Dr. Jessica Ghilani, Associate Professor of Communication (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh), teaches and researches media studies, information integrity, propaganda and persuasion, mass communication history, digital culture, telecom policy, social media platforms and more.
Her recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Propaganda and Public Relations in Military Recruitment, American Journalism: A Journal of Media History, Historiography in Mass Communication, and Minerva Journal of Women and War.
Her book manuscript, "Selling Soldiering: Advertising for US Army Volunteers since 1914,” examines the origins of volunteer military recruitment strategies, tracing them deep into the history of 20th century conscription, before the draft’s overturn in 1973. It is under contract and being revised with Lexington Books.
Dr. Ghilani’s research has been supported and recognized through grant and fellowship funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and National Air and Space Museum, the Aviation Space Writers Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the University of Pittsburgh, and Duke University Special Collections Libraries.
In 2019, Ghilani was the first Pitt Greensburg faculty member to receive one of the Provost’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence’s Innovation in Education Awards. Funding supported the creation of the university’s first stand-alone communication course dedicated to examining the history, growth, and influence of disinformation in digital realms, offered initially in fall semester, 2020.
In 2024, Ghilani was invited to present to White House officials in the Office of Science and Technology Policy during a workshop for the National Nanotechnology Initiative. She discussed algorithmic social media platforms and mis- and disinformation in a presentation titled, “Science Communication, Misinformation, and Trust.”
Dr. Ghilani an affiliate scholar with Pitt’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, and she studies information ecosystems through Pitt Cyber’s Civil Resilience Initiative, on the Oakland campus. She is affiliated faculty with Pitt Greensburg’s Center for Applied Research where she provides social media analysis to regional clients.
Ghilani offers frequent media commentary, having been quoted and interviewed for newspapers, television, radio, and digital native news media outlets within and beyond the SWPA region. In 2024, she began serving as social media expert contributor on Talk Pittsburgh, bringing insights about developing tech news for the CBS Pittsburgh KDKA television program. She appears 1-2 times a month.
In her commitment to community outreach, she has delivered public lectures and workshops about information integrity, mis/disinformation, and digital media literacy since 2018 to libraries, community centers, industry groups, and more across SWPA. Ghilani cofounded and served as advisory board member of Covey: a social media company that participated in the nationally-ranked startup accelerator, Alphalab. She completed her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh and grew up nearby in the Monongahela River Valley of Washington County. She currently resides in the city of Pittsburgh with her husband and their two daughters.
Courses Taught at Pitt Greensburg
- Mass Communication and Society
- #FakeNews: Journalism and Democracy in an Era of Contested Truths
- Digital Media Studies
- Communicating Gender in Film
- Communication and Cultural Studies
- Digital and Professional Communication
- History of American Advertising
- Research Methods in Communication Studies (Quantitative, Qualitative, and Critical)
- Composition 3 for Communication Majors
- Organizational Communication
- Senior Capstone Seminar in Communication
- Communication Process: Intro to Human Communication
- Mass Communication Process
- Public Speaking
