UTAR Faculty of Creative Industries Assoc Prof Dr S. Santhidran has been awarded Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in the United States. In spring 2022, he will be attached to Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. During this fellowship, he will conduct research on “FakeNews-Understanding Youth Perspectives: A comparative study between the US and Malaysia”. In this research, he will explore the cultural differences that influence youths on forwarding fake news. During this fellowship, he also will investigate the self-regulatory mechanism to refrain people from forwarding misinformation.    

Assoc Prof Santhidran expressed his gratitude to Dr Michael Suman, the research director for the Center of Digital Future, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California for his support in this research. 

In 2016, Dr. Santhidran was also the recipient of the Newton Advanced Fellowship by the British Academy (UK) to conduct an online experiment on “Engaging on Road Safety through Social Media Among Youths”.

The Fulbright U.S.–ASEAN Visiting Scholar Initiative was launched in 2012 to deepen people-to-people engagement and strengthen our educational ties around issues important to the ASEAN region. The year 2021 marks the 9th year of the programme. To date, more than 100 scholars from all 10 ASEAN Member States (AMS) have been awarded scholarships to carry out three to four-month research at U.S. universities on a wide range of subjects including maritime security, climate change, health, finance, political security, wildlife trafficking, and teaching English as a second language.

For more info on Fullbright: https://www.macee.org.my/2022fulbright-malaysian-scholar-program/.