Biography

Dr. Suzannah Evans Comfort (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, 2016) is an assistant professor in the Media School at Indiana University. Her research focuses on environmental communication with a particular emphasis on news coverage of climate change as well as communicative tactics by environmental NGOs. Her work has been published in numerous journals, including Journalism, Science Communication, and Environmental Communication. Prior to earning her Ph.D., Comfort worked as the editorial director at Oceana, the world’s largest environmental organization dedicated to ocean conservation. There, she published the book The Perfect Protein: The Fish Lover’s Guide to Saving the Oceans and Feeding the World with Oceana CEO Andy Sharpless.

At IU, Comfort teaches courses related to journalism practice, media literacy, and environmental and science communication.

Recent publications include:

Comfort, S.E. (2020). Journalism as an advocacy tool: Negotiating boundaries of professionalism in the 20th century American environmental movement. Forthcoming in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020911076

Comfort, S.E., Tandoc, E., and Gruszczynski, M. (2019). Who is heard in climate change journalism? Sourcing patterns in climate change news in China, India, Singapore, and Thailand. Climatic Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02597-1

Comfort, S.E. (2019). “Audubon is not Audubon”: Journalism as communicative logic in the pages of an NGO-produced magazine, 1960-1976. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919837029

Comfort, S.E. and Hester, J. (2019). Three dimensions of social media message success by environmental NGOs. Environmental Communication 13(3): 281-286. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2019.1579746

Myrick, J. and Comfort, S.E. (2020). The Pope may not be enough: How emotions, populist beliefs, and perceptions of an elite messenger interact to influence responses to climate change messaging. Mass Communication and Society 23(1): 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2019.1639758

Myrick, J. and Comfort S.E. (2019). The Pope, politics, and climate change: An experimental test of the influence of news about Pope Francis on American climate change attitudes and intentions. The Journal of Religion, Media, and Digital Culture. https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-00802003

Comfort, S.E. and Park, Y.E. (2018). On the Field of Environmental Communication: A Systematic Review of the Peer-Reviewed Literature. Environmental Communiction 12(7): 862-875. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2018.1514315

Comfort, S.E. and Blankenship, J. (2018). Curated journalism: A field theory approach to journalistic production by environmental non-governmental organizations. Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918786402

Comfort, S.E. (2017). From ignored to banner story: The role of natural disasters in influencing the newsworthiness of climate change in the Philippines. Journalism, 1464884917727426.

Evans, S. (2016). Journalistic norms, cultural values, and coverage of climate change in the Philippines. Environmental Communication 10(4), 492-507. doi:10.1080/17524032.2015.1088459

Evans, S. (2015). Shark Week and the rise of infotainment in science documentaries.Communication Research Reports 32(3), 265-271.

Evans, S. & Riffe, D. (2015). Coverage Reflects Importance of Fishing to Community. Newspaper Research Journal 36(4), 441-454. DOI: 10.1177/0739532915618404

Myrick, J. & Evans, S. (2014). Do PSAs take a bite out of Shark Week? The effects of juxtaposing environmental messages with violent images of shark attacks. Science Communication 36(5), 544-569. doi: 10.1177/1075547014547159