Dr. Natalie Pennington
Kevin Stoker
Welcome to Conversations stories from the faculty of the Department of Communication Studies. We're happy to have with us Natalie Pennington, Dr. Natalie Pennington. And she will join me. I'm Kevin Stoker and Dr. Dave Nourse. My colleague here
Dave Nourse
Always a pleasure, my friend.
Kevin Stoker
And we're happy to talk to Natalie. You know, Natalie is one of the most interesting people I know, one of the things that really fascinates me about Natalie is that she's interested in online relationships, and social media. Natalie is, is that because you got we're in an online relationship somewhere back? Tell us about how you got interested in that.
Natalie Pennington
Yeah. Thank you for having me. I, my interest in this, I think started with Facebook started my freshman year of college. So for me, being on sort of that you as universities start to get social media and there's, you know, social media before that, have you MySpace, Friendster, that stuff. But it was really the friend level of that at first for me that I think was interesting. And then I was in a long distance relationship. So that was one thing that at the time, I also getting into COMM As I didn't start as a Comm major, started to kind of be interested in those things, too. And then just kind of shifted from there and was like, Oh, wait, I could study Facebook. Let's do that. And just kind of ran with it. And I and I also know you were a debater, this go back to high school, right as it does, yeah. And I did debate through college as well. I'm all through undergrad, and then coach through my masters and my PhD for Kansas State University and the University of Kansas and but then competed for Missouri State, which was my undergrad, Go Bears. And yeah, that that was that was what got me into calm. I was not so I started as a political science major, and then moved over to communication studies, my debate coach convinced me to take people laugh at what I say the story, a research methods class. And that was the one that got me like, Oh, my God, this is so cool. And they do in a really interesting way. at Missouri State. I think maybe I've told you about this before, where they have, you do all three methods in one class, and you rotate with the same 20 people for like six weeks, six weeks, six weeks. And so it's I do six weeks of quant six weeks of qual six weeks of rhetoric. They themed the class. So like you're gonna study conflict from these three different lenses. And I was like, all this is fun. I was like, wait, I can like do this for a living. And so kept doing it. Yeah, that really well, if you love that. That's exactly what you are really ready to become a professor. Most definitely. That was what my debate coach said, if he was like, if this is what you enjoy, this is what you should do. So so how did you get into debate? Debate was a sibling thing. So I'm the baby of the family. And my brother and my sister both did debate. And at first I tried to resist because I didn't want to be like my siblings. So I joined drama. And then I wasn't really sure I wanted to do drama. And so convinced the debate coach to let me switch classes by saying my siblings do it. And everybody knows. And my sister was particularly good at debate. And so being able to leverage her name, we went to different high schools, but being able to say all the interesting things, but yeah, so that's what i For me, it was God it got in because my siblings did it and then just kept doing it. Because I enjoyed it. We're family meals quite an interesting to your house. I mean, so me and my sister were raised by my dad, and my brothers were raised by my mom, and me and my sister were probably way too much of a handful for my dad, too. But he was very wonderful to deal with are are two years apart. And so different high schools. But yes.
Kevin Stoker
Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting.
Dave Nourse
So you've been at UNLV - we were just talking before we hit record - for five years. And in that time, we had as you mentioned, we had the COVID. Right. So the pandemic kind of upended everything, but also made that experience kind of fly by. Tell us where you're from initially, and kind of what got you to Las Vegas and what have you loved about being at UNLV?
Natalie Pennington
so many good things there. So as I mentioned, born in Texas actually says I love these podcasts because I went to Nick afterwards and said, Oh my gosh, I'm a Dallas baby too. And so we got to connect on that. But so born in Texas, raised mostly Missouri, Kansas, said Missouri State for my undergrad stuck around the Midwest because I just was comfortable and so did K State for my masters in the University of Kansas for my PhD. After I finished my PhD, I actually ended up working at Kansas State for a couple of years. My husband also worked there as the director of debate. And then we wanted something new. You know, I think we had enjoyed what Kansas offered but just kind of saw this opportunity. This position had opened here. I knew a couple Jayhawks here and so reached out to them and they said oh my gosh, we love it. Yes apply. And it has been so much fun. It's such a different environment. It was definitely weird at first adjusting to, like palm trees and desert. I love no humidity. But it's been a blast. You know, it's just it's me and my husband, we've got two dogs, two cats, we take the dogs out playing every week. And if we can hit up California, Utah, Arizona, just trying to make sure that we really get to enjoy the outdoors here. And that's been one of the biggest ones that I really love. Yeah, I know. You're a Passionate hiker. Yes. So tell me what are your favorite places to go? Where are your favorite places to go hiking? And so a big criteria for us is dog friendly. Right. So that definitely does create kind of a weird talking about, they're both rescues. So we adopted one when we were in Kansas, and she's a lab Pomeranian cattle dog chow chow mix.
