Timothy R. Levine is an American communication professor, prolific researcher, and theorist. He is Distinguished Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at The University of Oklahoma. [1] Levine is credited as one of the most central and prolific researchers in the field of Communication Studies, [2] is known for his work as the creator of truth-default theory, his developmental work on the veracity effect, and editing of the encyclopedia of deception. [3] He is the author of Duped, published by The University of Alabama Press.
Levine was born in Scottsdale, Arizona and attended Northern Arizona University, where he received a BS in psychology, and West Virginia University, where he received a MA in communication in 1985. He earned a Ph.D. at Michigan State University in 1992.
Dr. Timothy Levine teaches and produces research on topics such as deception, interpersonal communication, persuasion, social influence, cross-cultural communication, and social scientific research methods. [4] Levine teaches graduate and undergraduate classes, and also does training for police, attorneys, and people in the intelligence and counterintelligence work industry. Before he held his current position at UAB, Levine has had teaching positions at Korea University, Michigan State University, Indiana University and University of Hawaii. Some of his contributions to the study of communication are developments of Information Manipulation Theory, Truth Default Theory, the Veracity Effect, the Probing Effect, and the Park-Levine Probability Model. Levine has had research funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense, [5] and the FBI.
Deception is the act of convincing one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the message has a tendency to believe it. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda and sleight of hand as well as distraction, camouflage or concealment. There is also self-deception. It can also be called, with varying subjective implications, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, ruse, or subterfuge.
Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationships among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about and analyzing key events, processes, and commitments that together form communication. Theory can be seen as a way to map the world and make it navigable; communication theory gives us tools to answer empirical, conceptual, or practical communication questions.
Molefi Kete Asante is an American philosopher who is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.
Jan A.G.M. van Dijk is professor emeritus of communication science at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, where he still works. His chair was called The Sociology of the Information Society. He lectured on the social aspects of the information society. Van Dijk was also Chair of the Centre for e-Government Studies and an advisor of and many governments and departments, including the European Commission and several Dutch ministries, city departments, and political parties.
Richard Newell Boyd was an American philosopher, who spent most of his career teaching philosophy at Cornell University where he was Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters. He specialized in epistemology, the philosophy of science, language, and mind.
Maxwell E. McCombs was an American journalism scholar known for his work on political communication. He was the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is particularly known for developing the agenda setting theory of mass media with Donald Lewis Shaw. In a 1972 paper, McCombs and Shaw described the results of a study they conducted testing the hypothesis that the news media have a large influence on the issues that the American public considers important. They conducted the study while they were both working at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The resulting paper, "The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media", has since been described as "a classic and perhaps the most cited article in the field of mass communication research in the past 35 years." McCombs has been described as, along with Shaw, "one of the two founding fathers of empirical research on the agenda-setting function of the press."
Mark L. Knapp is the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Professor Emeritus and a Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is internationally known for his research and writing on nonverbal communication and communication in developing relationships. He has also done research and published books on lying and deception. The Mark L. Knapp Award for career contributions to the study of interpersonal communication is awarded annually by the National Communication Association. The Mark L. Knapp Professorship, Moody College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, was established in 2017.
Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) is one of a number of theories that attempts to explain how individuals handle actual deception at the conscious or subconscious level while engaged in face-to-face communication. The theory was put forth by David Buller and Judee Burgoon in 1996 to explore this idea that deception is an engaging process between receiver and deceiver. IDT assumes that communication is not static; it is influenced by personal goals and the meaning of the interaction as it unfolds. IDT is no different from other forms of communication since all forms of communication are adaptive in nature. The sender's overt communications are affected by the overt and covert communications of the receiver, and vice versa. IDT explores the interrelation between the sender's communicative meaning and the receiver's thoughts and behavior in deceptive exchanges.
