Natalie Pennington is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. Her research encompasses a wide variety of topics, including friendship, social networks, wellbeing, social media, communication technology and how we talk politics with our inner circle.

Pennington’s recent work with the American Friendship Project has received media attention from across the country. She is the co-author of a recent study that found that while we are generally happy with the number of friends we have, we also long for more time and greater closeness with those companions.

Outside of discussing the mechanisms behind friendship, Pennington is also available for interviews on social support and grief online, and parasocial relationships-interactions.

She received her bachelor’s in communication studies at Missouri State University, her master’s at Kansas State and completed her Ph.D at the University of Kansas.

Pennington’s work has been published in numerous journals including Communication Research, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Computers in Human Behavior Reports and more.