Xiaochen Angela Zhang (Ph.D., University of Florida) is an assistant professor in public relations. Her research interests lie in how crisis and risk communication can be optimized across complex social and institutional networks.
Her overall research goal is to develop a better understanding of how organizational communication can be more responsive to stakeholder and general public needs. Her research aims at understanding 1) how to leverage communication to increase individual and community resilience in disaster events, 2) how diverse publics process crisis and risk information and how to optimize risk and hazard communication, and 3) ethical organizational communication for strategic crisis management.
Dr. Zhang recently received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award ($520,000) to study the construction and communication of social and transactive knowledge networks for disaster community resilience. Over a 5-year span (2023-2028), Dr. Zhang is studying how relationships and communication among non-profits, community groups and local government agencies can improve disaster resilience, resource allocation, and emergency management by enabling direct and lateral organizational interactions.
Dr. Zhang has received multiple research awards, including the 2016 Bob Heath Top Paper Award from the Public Relations Division of the International Communication Association (ICA), the 2022 Race in Public Relations Award and the 2023 First Place Paper Award (teaching category) from Public Relations Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) for her research on corporate CSR communication, corporate crisis communication, and public relations ethics education. Her research has been published in top-tier journals including Mass Communication & Society, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and Computers in Human Behavior.
Teaching graduate- and undergraduate-level courses on research methods, crisis and risk communication, and strategic communication ethics, Dr. Zhang received the 2020 Owen Kulemeka Teacher of the Year Award from Gaylord College. She received the 2021 Teaching Intellectual Virtual Project Award from OU to study ethics pedagogy and to develop undergraduate- and graduate-level communications ethics courses. She is active in engaging students in service-learning projects where students collaborate with community organizations to help tackle communication problems.
