Media, Masculinity, and Intimate Partner Violence

Introducing New Working Group for 2025-2026: Media, Masculinity, and Intimate Partner Violence

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence estimates 25% of women experience intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetimes. Lubbock women are at an even higher risk. In 2018, Lubbock County’s domestic violence rate (1,496 per 100,000 people) was twice the state average (690 per 100,000 people), according to the Lubbock Area United Way. In 2020, Lubbock PD reported that domestic violence is the leading cause of homicides in the area.

Further, because toxic masculinity arises from many sources – ranging from family life to media messaging to literature – addressing it requires a multipronged approach. As each team member studies gender from a different perspective, we will overlap our expertise to reveal the connections between our fields and ways various forms of communication create, enforce, and/or challenge ideologies about masculinity, abuse, and healing.

With experts from the social sciences, media, addiction studies, literature, and women’s and gender studies, our team seeks to illuminate cultural misunderstandings about toxic masculinity and its relationship to IPV, while also working to determine and dispense of the sources of these misconceptions.

Media, Masculinity, and Intimate Partner Violence Team Members:

Dr. Megan Condis is an Associate Professor of games studies in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media Industries at Texas Tech University.  Her research primarily focuses on the ways that technologies come to be read as signifiers of specific racialized, gendered, and sexualized identities.  Her book, Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture (University of Iowa Press, 2018), argues that the proliferation of gendered narratives in and around video game culture has produced a meta-game of masculine performance that one must play to be considered a hardcore gamer.  She has also done research into the ways in which white supremacist groups attempt to recruit within online gaming spaces.  She is currently an assistant editor at  the journal Analog Game Studies and is the Vice Chair of the Game Studies Division for the National Communication Association.

Dr. Devin Mills is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community, Family, and Addiction Sciences at Texas Tech University, where he has served since 2019. His research focuses on substance use disorders and behavioral addictions, particularly video gaming and gambling disorder, using social and personality psychology frameworks. In addition to studying the development of addictive behaviors, Dr. Mills investigates the factors that support sustained recovery across the lifespan. His work has been supported by the International Center for Responsible Gaming, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, and a number of sponsored projects with non-profit organizations. He earned his Ph.D. from McGill University in 2017 and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Rutgers University's Center for Gambling Studies from 2017 to 2019.

Dr. Jessica Smith is the author of Lady Smith(University of Akron Press, 2025). She is currently an Associate Professor of Practice at Texas Tech University, where she also directs the MFA in Creative Writing. Her research focuses include contemporary American poetry, contemporary American memoir, literary trauma theory, and representations of intimate partner violence in American popular culture. Her poetry, essays, and criticism can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, The Rumpus, and other journals. She is a co-director of the Sexism/Cinema film series and faculty director for the LHUCA Literary Series. She is the recipient of support from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. 

Dr. Miglena Sternadori is Professor and Chair of the Department of Journalism & Creative Media Industries. Her research is driven by the desire to understand how fundamental social categories, especially gender and sexuality, influence the production and perception of mediated messages across contexts. Her scholarship includes one solo-authored book, two edited collections, more than 35 articles and book chapters, over 50 refereed conference papers, and over two dozen essays and book reviews. She is the lead editor of the Handbook of Magazine Studies (Wiley, 2020) and has published in top-quartile journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Mass Communication & Society, Women’s Studies in Communication, Convergence, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Journal of Media Psychology, and Journal of Consumer Marketing, among others. 

Dr. Dana Weiser is a Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, as well as a faculty affiliate of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Texas Tech University. Her research primarily focuses on how family experiences shape adults' relationships and sexual behaviors. She studies how—and what—families teach us about infidelity, sexual health, and sexual and relationship violence, as well as the predictors of and reactions to infidelity. She has received external funding from the National Science Foundation and Humanities Texas as a co-principal investigator on interdisciplinary research teams. Dr. Weiser has served as Chair of the Feminism and Family Science Section of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR), co-chairs the NCFR Sexuality Focus Group, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and the Journal of Family Theory and Review. At Texas Tech University, she has been recognized with the President’s Academic Achievement Award and honored as an Integrated Scholar.