Christopher DiLullo ’22 CLAS, 2022 Falvey Scholar (Photo by Andrew McKeough)

The Falvey Scholars Program is an annual program established by Falvey Library to recognize outstanding undergraduate research. Now in its 20th year, the program is a collective initiative of the Library and the Center for Research and Fellowships. The recipients of this award are selected from a pool of candidates nominated by Villanova faculty and reviewed by Library staff and faculty.

This year, eight students received awards, their work reflecting the breadth and depth of undergraduate research at the University as well as the support the Library, its resources and staff, provide student-scholars.

This blog is the second of seven installments, which will introduce our scholars and cover their research in their own words. Look for additional coverage of the Falvey Scholars in the fall issue of Mosaic.

Congratulations to all of our Falvey Scholars, past and present!

Scholars Summary

Christopher DiLullo ’22 CLAS
Hometown: Farmington, Conn.
Other honors: 2022 CLAS Medallion Recipient, Department of Communication; Phi Beta Kappa; Lambda Pi Eta; and Sigma Delta Pi.

Project: “Media on Media: How Media Trade Publications View Streaming Services Compared With Legacy Media”

Faculty Mentor: Allyson Levin, PhD, Assistant Teaching Professor, Communication

Describe your research in your own words (as simply as possible):

My research was an examination of how the media industry has reacted to the evolution of the industry itself since streaming was introduced in 2007. This was performed through an analysis of the coverage of the media industry by media trade publications.

How did the Library’s staff impact your research and academic experience?

I worked with former Falvey Social Studies Librarian Deborah Bishov to develop a greater understanding of LexisNexis (now known as Nexis Uni), a resource I accessed through Falvey Library in order to collect all of the articles I used in my research.

How did Falvey’s resources and databases impact your research?

Falvey’s resources helped me immensely with the literature review portion of my research. Without Falvey’s subscriptions to various academic journals, I would not have been able to complete the comprehensive literature review that served as the foundation for my research. Furthermore, Falvey’s resource of LexisNexis is what helped me collect all of the articles included in my sample and overall population. LexisNexis made the article collection process of my research incredibly easy, and without using LexisNexis courtesy of Falvey, I would have spent countless more hours collecting each article included in my time frame individually from the trade publication websites themselves.

What’s next for you?

I have been admitted to a Master’s in Media Studies program at Syracuse University. However, I am still exploring options, and I hope to pursue a career in the media industry.

Will you continue this research direction or has it inspired you to new research interests?

I am interning at The Walt Disney Company for their Disney+ Content Programming team.

In the future, I would like to continue this research, although slightly changing the direction. I would love to analyze the evolution of the media industry through the eyes of the media-consuming public, potentially performing an analysis of content posted on social media to gauge this reaction. I would also love to analyze the programming developed by media companies since the introduction of streaming to understand how media channel programming has changed as a result of industry evolution.