Associate Professor of Communication and Public Relations Dr. Todd Wold recently received the Top Paper Award at the Kentucky Communication Association (KCA) 2025 Conference on Sept. 26-27 for his paper titled: “Family privacy boundaries on Facebook when a child experiences a life-threatening illness: A qualitative case study analysis of a family’s Facebook community support page during a child’s bone-marrow transplant.”
“Social media technology has emerged over the past two decades, allowing patients and families to communicate about illness and treatment experiences with friends and loved ones,” Wold said. “This health communication paper presented a qualitative case study of a Facebook page used by a family to rally support from family and friends around a child’s bone-marrow transplant.”
“With the goal of evaluating the coordination of communication privacy and boundary turbulence within the family, the findings have potential implications for future research into communication privacy management theory in families where social media platforms are used to communicate health narratives about a child experiencing life-threatening illness and medical treatment,” Wold said.
According to KCA’s website, this year’s conference theme was “Communication Unbridled: Kentucky Spirited.” Presentations focused on instructional, interpersonal, mass, organizational, small group, applied, health, political, intercultural, and rhetorical communication; public relations and advertising; language/social interaction; mediation/dispute resolution; and performance studies.
Before coming to Asbury in 2016, Wold served as chair and professor of communication arts at a Christian university following a long corporate career at Ameriprise Financial working in public relations, advertising, and marketing. His research interests include the political economy of social media and crowd patronage platforms, the digital disintermediation of faith practices in church communities, and transcendence in filmmaking.
Asbury professors and students have received several awards throughout this year.
This summer, Professor of Screenwriting and Associate Dean (School of Communication Arts) Sean Gaffney, adjunct professor Shun Lee Fong, and Media Communication major Sabina Boyer ’27 received screenwriting awards from the Faith & Family Filmmakers Association (FAFF). Multiple Asbury alumni also won Emmy Awards this year for NBC Olympic Coverage.
The Asbury University School of Communication Arts offers Traditional Undergraduate programs in Communication, Media Communication, Multimedia Journalism, and Theatre and an Online Multimedia Design degree. Graduate programs include the M.A. in Communication; M.A. in Digital Storytelling; M.A. in Instructional Design, Innovation & Leadership; MFA in Film/TV Production; and MFA in Screenwriting. Learn more: asbury.edu/graduate.