Sang-Hwa Oh
- PhD, University South Carolina (Mass Communications/Public Health)
- MA, Sogang University (Mass Communications)
- BA, Ewha Womans University (Social Welfare/Mass Communications)
- Assistant Professor of Advertising
- Institute of Communications Research
- Illinois Informatics
- Public Relations Strategies*
- Persuasion and Consumer Response*
- Graduate Seminar II
* made the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students
Dr. Oh is an interdisciplinary researcher, teacher, and consultant for societal- and individual-levels of wellbeing via communications and various media. Oh’s research is at the intersection of (emerging) media effects (including AI and VR), diffusion of health/risk (mis)information, media literacy intervention effect, and roles of differential emotions in the communication process for public health promotion and social change. She has worked as a Faculty Chair of Public Relations Minor Program and is currently a Faculty Advisor of Korean Student Association (KSA) at UIUC. She came to the College of Media at UIUC after spending two years at Appalachian State University as an Assistant Professor. Prior to joining academia, Oh had worked at Samsung iMarketKorea (one of the biggest B2B e-market places in the world in early- and mid- 2000s) for four-and-a-half years as a strategic planning and communication manager.
2021: Best Research Paper, 2nd place, Global Colloquium, Korea Advertising Society (KAS), Korea.
2016: Rainbow Top Research Paper Award, Korea Health Communication Association.
2015: Red Raider Public Relations Research Award, International Public Relations Research Conference.
2014: Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award, University of South Carolina.
2011: Third-Place Award, Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk Division, 94th annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Dr. Oh is on the editorial board of Health Communication and The Korean Journal of Advertising and Public Relations. Her research has appeared in Health Communication, Mass Communication & Society, Risk Analysis, International Journal of Communication, Public Understanding of Science, among other peer-reviewed publications. She also served as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and prestige journals in the communication field.
Dr. Oh has recently tackled 5 main research themes:
1) how public health emergency issues are presented on traditional and social media via computational analysis methods,
2) what role the media play in affecting the general public’s understanding of the issues, and behaviors at individual- and policy-levels,
3) what kind of misinformation regarding the issues is spreading on social media and how to mitigate any harmful consequences of it (including examining the effect of media literacy intervention),
4) how organizations can better communicate the issues via strategic communication focusing on the role of transparent communication, trust, and emotions, and
5) how digital divide in the current media landscape affects health inequity and how to solve it.
Yoo, WH., Oh, S.-H+., & Kim, T. (In press). How Social Media Exposure Influences Preventive Behavioral Intention during the COVID-19 Outbreak in South Korea: A Communication Mediation Model Approach. Journal of Creative Communications.
Yoo, WH., Oh, S.-H., & Chio, D-H. (2023). Exposure to COVID-19 Misinformation across Instant Messaging Apps: Moderating Roles of News Media and Interpersonal Communication. International Journal of Communication, 17, 712-734.
Oh, S.-H+., Lee, Cj., & Park, SH#. (2022). Trust matters: The effect of social media use on public health policy support through (mis)beliefs in the context of HPV vaccination. Health Communication. Published online ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2022.2096985
Oh, S.-H+., Lee, S-Y#., & Han, CH#. (2021). The effects of social media use on preventive behaviors during infectious disease outbreaks: The mediating role of self-relevant emotions and public risk perception. Health Communication, 36(8), 972-981. *Listed as the 2nd most cited article during the past three years in Health Communication.
Ham C-D., Chung, UC#., Kim, WJ#., Lee, SY#., & Oh, S.-H. (2021). Greener than others? Exploring generational differences in green perceptions and purchase intentions of the US consumer: Consumer socialization and social intelligence perspectives. International Journal of Market Research, 64(3), 376-396.
Lim, HJ, Oh, S.-H., Kim Y., & Kim, J.-N. (2019). Activists and their communicative behaviors for effective crisis communication in the age of social media. Asian Journal of Public Relation, 3(1), 1-14.
# a student author/co-author at the time of submission
+ corresponding author