Education
Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication, 2019
M.A. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012
B.A. Renmin University of China, 2006
Areas of Research
Message effects and persuasion, health communication, computational communication science, persuasive AI, communication of morality, communication-based interventions
Research Impact
Dr. Sijia Yang’s research applies experimental, computational (e.g., multimodal automated content analysis, web-based experiments, causal machine learning), and community-engaged approaches to the study of message effects and persuasion on digital media, particularly in the context of public health and science communication.
Currently, Yang is pursuing three lines of research. The first line of work aims to understand the process of moralization and politicization of health issues and the implications for communication-based health interventions. Since multimodal content is now a norm in digital communication campaigns, the second line aims to identify and evaluate persuasive features in multimodal messages through causal machine learning. The last line of work aims to understand the roles of AI in pro-social persuasive messaging, especially the potential to harness the power of AI to improve health communication interventions in underserved communities.
Recent Publications
2025. “Can generative AI enhance visual correction of health misinformation? An online
experiment testing AI-generated debunking visuals and credibility boosters.” Journal of Mass Communication Quarterly.
2025. “Pictorial warning labels reduce sharing intentions, blunt self-relevance processes elicited by social media posts promoting cannabis edibles.” Journal of Communication.
2025. “Constructing vec-tionaries to extract latent message features from texts: A case study of moral appeals.” Political Analysis.
2024. “Correction by distraction: How high-tempo music enhances medical experts’ debunking TikTok videos.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
2023. “Designing and testing social media campaign messages to promote COVID-19
vaccine confidence among rural adults: A community-engaged approach featuring rural
community leader and clinician testimonials.” Preventive Medicine Reports.
Recent Awards and Honors
2023: Top Poster Award, ComSHER Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
2023: Terry Hynes Innovative Leadership Award, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, UW–Madison
2022: University of Wisconsin–Madison Exceptional Service Award, Office of the Provost, UW–Madison
2020: Abby Prestin Dissertation of the Year Award, Health Communication Divisions, International Communication Association & National Communication Association
2020: Top Paper Award, Health Communication Division, International Communication Association
Recent Grants
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
National Science Foundation
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
International Fact-Checking Network
Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education, UW–Madison
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
UW–Madison Institute for Clinical and Translational Research
Courses
J203: Information for Communication
J677: Concepts and Tools for Data Analytics and Visualization
J818: Computational Approaches to Communication Research
J880: Message Effects