EMBODIED MEDIA COGNITION LAB
RESEARCH
Our Current Focus
The Embodied Media Cognition Lab examines how individuals attend to, process, remember, and respond to media and strategic communication across traditional, digital, immersive, and AI-mediated environments.
Located in Room AJ 285B within the Unified Research Lab, the lab integrates media psychology, motivated cognition, strategic communication, and psychophysiology to investigate how message characteristics, technological affordances, and audience predispositions shape attention, emotion, cognition, judgment, and behavior.
Current research includes corporate social responsibility and advocacy communication, prosocial communication, journalism and AI, emerging and immersive media, advertising, and other forms of mediated communication. Our research combines psychophysiological measures with self-report, behavioral, and memory-based measures.
Research capabilities include:
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MediaLab software for stimulus presentation, with continuous response measurement, secondary task reaction times (STRTs), and signal detection research.
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BIOPAC MP160 data acquisition with ECG (electrocardiogram), EDA (electrodermal Activity), and facial EMG (electromyography).
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Behavioral, self-report, memory, and other experimental research methods.
SELECTED RESEARCH OUTPUTS
2026 — Peer-Reviewed Publications
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Chung, S., Lee, Y., & Sparks, J. V. Motivated message processing as a mechanism of audience engagement with corporate social advocacy: A study of identity and sociopolitical context. Communication Monographs, 93(3), 351–372.
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Chung, S., & Sparks, J. V. Media format and content valence in environmental CSR communication: Evidence from 2D and 360-degree videos. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 1–16.
2024 — Conference Presentations
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Chung, S., Lee, Y., & Sparks, J. V. The effects of political ideology and issue controversy on motivated cognitive processing of corporate social advocacy (CSA) communication messages. Paper presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Philadelphia, PA.
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Lee, Y., Chung, S., Sparks, J. V., Jamil Pour, A., Sa-ad, M. M., & Murphy, L. Visual strategies in “child hunger” charity messages: Effects of helper and child images on psychophysiological and motivated processing. Paper presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Philadelphia, PA.
2023–2024 — Funded Research
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Advance Program Grant — $10,000
Ball State University Sponsored Projects Administration
Co-Principal Investigators: YoungAh Lee, Sungwon Chung, and Johnny Sparks
2023 — Conference Presentations
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Chung, S., Lee, Y., Sparks, J. V., Morrell, C. T., & Murphy, L. Are you with me or them? The motivational and cognitive effects of political ideology and issue controversy in corporate social advocacy (CSA) communication. Paper presented at the International Communication Association, Toronto, Canada.
2021 — Conference Presentations
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Chung, S., & Sparks, J. V. Cognitive and attitudinal processing of visual frames in 360-degree environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages. Paper presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, New Orleans, LA.
Lead Researcher
Sungwon Chung, PhD, EdD
Associate Professor of Strategic Communication
Dr. Chung is the founder and lead researcher of the Embodied Media Cognition Lab. His research examines how media and strategic communication shape attention, cognition, emotion, memory, judgment, and behavior. Grounded in media psychology and motivated cognition, his work integrates psychophysiological, behavioral, and self-report methods across strategic communication, corporate social responsibility and advocacy, journalism and AI, automated and immersive media, and other emerging communication technologies.
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Research Faculty
YoungAh Lee, PhD
Professor of Strategic Communication
Dr. Lee’s research delves into the impact of strategic communication on managing social media reputation, particularly in the context of social and political polarization. With a current emphasis on corporate social advocacy, she is exploring how polarized public opinion reacts to corporate social advocacy by analyzing boycotters and advocates through social network analysis and psychophysiology.
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Johnny Sparks, PhD
Professor of Journalism
Dr. Sparks’ research employs social scientific theories at the intersection of communication and psychology to explain how the structure and content of media messages affect individuals' motivation, emotions, and cognitive processing. His current research also addresses pedagogical and leadership issues in mass communication.
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