Muniba Saleem studies how media affects interpersonal and intergroup relations between racial, ethnic, and religious groups using social scientific methods. Recent work also examines how racial-ethnic minorities use and cope with media environments.
Muniba Saleem obtained her PhD in Social Psychology from Iowa State University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Saleem studies how media affects interpersonal and intergroup relations between racial, ethnic, and religious groups using social scientific methods. Applying social psychological theories, Muniba has studied the effects of media representations of marginalized groups in violent contexts on hostile attitudes and support for harmful policies towards depicted members (Saleem & Anderson, 2013; Saleem et al., 2017). Recent work has examined how the same negative media depictions influence minority members' social, psychological, and political outcomes (Saleem et al., 2023). Longitudinal and experimental research reveals that negative media depictions adversely influence immigrants' integration and trust in American politics (Saleem et al., 2019) but at the same time minorities are motivated to seek collective action to improve their ingroup's image and status in the larger society (Saleem et al., 2020; 2023). Dr. Saleem's work has been published in journals such as Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Child Development, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and American Psychologist. Her research has been funded by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, and Facebook.
Ph.D. in Social Psychology, Iowa State University.