Christopher Chavez

I am a native of Southern California and currently live in Pasadena, California. I received my master’s degree in Communication from USC in 1995 and, for ten years, worked as an advertising executive at agencies in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston.

I am currently a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC and my research examines the role that media and social institutions play in shaping the identities and practices of bi-cultural, bi-lingual citizens. With support from a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, I am currently conducting research that explores the impact of religious affiliation on civic engagement among Latino Evangelicals and Latino Catholics living in Los Angeles, with the help of colleagues on Metamorphosis. In June of 2006, I presented two papers at the International Communications Association conference in Dresden, Germany. My paper titled “Spanglish in persuasive communications: A study of code-mixing and linguistic preference in advertising,” was a top three interactive paper in the Ethnicity and Race in Communications division.

My dissertation will examine how national brands and marketers incorporate ethnic markets into their overall advertising campaigns, how creative and strategic labor is divided and how monetary, strategic and creative resources are allocated.