Dave Nourse
Write that down, Kevin.
Natalie Pennington
Yes. My sister dubbed it a labyrinthian cattle shell. So, but Piper we say she's a little princess. And so we've had Piper for six years this weekend, actually. And then we adopted our second dog but Kobe during the pandemic. He came from Arizona, very similar background from paper to people who had had like hoarding houses, unfortunately, lots of pets. And so we brought the Colby into the fold. Even more breeds that I can. He's very cute, just a little ball of energy. He's got Viola and German shepherd. And um, so he's just very,
he locks on to something and goes for it. But so they gotta run the energy out of him. Right. So they're great to just take out. So in terms of our favorite spots, you know, we got an American beautiful pass and go out to Lake meet a ton. And that's a really big one for us just dive off into, you know, there's so many different spots you can do. You've never done the bowl of fire. That was really fun. People don't know about that. So my mark this is it like yeah, like me, yeah, biomarker 18.1. There's just like, four little spots, and you can park and actually, we bought Rebecca and Trevor out there with us wants to show it to him. But just a really beautiful, you gotta catch it like really early in the day, it's gonna get really hot, really fast. But um, but that's a favorite. I in the summer, when it's really, really hot. Out Mount Charleston, the Bristlecone trails, so there's upper and lower, those are really, really great. And in winter, if I want some snow, then those are good, too. But immediate. Those are my favorite. Yeah.
Kevin Stoker
That's great. That's great. Tell us a little bit more about what you study and kind of what your research focuses.
Natalie Pennington
So as you mentioned before, my first sort of foray into research was really looking at social media first on So Facebook is the most popular back in dating myself back in 2004, getting popular, you know, good when that high school 2006 public by 2008. And so really, primarily Facebook for a long time started to sort of expand that and look at also just general social media, social networking, interested in how people argue on it, make friends and friends. And so really interested in this more broader social network perspective of like strong ties and weak ties. How on social media, you know, it's I always do this in class, I say, Keep your hand up until, and the number of people that people are connected with on social media is just insane to me. Because research says in terms of our actual social interactions, and relationships, were really only pretty good at like, upper limit of 150 ish. But as we know, people are like, oh, yeah, I've got 5000 Facebook friends, I've got 10,000 Instagram followers. So those things are really interesting to me. More recently, especially, I think, in part due to the pandemic, expanding that even further to look at all types of communication technology. So we're really interested in how we can satisfy our connection and belongingness needs with others, whether that be weak ties, or strong ties, through phone calls, texting, video chat, just kind of all those different contexts. And then, you know, I like to collaborate. So also trying to find opportunities to connect with folks that I enjoy. So a little bit with politics, a little bit with wearable health trackers. So if it's got a tech part or relationship, you can probably sell me on wanting to be a part of a study.
Kevin Stoker
So in doing that, so I think I have a series of questions here. In doing that, what has been kind of your most fascinating discovery, as you've done this.
Natalie Pennington
There's two parts I'll say. So I think one that was just like, I kind of blew my mind and made me do additional studies, which I thought was a valuable like, this is something I found that made me want to keep asking questions was that in my dissertation, I asked people under what conditions they might unfriend or unfollow or hide somebody on social media. So you know, this person's oversharing way too much. I'm uncomfortable. theory says that. You go too fast too soon with disclosure and people pull back. But social media that's not the case. So overwhelmingly, the answer, really range of things like this person posts negative things about you online, and people overwhelmingly did nothing. There were some, you know, small significant effects because it's a big sample. So statistically, some things that I could say but really the visual here of this can Helling descriptive of overwhelmingly, we do nothing. I was like, what? Like why were you know, these aren't we're not talking to these people, we're not interacting with them. And so from a cost perspective saying like, what's the benefit? Why don't we just hit the unfriend button? And so that led me kind of down the rabbit hole to learn a little bit more about why those things happen.
Kevin Stoker
Do you think it's because we don't want to unfriend people because then we won't have so many friends.
