The communication discipline equips undergraduate students with the skills to interact ethically and effectively with the world. Increasingly, students seeking careers in communication related fields need to be prepared to use these skills across different areas. This paper argues that the communication discipline should embrace and implement anti-racist pedagogy as a way to create effective and ethical communicators who are equipped to create positive organizational and social change. This move toward anti-racist pedagogy is vital because college students need to be equipped to confront systemic injustice that is becoming more widely acknowledged because of digital communication and social media. Anti-racist pedagogy is the method and curriculum used to teach content in reference to race, ethnicity and power dynamics. The goal of this pedagogy is to move beyond celebrating diversity and towards action. “Anti‐racist pedagogy seeks to eliminate social oppression through reflection and action,” (Basque and Britto, 2019, p. 2). It challenges individual and systemic oppression at the interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels, (Blakeney, 2005). Utilizing an Anti-racist pedagogy can promote the inclusivity of people from historically marginalized groups to the communication discipline and open spaces for the exchange of ethical and effective ideas between people of different backgrounds. Anti-racist pedagogy is effectively being used in a variety of disciplines. The expected result of this research is an articulation of the value of this framework specifically within the communication discipline.

Governments and NGOs are increasingly leveraging social media to share important health information. Sharing public health information on social media is particularly valuable in developing countries, such as Pakistan, with poor-quality health information systems. The BAANG social network allows users in rural Pakistan a potential medium for sharing health information by allowing users to call in, record audio posts, and listen to posts. This study was tested using data from 6000 users on the platform during the early period of COVID-19 information dissemination. Preliminary analysis of the BAANG data suggests that usage patterns vary remarkably across users - some call in once while others post frequently. This study determines whether users who receive more engagement with their posts subsequently engage with the platform more, and are thus exposed to more health information. We define engagement as 1) quality engagement based on post quality, and 2) random engagement based on the time users post. By analyzing post quality ratings and the time of each post, we find that random and quality engagement both have significant effects on future engagement and thus exposure to public health information. We also conclude that quality engagement has a bigger effect than random engagement, with random engagement exposing users to twice as much health information and quality engagement more than doubling user exposure to health information.