electronic News journal.
August, 2013 Lauren was invited to join the board of directors for the Sport Communication Research Alliance. Hear her introductory podcast here.
August, 2013 Lauren's co-authored article "Fanfare for the American: NBC's primetime telecast of the 2012 London Olympiad" was awarded the Top Paper award from the Entertainment Studies Interest Group at AEJMC.
July, 2013 Lauren's article "Girls ruin everything: An analysis of the framing of the removal of baseball and softball from Olympic competition" was accepted for publication, and will appear in Volume 9, Issue 2 in the Journal of Sports Media.
July, 2013 Lauren was invited to join the editorial review board for the journal Frontiers in Child Health and Human Development .
June, 2013 Lauren's co-authored article "(Re)calling London: The gender frame agenda within NBC's primetime broadcast of the 2012 Olympiad" was accepted for publication in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.
May, 2013 Lauren's co-authored article "Competing separately, medalling equally: Racial depictions of athletes in NBC's primetime broadcast of the 2012 London Olympic games" was accepted for publication in the Howard Journal of Communication.
April, 2013 Lauren's co-authored article "Presenting Me! An Examination of Self-Presentation in U.S. and Russian Online Social Networks" was accepted for publication in the Russian Journal of Communication.
April, 2013 Lauren was elected as Vice-chair elect for the Political Communication Division of the Southern States Communication Association.
February, 2013 Lauren will receive two distinguished paper designations from the 2013 IACS Summit on Communication and Sport.
July, 2012 Lauren's co-authored article "Nice Dig! An analysis of the verbal and visual coverage of men's and women's beach volleyball during the 2008 Olympic Games" was accepted for publication in the Communication and Sport journal.
July, 2012 Lauren's co-authored article "Identity in Twitter's hashtag culture: A sports media consumption case study" was accepted for publication in the International Journal of Sport Communication.
April, 2012 Lauren will receive the top paper award from the Political Communication Division of the Southern States Communication Association.
February, 2012 Lauren's dissertation, "Winning Isn't Everything: The Effect of Nationalism Bias on Enjoyment of a Mediated Sporting Event" has been accepted for publication and will appear in the International Journal of Sport Communication.
January, 2012 Lauren's co-authored article "International Facebook Faces: An Analysis of Self Inflicted Face-ism in Online Profile Pictures" has been accepted for publication and will appear in the Journal of Intercultural Communication.
August, 2011 Lauren was elected co-chair of the Membership and Recruitment committee of the Sports Communication Interest Group of AEJMC.
April, 2011 Lauren's co-authored article "Let's (Not) Talk About Sex: An Analysis of the Verbal and Visual Coverage of Women's Beach Volleyball During the 2008 Olympic Games" has been accepted for publication and will appear in the Journal of Sports Media in either the Fall of 2011 or Winter of 2012.
April, 2011 Lauren was elected to the position of Secretary/Vice-Chair Elect in the Mass Communication Division of Southern States Communication Association. Her term will span from 2011 - 2015.
April, 2011 Lauren received the top paper award from the Political Communication Division of the Southern States Communication Association.
November, 2010 Lauren was asked to serve as the Chair of the Roundtable and Panel Selection Committee for the Children, Adolescents and Media division of the International Communication Association. She will serve in this position for the 2011-2012 conferences.
August, 2010 Lauren began working for Auburn University, in the Department of Communication and Journalism as an Assistant Professor of Public Relations
April 2010 Lauren received the Top Student Paper Award for the BEA 2010 Research Symposium entitled "Sports Media: Transformation, Integration, Consumption Schedule". She presented her research amongst the most senior and renowned sports media scholars at the 2010 BEA Convention in Las Vegas in April, and her paper will appear in a book entitled Sports Media: Transformation, Integration, Consumption, edited by Andrew Billings, due out in 2011.
April, 2009 Lauren received the Robert Bostrom Young Scholar Award at the 2009 Southern States Communication Association conference. This award honors the most outstanding paper submitted to the convention each year by a graduate student. The recipient of this award is determined by the Vice President through a process established by the Vice President.
March, 2008 Lauren was invited to make a guest appearance on KKIQ and Diablo Valley 92.1 (KKDV) Radio discussing her paper "MySpace Goes to Washington: The Use of Social Networking Sites as a Political Campaign Tool"