Academic Research

I study the communicative processes and technologies that enable organizational transformation and social change.

My research is motivated by an interest in how technology is changing what it means to belong in society. My current agenda examines how narratives, myths, and affect operate in digitally mediated processes of meaning-making with projects spanning nostalgia, misinformation, and the epistemic cultures of public relations.

With nearly 20 years of experience as a communications consultant working for the private sector and within higher education, I bring to my research substantive and theoretical interests at the intersection of the sociology of storytelling, organization studies, and political communication.

Intellectual wayfindings

My research interests, like everything in the social world, have been a process, shaped in interaction and in socially contextual ways.  Cultivated during my master’s studies in sociology at the University of Chicago, this processual ontology has influenced how I think about the questions of social life that have vexed me for years and offers a heuristic for understanding my intellectual journey and interests.  As I pursued a career in the public relations industry, I found myself questioning what I was really doing with words as J.L. Austin famously asked.  Can a corporation hitch its meaning to a social movement? What does it really mean to “construct” a narrative and with what effect on human behavior within organizational contexts? 

My industry experience left me relentlessly curious about the permeability of boundaries in the social world, as I remained steeped in empirical data revealing the paradoxes of organizational life.   

Research Interests

  • “Fever Dreams and the Future of Nostalgia.”

  • “Live Free and Die: COVID-19 as a Vector for Moral Judgment and Risk-Taking.”

  • “Myths and Markets: The Emergence of the Policy Program at the University of Chicago”

  • “PR as an Epistemic Culture”

Manuscripts

Conference papers

Nostalgia

Conner, V.A. “Fever Dreams and the Future of Nostalgia.”

  • Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA (October 2023 - planned)

  • Backward Glances Biannual Graduate Student Conference, Northwestern University Screen Cultures Program, Evanston, IL (September 2022)

Epistemic Communities and Cultures

Conner, V.A. “PR as an Epistemic Culture: The Role of the Public Relations Profession in Managing Misinformation and Challenges to Epistemic Authority .”

  • International Communication Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON (May 2023 - planned)

Misinformation

Rojecki, A., Royal, P., and Conner, VA. “Live Free and Die: COVID-19 as a Vector for Moral Judgment and Risk-Taking.”

  • American Political Science Association Annual Conference, Montreal, QC (September 2022)

  • International Communication Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON (May 2023 - planned)

Works in Progress

Organizational Emergence

Conner, V.A. “Myths and Markets: The Emergence of the Public Policy Program at the University of Chicago.” MA Thesis, University of Chicago (August 2020)

“At a time when professional education is on the rise and the value of a liberal education remains in question as student debt loads skyrocket across America, this case study fills a critical gap in the historical record of the University of Chicago while also providing new empirical evidence to confront the question of the myth vs. the reality of the Ivory Tower, uncovering the narrative and linguistic mechanisms that lead to subtle, “covert” forms of organizational change and innovation. ”

Narrativity

Conner, V.A. “Professional Education and the Myth of the University of Chicago.” Seminar Paper, University of Chicago (March 2019)

“One observes the net effect of cohering the University myth into a purified ‘standard story’ - one characterized by the manifest destiny of a hero (the “Great University”) directed at an intellectual mission (pure knowledge) - over time to the minimization of anything that does not fit the myth, such as professional education. ”

“Myths, however stable as they may appear, are dynamic. While they can – and are often used – within organizations to justify and legitimate paradoxical organizational behavior, they also have the power to cross social space and temporalities in a way that catalyzes subtle, yet profound, organizational change.”

— Viki Askounis Conner