Nicole Messina is a Ph.D. candidate at Klein College of Media and Communication, interested in media largely consumed by children, adolescents and young adults. Her research focuses on media consumers’ conscious and subconscious engagement with entertainment media and where this meets forms of edutainment and health communication. She has a particular interest in the parasocial interactions and relationships that develop between individuals and media figures. Through her research she seeks to better understand how such interactions with media and media figures can become a catalyst for attitude and behavior change among individual viewers and consumers. Currently Nicole’s intellectual interests intersect with research in public health, as well as the relationship between media consumption and young consumers’ development of social/group identities and sense of self.