Health Communication

Health Communication in the OU Department of Communication has three major areas of research as our strength: (a) health communication in interpersonal contexts, (b) health promotion and campaigns, and (c) organizational and health communication. Health communication in interpersonal contexts examines how individuals manage their illness events effectively and appropriately through social interactions. Faculty members in this area of research have examined how health literacy, communicative competence, and social support play a critical role in individuals’ illness management with their support network, including health care providers, family members, and supportive others.

The area of health promotion and campaign adopts a perspective similar to that of public health researchers in exploring best practices in modifying individuals’ health behaviors (e.g., risk aversion/management and smoking cessation) through health education and implementation of different campaign strategies. Faculty members in this area of research have explored the effectiveness of campaign messages (e.g., message features), factors influencing individuals’ evaluation and interpretation of campaign messages (e.g., psychological and emotional factors), and different message outcomes (e.g., message effects and campaign evaluation).

The area of organizational and health communication focuses on research such as community organizing and health, the emotion experiences of health professionals, healthcare ethics (e.g., informed consent, privacy), healthcare teams, managed care, physician assimilation, and health professionals’ coping with stress and burnout. Currently, faculty members’ research includes community organizing and health, healthcare ethics, and physician assimilation. Because the OU-Norman campus is 20 minutes away from the OU-Health Science Center campus at Oklahoma City and 2 hours away from the OU-Community Medicine campus at Tulsa, faculty members, physicians (including medical residents), and graduate students often collaborate on research projects across campuses. In addition, due to the strength in our intercultural communication program, many of our faculty members and students often conduct their studies in international settings, highlighting the culturally and socially constructed nature of health/illness management.

Comm 5263 Health Communication
Comm 5393: Risk and Crisis Communication
Comm 5453: Social influence
Comm 5553 Persuasive Communication Campaigns
Comm 6423 Communication in Health Organizations
Comm 6023 Communication Research Task Groups
Comm 6960 Directed Readings

Elena Bessarabova
Mengfei Guan
Claude Miller
James Olufowote
Norman Wong

Ma, Haijing (2021). “I felt completely turned off by the message”: The effects of controlling language, fear, and disgust appeals on responses to COVID-19 vaccination messages (Graduate Student Dissertation Grant Award, and H. Wayland Cummings Quantitative Dissertation Proposal Award, OU Department of Communication).

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Austin, J. A., Wong, N., & Owens, A. (2022). The hashtag heard around the world: Social media users’ perceptions and responses to the #MeToo hashtag. Atlantic Journal of Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2022.2083136

Banas, J. A., Bessarabova, E., Penkauskas, M., & Talbert, N. (2023). Inoculating against anti-vaccination conspiracies. Health Communication, 1-9. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2235733

Beeler-Blackburn, K., & Wong, N. (2023). When “yes means yes”: Short-term effects of an educational video on acceptance of ideals related to affirmative sexual consent among young adults. Studies in Media and Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.11114/smc.v12i1.6483

Bessarabova, E., Banas, J. A., Reinikainen, H., Talbert, N., Luoma-aho, V., & Tsetsura, K. (2024). Assessing inoculation’s effectiveness in motivating resistance to conspiracy propaganda in Finnish and United States Samples. Frontiers in Psychology, 15:1416722.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1416722

Bessarabova, E., & Banas, J. A. (2024). Uncertainty and inoculation: Instilling resistance to anti-vaccination conspiracy propaganda. Communication Quarterly,72(4), 403-420, https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2024.2368124

Bessarabova, E., Massey, Z. B., Ma, H., MacDonald, A., & Lindsey, N. (2023). Reactance, mortality salience, and skin-cancer prevention among young adults. Advance online publication. Health Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2293911

Bessarabova, E., Turner, M. M., Richards, A. S., (2023). Anger, efficacy, and message processing: A test of the Anger Activism Model. Southern Communication Journal. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1041794X.2023.2250301

Bessarabova, E., & Massey, Z. B. (2023). The effects of death awareness and reactance on texting-and-driving prevention. Risk Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.14107

Guan, M., Li, Y., Scoles, J. D., & Zhu, Y. (2023). COVID-19 message fatigue: How does it predict behavioral intentions and what types of information are people tired of hearing about? Health Communication, 38(8), 1631-1640. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2021.2023385.