Natalie Pennington
That's a little bit of it. So the biggest reasons that people offer that I think kind of resonated for me. One is that social capital, so it doesn't hurt to have these people in my network. And I don't know where I'm going to be when and I might need to know something that this person knows. Totally fair. There's also and this one, I think, is tricky, like nostalgia, when people don't unfriend people, because those are connected to a time and a place of who they were. And so there's some positive parts to that. And some negative parts of that too, I think. And the last one is face work, right? So what if I see this person, and they asked me why we're not friends anymore. And people are very concerned about I think that face side of it. And so try to be careful.
Kevin Stoker
And it's a part of the Facebook culture, too. That goes against by unfriending. Somebody you kind of go against what the, you know, format does what Facebook is all about?
Natalie Pennington
Yeah. And it's, it's a very active choice, right? I can passively just keep people in my network versus actively happening. And I think they make it like the number of times you have to be like, No, really, I'm sure. And so they don't make it easy for you. And then I think also just because they use the word friend, instead of follower that that can also kind of even perceptually make you feel like oh, but that's a friend. Well, no, not.
Kevin Stoker
My other question then is, what scares you about the things you've learned in your research.
Natalie Pennington
So I'll take one for that. That's one of the more recent studies I did. So as I said, I've kind of as I move past social media, and just broadly think about interesting questions about social interaction and our relationships and and whether or not technology can help us meet those needs, right, especially in a pandemic context, where you can't maybe see people face to face. And so we did a study where we asked people to share about experiences they had, where they had long time of social interaction low or social interactions high. So people in like the low condition, saying things like, you know, I just moved to a new place. So try to really get a capture a time period, not just like a day. And then high connection, people were like, I love everyone I work with, they're fantastic. And so but what we found is that it was countered a theory where people in the low connection, were not communicating as much. So like, in a fearful perspective, for me, it's recognizing a little bit of the rich get richer or poor get poor component, where theory says, I don't feel connected, I reach out, but that's not happening. And so trying to think about ways we can encourage or teach people about how to reach out when they're feeling low, effectively.
Dave Nourse
I'm curious, Natalie, you've been following social media and people's interaction on social media for a long time. Now, admittedly, you know, Facebook's almost a 20 year old company, recently, and I say like, maybe maybe even since just before COVID. But you know, we've spent so much time online throughout the pandemic. And, you know, people who may not have been comfortable on these platforms before ended up having to become comfortable on them. Has your research pointed to any sort of shift in people's behavior recently, as the novelty of social media has worn off? And kind of the reality is like for some of these relationships, it's only going to be online or through these virtual platforms? And has have things shifted, or people's behaviors or perceptions of the platforms shifted, as they become more ubiquitous?
Natalie Pennington
It's such a good question, I think there's a couple parts to it that I can get out. So one is I actually think it's fantastic for people to realize that there might be benefits to relationships existing online and only being online. And I teach a class, where I have people join online communities is an activity that they don't have, they have lots of choices, but one of them is to join a subreddit, and just engage and kind of think about that process. And then it gets them thinking about how you know, especially if you don't have that support network in person for something, the chances you can build meaningful relationships online. And that's something that people have been saying in the comm tech world since the 90s. And yet so often, literally, no, there has to be in person. So I do think there's less of a pushback on that. I've noticed that in sort of how my students talk. At the same time, sort of the flip here also is the the fear of social interaction. Now everything has been online. And now that I'm around people in person, I don't know how to act. And there was a lot of that fear expressed. I did a study where I interviewed and talk to college students about their experiences. And that was one was kind of repeated like I don't know, to be around people now. And so really thinking about that, how do we find a balance between the two, not fully online, not fully in person recognizing those benefits but still supporting those interaction needs?
Dave Nourse
Fascinating. Tell us a little bit about your teaching, we'd love to hear not only what you teach, but maybe if there's a particular philosophy that you've tried to, you know, you've developed over the years that you try to impart in the classroom. Just talk to us about that a bit.
