Natalie Jomini Stroud

Professor, Department of Communication Studies, UT Austin
Director, Center for Media Engagement, UT Austin

At ISOJ 2025, Natalie is a presenter for the research breakfast “Agenda-setting and online journalism: A Tribute to Max McCombs,” happening on Friday, March 28, at 8:00 a.m.

Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud (Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the School of Journalism, as well as the founding and current director of the Center for Media Engagement in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. The Center for Media Engagement examines commercially viable and democratically beneficial ways of improving media.

Talia’s research has received numerous national and international awards, including the International Communication Association (ICA)’s prestigious Outstanding Book Award in 2012 for her book Niche News: The Politics of News Choice, the inaugural Public Engagement Award from the Journalism Studies Division of the ICA in 2019, and the 2016 Bill Eadie Distinguished Award for a Scholarly Article and 2011 Michael Pfau Outstanding Article Award from the National Communication Association.

Talia serves on the editorial boards of seven academic journals and the advisory boards of SciLine, a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Social Science Research Council’s Media & Democracy Initiative. Her research has appeared in Journal of Communication, Journalism, Political Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and New Media & Society. Talia twice received the Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the Communication Studies Graduate Community.