Profile

Waseq's scholarship primarily explores how audiences engage with entertaining, interactive, and educational media content. With an umbrella focus on entertainment media effects, his research program interrogates two distinct trajectories. The first strand probes effective message design for strategic communication campaigns. In this research, Waseq studies serious games and virtual environments as tools for environmental communication. The second strand investigates the functional roles mediated entertainment can play for individuals and communities. In his most recent projects, Waseq examines user experience of cognitive enhancement from playing games, and novel avenues for building sense of community for diverse student bodies on campus through collegiate esports programs.