Natalie Pennington
Yeah. So I've taught a lot of research methods classes, primarily for the department. And that's been a big one, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, I was our graduate coordinator for a couple of years. So also doing some graduate professional development classes. Those are probably some of my favorites. I just love that chance to get them when they're they're just starting are also, you know, in year two, planning and thinking about the future and say, What's next, and also networking with alumni. So that's been really fun. I'm definitely very much driven by how can I practically apply this content, so very much of a skills based approach? When I can I think theory is still fun. But sort of saying, you know, if I think about my day to day life, especially so I teach my favorite class was my online relationships course, I'm teaching it right now. Actually, I typically just teach it as a summer one class, but we got the chance to offer it. And it's just such a fun one for me to get people thinking about all the different creative ways we use tech, but expand a little also teaching help calm this semester. And that's been a nice shift as well. Just a fun, fresh class to teach. And I think there's some really fun and cool things to think about there. The students are developing public health campaigns, and I just got their topic choices last week, and there's so many fun topics like, Oh, this is cool. I enjoyed this.
Kevin Stoker
I have to admit, one of the things I've really marveled about you is how well you organize and structure things. As graduate coordinator, you did some amazing things, not only with recruiting, but also with just kind of managing and operating so efficiently and everything else and just getting so much done. Where did that kind of, you know, get more of you doing? You do the creative stuff online. But now we're talking about someone's very much analytical personality.
Natalie Pennington
Well, I'm a Virgo. So right, yes, no, but I'm very organized. I always have been, I think a part of that is just I've always been a very busy person. And so you have to structure your time to do all of the things that you want to do. So you know, in undergrad, I mentioned I traveled competitively for debate. But I also, I still graduated in four years, and I worked 40 hours a week at an Applebee's. So Apple, buddy. But so like, I had to make sure that I had everything scheduled. And so honestly, it felt like when I moved to grad school, and it was, you know, teaching coaching classes, I was like, Oh, this is okay. But it forced me to have to create additional sort of, because I had more time and how to balance that. But OmniFocus is really the final answer of my my statement. It is a software I use. That is fantastic. That helps keep me going on things. So it'll tell us more about that. Yeah, well, it's a scheduling platform that allows me to create all kinds of folders and lists and break them down by you know, I've got my one for every semester. It's a little ridiculous every semester, within those semesters, the teaching versus research within those, the classes within that. And so then I can set things for recurring. So I'm our research pool coordinator. Every two weeks, I want to message the students to remind them about studies that are available, I have a reoccurring reminder that on 10am on Tuesdays every two weeks, I send that note. And so it'll kind of message that to me. But I can also add additional notes, and I can share things. And so it just helps me sort of know the different parts because there are so many moving pieces.
Kevin Stoker
Well let's talk about your own social media. Yes. Tell me about managing that and kind of what what do you want to be known for? And what's been great going well for that in that regard?
Natalie Pennington
That is a fun question. I don't use a lot of social media, actually, I I'd say my most active is my Twitter. And that's a very professional facing, you know, engaging with academic Twitter. So connecting with other folks to talk about research and sort of learn to network in that way. My Facebook, I actually just use an example with my students in my class, sometimes I talk about our media use is really driven by our relationships, not the other way around. And so I'm on Facebook, not because I love Facebook, but because my husband quit Facebook, and his family wants to know what's going on with us. And that's where I'm most connected to his family. So now I'm stuck, which I adore his family and could talk to them in other ways too. And we do but Joe's like you can't quit because then they can't see the dogs. So that one's an easy one. But yeah, I I I lurk a lot on social media because I think it's important to know and think about how people communicate through them. But I'm very much not a poster. I tend to watch rather than write
Kevin Stoker
The observer.
Natalie Pennington
Yeah.
Dave Nourse
Natalie, you've, you're clearly an accomplished professional, you've done quite a lot, you've been very productive. If you look at your career, yeah, and you can go back to childhood, really, but if you look at this kind of span of time, talk to us about one of the experience, or maybe there's an experience that was really monumental, so to speak, and kind of forming who you are today. And, you know, if there's, if there's a moment or an experience or something that you participated with, clearly, you know, all of the work that you did with debate over the years had to have been important, but can you point to something that really helped shape who you are as professional and a person today?
Natalie Pennington
That's hard!
Dave Nourse
I know, I put you on the spot.
Natalie Pennington
I don't know that I know the answer to that one. You know, I do think every choice we make helps inform, of course, where we get to, I started at graduate school, very interested in qualitative work. I was very fearful of numbers. And so of course, as I mentioned, I now teach the quant classes I like the numbers. In my first year, my Ph. D. program, I actually joined my university to work with someone else, and met a faculty member who became my advisor, he poached me. But I would say that first study with Jeff was really the like, oh, there's like these big things you can do. You can work in a research team really kind of seeing the life of a study. I think that for me really helped really make clear that this is something that I want to do as a career and the chances that I could get from that. So that was a big one. I mean, I yeah, that's hard.
