Alicia Mason

About Dr. Alicia Mason Collins

Dr. Alicia Mason joined the PSU Department of Communication in Fall of 2009. She is a former broadcaster, who worked with local media outlets KOAM and KKOW in SE Kansas, prior to receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Mason's work has been presented at several national and international conferences, and appears in top academic journals including: Communication Quarterly, Communication Monographs, Innovative Abstracts, Health Communication, Journal of Intercultural Communication, and the International Journal of Communication and Health. Mason’s academic interest in risk/crisis communication spans organizational/business, public health, and environmental contexts.

Dr. Mason was the 2013 recipient of the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, and the 2014 recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award in the College of Arts and Sciences. Mason is the director of the Communication Research Lab at Pittsburg State University, co-advisor for the PR/Ad club, and teaches within both the Public Relations and Advertising tracks within the department. Dr. Mason is a contributor to the Joplin Area Advertising Federation, the departmental representative for the Bachelors of Integrated Studies [SSRM] degree program: Society, Sustainability and Resource Management, and currently serves as a Professor in the Department of Communication.

Education

Teaching Emphases

Peer-reviewed Journal Article(s)

• Mason. A.M., & Miller, C. H. (2012). Inoculation message treatments offer insights for curbing non-communicable disease development. Pan American Journal of Public Health. 34(1), 29–35.

• Mason, A.M. (2014). The impact of media frames and treatment responsibility within the situational crisis communication theory framework. Corporate Reputation Review. 17, 78-90.

• Mason, A.M. (2014). Overcoming the dual-delivery stigma: A review of patient-centeredness within the Costa Rican medical tourism industry. International Journal of Communication and Health, 4, 1-9.

• Mason, A.M. & Miller, C.H. (2015). The ability of inoculation to confer resistance to deceptive health-nutrition related advertising claims. Health Education Journal, 75(2), 144-157. doi:10.1177/0017896915569365

• Spencer, L. & Mason, A.M. (2016) Images of Alzheimer’s: A visual analysis of the imagery used to globally market Alzheimer’s services online. International Journal of Communication and Health, 9, 1-11.

• Mason, A.M. (2016). Media frames and crisis events: Understanding the impact on corporate reputations, responsibility attributions, and negative affect. International Journal of Business Communication. doi:10.1177/2329488416648951

• Mason, A.M., Drew, S. & Weaver. D. (2017). Managing crisis-induced uncertainty: First responder experiences from the 2011 Joplin-Duquesne tornado. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. 23, 231-237.

• Hooey, C., Mason, A.M. & Triplett, J. (2017). Beyond greening: The challenges to adopting sustainability in Higher Education. The Midwest Quarterly, Spring, Vol 3, pg. 280-291.

• Mason, A.M., Hooey, C., Triplett, J., & Pogue, J. (2017). Deflection, disassociation, & acknowledgement: A content analysis of the 2011-2014 media framing of hydraulic fracturing and Oklahoma earthquakes. Journal of Science Communication 16(4), 1-21.

• Mason, A.M., Flores, L., Liu, P., Tims, K., Spencer, E. and Gire, T.G. (2019). Disaster communication: An analysis of the digital communication strategies used by the medical tourism industry during the 2017 Caribbean hurricane season.  Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, 2(3), pp. 241-259. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTI-03-2018-0021

• Mason, A.M. (2019). Sulitest®: A mixed-method, pilot study of assessment impacts on undergraduate sustainability-related learning and motivation. Journal of Sustainability Education, 20,  ISSN: 2151-7452.

• Mason, A.M., Spencer, E., Macek, K., Smith, A., Potter, S. (2019). Using the theory of emotional stakeholders to experimentally test the influence of proxy communicators about organizational crises in digital news reports. International Journal of Business & Social Science 10(4), pg. 25-38.

Book Chapter(s)

• Wright, K. & Mason, A.M. (2013). Medical tourism: The role of communication regarding risks and benefits of obtaining medical services abroad. In (Eds) M. H. Eaves Applications in Health Communication. Kendall Hunt Publishing.

• Mason, A.M. & Triplett, J. (2015). Controlling environmental crisis messages in uncontrollable media environments: The 2011 case of blue-green algae on Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees, OK. In (Eds) Communicating Climate Change and Natural Hazard Risk and Cultivating Resilience. Springer Publishing.

• Mason, A.M. & Spencer, E. (2016). Health communication: Insights for quality H2H delivery in medical tourism. In Eds (DeMicco) Medical Tourism: Hospitality Bridging Healthcare (H2H) and Wellness. Apple Academic Press.

• Mason, A.M., Bhati, S., Jiang, R. & Spencer, E. (2020). Medical tourism patient mortality: Considerations from a 10-Year review of global news media representations. In Global Issues and Innovative Solutions in Healthcare, Culture, and the Environment. Forthcoming 2020.

• Compton, J. & Mason, A.M. (2020). Inoculation theory & Narrative. In Eds Dunn, S.S & Nisbett, G. Implications and Innovations in Persuasive Narrative. Forthcoming 2020.