Melissa Tully studies international communication, media in developing countries, media technologies, and philanthropy and nonprofit communication. Her research focuses on the convergence of mobile and Internet technologies and how nonprofit organizations grapple with theses technologies. She is particularly interested in open-source platforms, tools that combine Internet and mobile components, and social media. Tully’s dissertation examines how Kenyan civil society organizations, including NGOs, nonprofit groups, and local community-based organizations, incorporate media technologies into their work.

Tully has conducted research in Kenya, Ghana, and Burundi. Her dissertation is based primarily on ten months of fieldwork supported in part by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant.

Tully has taught Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling, Social Media Today, and Philanthropy Communication in a Digital World. She is the current co-vice chair of the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at AEJMC. 

Publications

Vraga, E. K., Tully, M., Akin, H. & Rojas, H. (2012). Modifying perceptions of hostility and credibility of news coverage or an environmental controversy through media literacy. Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism. 13(7), 942¬–959. doi: 10.1177/1464884912455906

Tully, M. & Ekdale, B. (2012). The Team online: Entertainment-education, social media, and cocreated messages. Television and New Media. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/1527476412455952

Tully, M. (2011). Ushahidi and the Kenyan blogosphere: Alternative online media in the 2007 post-election crisis in Kenya. In B. A. Musa & J. K. Domatob (Eds.), Communication, culture, and human rights in Africa (pp. 153–171). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Tully, M. (2010). All’s well in the colony: Newspaper coverage of the Mau Mau Movement, 1952–1956. InT. Falola & H. Ter Haar (Eds.),Narrating war and peace in Africa(pp. 56–75). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Vraga, E. K., Tully, M. & Rojas, H. (2009). Media literacy training reduces perception of bias. Newspaper Research Journal, 30(4), 68–81.

Fair, J. E., Tully, M., Ekdale, B., & Asante, R. K. B. (2009). Crafting lifestyles in urban Africa: Young Ghanaians in the world of online friendship. Africa Today, 55(4), 29–49.