Information Manipulation Theory is a theory of deceptive discourse production, rooted in H. Paul Grice's theory of conversational implicature. IMT argues that, rather than communicators producing truths and lies, the vast majority of everyday deceptive discourse involves complicated combinations of elements that fall somewhere in between these polar opposites; with the most common form of deception being the omission of contextually problematic information, commonly known as white lies. More specifically, individuals have four different ways of misleading others: playing with the amount of relevant information that is shared, including false information, presenting irrelevant information, and/or presenting information in a vague or ambiguous fashion. As long as such manipulations remain undetected by recipients, deception will succeed. Two of the most important practical implications of IMT are that deceivers commonly use messages composed entirely of truthful information to deceive; and that because this is the case, our ability to detect deception in real-world environments is extremely limited.
Charles R. Berger was an American professor emeritus of communication at the University of California, Davis. Berger died on September 25, 2018, from health complications arising from cancer.
Jay F. Nunamaker Jr. is Regents Professor and Soldwedel Professor at the University of Arizona. Regents Professor is the highest faculty rank bestowed at the university, an honor reserved for the top 3% of scholars.
Judee K. Burgoon is a professor of communication, family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, where she serves as director of research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for the NSF-sponsored Center for Identification Technology Research. She is also involved with different aspects of interpersonal and nonverbal communication, deception, and new communication technologies. She is also director of human communication research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for Center for Identification Technology Research at the university, and recently held an appointment as distinguished visiting professor with the department of communication at the University of Oklahoma, and the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma. Burgoon has authored or edited 13 books and monographs and has published nearly 300 articles, chapters and reviews related to nonverbal and verbal communication, deception, and computer-mediated communication. Her research has garnered over $13 million in extramural funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Counterintelligence Field Activity, and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Among the communication theories with which she is most notably linked are: interpersonal adaptation theory, expectancy violations theory, and interpersonal deception theory. A recent survey identified her as the most prolific female scholar in communication in the 20th century.
Predicted outcome value theory introduced in 1996 by Michael Sunnafrank, posits that people seek information in initial interactions and relationships to determine the benefits of interpersonal relationships by predicting the value of future outcomes whether negative or positive. If a person predicts a positive outcome in the relationship this can lead to increased attraction, however if a person predicts a negative outcome then he or she would pursue limited interaction or possibly relationship termination. The processes of predicted outcome value directly link to continued relationship development and communication as well as stronger attraction and intimacy within the relationship.
Ian Rumfitt is a British philosopher specialising in the philosophy of language and philosophy of math He is a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
David L. Altheide is an American sociologist. He taught for thirty-seven years at Arizona State University and is Regents' Professor Emeritus of the School of Justice and Social Inquiry there.
John Robert Putnam French Jr. was an American psychologist who served as professor emeritus at the University of Michigan. He may be best known for his collaboration with Bertram Raven on French and Raven's five bases of power in 1959.
Piers Gregory Robinson is a British academic researcher in the field of media studies. He is also a co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies and a founder of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (SPM). He has authored a number of publications on the CNN effect. He has attracted criticism for disputing the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War.
Truth-default theory (TDT) is a communication theory which predicts and explains the use of veracity and deception detection in humans. It was developed upon the discovery of the veracity effect - whereby the proportion of truths versus lies presented in a judgement study on deception will drive accuracy rates. This theory gets its name from its central idea which is the truth-default state. This idea suggests that people presume others to be honest because they either don't think of deception as a possibility during communicating or because there is insufficient evidence that they are being deceived. Emotions, arousal, strategic self-presentation, and cognitive effort are nonverbal behaviors that one might find in deception detection. Ultimately this theory predicts that speakers and listeners will default to use the truth to achieve their communicative goals. However, if the truth presents a problem, then deception will surface as a viable option for goal attainment.
David M. Markowitz is a communication professor at Michigan State University who specializes in the study of language and deception. Much of his work focuses on how technological channels impact the encoding and decoding of messages. His work has captured the attention of magazines and outlets in popular culture; he writes articles for Forbes magazine about deception. Much of his research has utilized analyses of linguistic and analytic styles of writing, for example, Markowitz's work on pet adoption ads was referenced in a website featuring tips on how to write better pet adoption ads.
Jeffrey T. Hancock is a communication and psychology researcher and professor at the College of Communication Stanford University. Hancock is best known for his research in fields of deception, trust in technology, and the psychology of social media. Hancock has been published in over 80 journal articles and has been cited in National Public Radio (NPR) and CBS This Morning.