Sahara Byrne
Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
What I do
Sahara Byrne is interested in why strategic messages that are designed with good intentions sometimes have the opposite effect. She studies message disruption processes and a theoretical construct known as “noise.” Her work takes a developmental approach, focusing on why children and adolescents sometimes resist messages with pro-social intentions. Her research aims to explain why this “boomerang effect” is likely to occur in response to many types of strategic messages, especially those that are policy driven and pro-social, such as government-imposed health campaigns. She also examines deliberate attempts to disrupt message effects, such as efforts to prevent negative impacts of the media on children.
Sahara Byrne received her B.F.A in Film and Television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, Santa Barbara.