Guan, M., Jennings, F. J., Villanueva, I. I., & Jackson, D. B. (2022). Delineating antecedents and outcomes of information seeking upon exposure to an environmental video opposing single-use plastics. Environmental Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2022.2102048

Guan, M., & So, J. (2022). Social identity theory. In E. Ho, C. Bylund, & J. van Weert (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Health Communication. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119678816.iehc0667

Guan, M., Han, J. Y., Shah, D. V., Gustafson, D. H. (2021). Exploring the role of social support in promoting patient participation in health care among women with breast cancer. Health Communication, 36(13), 1581-1589. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1773704

Klassen, A. C., Lee, G., Chiang, S., Murray, R., Guan, M., Lo, W.-J., Hill, L., Leader, A., Manganello, J., Massey, P. (2024). Did the COVID-19 experience change U.S. parents’ attitudes towards HPV vaccination? Results from a national survey. Vaccine, 42(7), 1704-1713. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2024.01.105

Kim, N, Leshner, G. M., & Miller C. H. (2022). Native Americans’ responses to obesity attributions and message sources in an obesity prevention campaign. Journal of Health Communication, published online, https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2022.2153289

Li, Y., Guan, M., Hammond, P., & Berrey, L. E. (2021). Communicating COVID-19 information on TikTok: A content analysis of TikTok videos from official accounts featured in the COVID-19 information hub. Health Education Research, 36(3), 261-271. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyab010.

Lookadoo, K., Hubbard, C., Nisbett, G., & Wong, N. (2021). We’re all in this together: Celebrity influencer disclosures about COVID-19. Atlantic Journal of Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2021.1936526

Ma, H. & Miller, C. H. (2021). The effects of agency assignment and reference point on responses to COVID-19 messages, Health Communication, 36(1), 59-73, https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1848066

Ma, H., & Miller, C. H. (2022). Threat type moderates agency assignment: A partial matching effect. Health Communication. Published online. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2022.2065746.

Ma, H., & Miller, C. H. (2022). “I felt completely turned off by the message”: The effects of controlling language, fear, and disgust appeals on responses to COVID-19 vaccination messages. Journal of Health Communication.

Miller, C. H. (2024). Affect, motivation, and resistance in inoculation (forthcoming). In B. Ivanov, K. Parker, and J. Compton (Eds.) The handbook of inoculation theory and practice. Wiley Blackwell Press.

Miller, C. H., & Ma, H. (2021). How existential anxiety shapes communication in coping with the coronavirus pandemic: A terror management theory perspective. In H. D. O’Hair and M. J. O’Hair (Eds.), Communication Science in Times of Crisis (pp. 54-80). Wiley.

Newbold, T., Burak, E.G.D., Leshner, G., Connelly, S., Wong, N., Lee, S.K., & Jang, S.R. (2024). COVID-19 vaccine messaging for young adults: Examining framing, other-referencing, and health beliefs. Health Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0001376

Olufowote, J. O. (2021). Taking culture and context seriously: Advancing health communication research on HIV/AIDS prevention in Tanzania with the PEN-3 cultural model. Howard Journal of Communications, 32(4), 394-412.

Olufowote, J. O., Adebayo, C. T., Livingston, D. J., & Wilson, K. K. (2022). An alternative entry point into health communication research: Introspections on learning, applying, and future uses of PEN-3. In C. O. Airhihenbuwa & J. Iwelunmor (Eds.), Health, culture, and place: From the tree to the forest (pp. 105-120). U-RISE, LLC.

Olufowote, J. O., & Livingston, D. J. (2021). The excluded voices from Africa’s Sahel: Alternative meanings of health in narratives of resistance to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in northern Nigeria. Health Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2021.1895416

Richards, A. S., Bessarabova, E., Banas, J. A., & Bernard, D. R. (2022). Reducing psychological reactance to health promotion messages: Comparing preemptive and postscript mitigation strategies. Health Communication, 37 (3), 366-374, https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1839203

Richards, A. S., Bessarabova, E., Banas, J. A., & Larsen, M. (2021). Freedom-prompting reactance mitigation strategies function differently across levels of trait reactance. Communication Quarterly Communication Quarterly, 69, 238-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2021.1920443

Schrodt, P., Zhuang, J., & Guan, M. (2024). A conditional process analysis of emerging adults’ motivated information management with parents, family conversation orientation, and intentions to vaccinate for COVID-19. Health Communication, 39(4), 754-766. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2185348

So, J., Ahn, J., & Guan, M. (2022). Beyond depth and breadth: Taking “types” of health information sought into consideration with cluster analysis. Journal of Health Communication, 27(1), 27–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2022.2029978

Sun, J., & Miller, C. H. (2023a). Smartphone attachment and self-regulation mediate the influence of avoidant attachment style on phubbing. Journal of Human Behavior & Emerging Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/8810293

Sun, J., & Miller, C. H. (2023b). Insecure attachment styles and phubbing:  The mediating role of problematic smartphone use. Journal of Human Behavior & Emerging Technologies, https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/4331787

Zhao, X., Guan, M., Liang, X. (2022). The impact of social media use on online collective action during China’s COVID-19 pandemic mitigation: A social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) perspective. International Journal of Communication, 16, 85-106. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/17576

Zhuang, J., & Guan, M. (2022). Modeling the mediating and moderating roles of risk perceptions, efficacy, desired uncertainty, and worry in information seeking-cancer screening relationship using HINTS 2017 data. Health Communication, 37(7), 897-908. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2021.1876324

Claude Miller; Co-PI, “Peer Training and Intervention for Pre-exposure HIV Prophylaxis,” Waterhouse Family Institute ($10,000), 2018-2020 – Funded