Research
Research Program
How do communication interventions improve decision-making in digital information environments?
Much of the information people use to make health decisions comes from digital environments, including social media, artificial intelligence, and social networks. These environments create new opportunities for improving health communication but can also make it difficult for people to evaluate information and make informed decisions.
My research examines the processes through which communication interventions influence behavior and decision-making in these environments. I develop and evaluate interventions that mitigate the effects of misinformation, encourage preventive health behaviors, and improve public understanding of health and science.
Digital Information Environments
Interventions
Making
Societal Outcomes
Methods
I use multiple methods to evaluate interventions and examine communication processes across digital information contexts.
- Experiments: Testing the causal effects of message features and communication interventions.
- Surveys: Examining predictors of health behaviors across populations and contexts.
- Computational Methods: Analyzing large-scale online behavioral data and social media discussions.
Featured Research
Selected projects on theory-driven communication research, methodological contributions, and health-related decision-making.
Science Communication
AI Chatbots for Addressing Health Misinformation
We examined whether AI chatbots can address contraceptive misinformation using bypassing and combined communication strategies. Combined strategies reduced misinformation beliefs, increased recommendation intentions, and elicited less reactance than the correction alone.
Preprint
Measuring Deepfake Literacy
This project develops and validates a deepfake literacy scale to measure public understanding of deepfakes beyond general AI knowledge. Across two studies, the scale showed strong reliability and validity and was associated with perceived knowledge, detection self-efficacy, and support for interventions to address deepfakes.
Telematics and Informatics
Computational Analysis of Online Stigma
Using more than 1.2 million tweets, this study examines how anger and disgust primarily involved stigmatizing language toward the MSM community. These findings show how negative emotions expressed online may amplify stigma during public health crises.
Explore my complete research program and publication record on the Publications page.