Dave Nourse
And it admittedly, you know, this is this is asking you kind of on the spot. What what shifted you the most or shaped you the most. So I'll ask you another question. That should hopefully be a lot easier since you spent 40 hours a week for many years working at Applebee's. A Do you ever frequent Applebee's anymore? And b If you did, what would you eat?
Natalie Pennington
What a fantastic question me and my sister joke about that because she ended up taking a job there. We did end up eventually liking each other I do very much adore my sister. High School windy Natalie not friends college windy and Natalie totally friends. But so she did end up getting a job at the one I worked at, as well. And I tell her sometimes I was like, you know, I think that was my main source of food for so long. Because you know, every weeknight when I'm in town, that's where I'm at. And then I'm traveling for debate. I have not eaten in an Applebee's in a very long time. I was a bartender and my final couple of years there as well. So I feel like I might still be able to make a perfect margarita if I wanted, which is an apple at Applebee's specialty with our little shaker and martini glass. There are definitely dishes that I'm like, was that good? Or was that weird? Then, you know, they had the fiesta lime chicken was a popular one back in the day. The number of people splitting oriental chicken salads, and crispy chicken bowls was quite high. I can't believe I'm like, you just caused me to remember way more of the Applebee's menu and I thought I would apologize. But no. If I was to eat there today, I would go for an old staple the appetizer sampler. Not oldie but a goodie. Right. You can get a little bit of key Cydia, a little bit of wings, some spinach artichoke dip,
Dave Nourse
Alright inside source, here Kevin. The inside source.
Kevin Stoker
So there's a place or an adventure you'd like to take, what would it be?
Natalie Pennington
Oh, well, I have one that's, that's been planned that I'm quite excited for. So me and my two best friends are taking a trip to Italy in spring 2024. And so this actually started getting planned during the pandemic and was kind of something fun for us to start, you know, two of the three of us are learning Italian, the third set Oh, well, if you all know it, I don't need to learn it. Yes. We're getting we're getting there. But so we had had a trip planned because we're friends and we like to try to get together and it was local, then it got canceled. And she was pretty bummed. And we said okay, well let's, you know, let's look bigger, what's the what's the big thing we can do, and sort of trying to find places that all three of us wanted to go and that came up. And so it's we're very all calm professors. So every conference, we've been getting together the past few now that we're in person, again, making steps towards concretely planning it and got our locations picked out and each of us are in charge of a section. I'm in charge of Rome. And then we're also looking at Florence and at Sicily. So I'm excited for that.
Kevin Stoker
It does sound exciting. Well, if there's something we should have asked you that we haven't, what would that be? The people want to really know about Natalie and everything else. What should we have asked?
Natalie Pennington
I mean, I think that the one thing people would most say is probably the dogs and hiking. I'm very vocal about my level of that. So anytime people have a good recommendation of a cool place to hike, I always want to hear it. I've got outside my office on the fourth floor. are cute pictures of the pets that I have to two cats, two old ladies. They run the house. They Yeah, the dogs are deeply terrified of the cats as they should be. But yeah, I can't think of anything. Um, yeah, you know, thank you for having me. It's really cool. I said, I loved listening to the earlier episodes. And I think as somebody who's interested in and friendship and connection, I was like, off. This is like making me learn new things about my colleagues and feeling closer to them and be, you know, again, got to go to Nick and say, Dallas to or, you know, Rebecca, talking about how we met our partners and same thing, Emma was also she met her partner through debate. And so that's how
Kevin Stoker
you met your Yeah. And I think it's interesting that Joe is not in went a different route in terms of his career. He was a communications person got it, did he get his PhD? He doesn't get his master's, and he was a debater and everything. But he has stayed kind of close to it.
Natalie Pennington
Yeah, he got out when we moved here. So that was an act of choice for him to try out some new new ways of doing things. But he works at a law firm here in town. So, so related, and I think that he loves that ability to sort of have a nine to five, come home, and then of course, gets to hear me talk through things and it's nice because he has that perspective. Right. But But yeah, we met in the master's program at K State and then he became the director of debate there and it's now happily enjoying a nine to five.
Kevin Stoker
Well, Natalie, it's been lovely having you with us. And it's just fascinating. I really interesting stuff.
Thank you so much for having me.
Dave Nourse
Thank you.
Kevin Stoker
Thank you.
