“This is a unique partnership with both parties benefiting from a new way of thinking about the ethical treatment of children,” Children’s Central director and MSU professor Nora Rifon said.

With the help of a three-year, $370,000 grant from CTF, MSU faculty and students will explore different ways the media negatively affects children. Rifon said because of the prominence of the media in American culture, its negative effects are often overlooked, especially in the area of child abuse.

“As a society, we accept the benefits of media and its presence in our lives,” she said.

Paul Shaheen, interim director of CTF, said along with research, MSU researchers will be able to market CTF throughout the state by helping disseminate the results of their findings.

“We needed to do research-based marketing and we didn’t have the capacity,” Shaheen said. “We needed to start to do some branding of CTF because surveys would show not enough people in the state know who we are or what we stand for.”

Rifon said researchers at the university will explore topics such as the role of advertisements on children’s diets, youth safety on the Internet and the development of public service announcements for child abuse prevention.

Richard Cole, chairman of the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing, said MSU’s position as a research university with a college dedicated to the media allows it to play an influential role in child safety.

“We sit in a pivotal position to use research-based messaging expertise and student enthusiasm to help prevent child abuse and contribute to our society’s need to assure the ethical treatment of all children,” Cole said.