Thomas Zhang (he/him/his) is a Ph.D. student studying public health communication at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his BA (Journalism) and MSc (Human Communication) degrees from Universiti Putra Malaysia. His research interests include cancer risk communication, health information & knowledge management, and narrative persuasion for health behavior change. As a quantitative communication researcher, Thomas applies survey and experimental methods in his recent research to
- explore the mechanisms laypersons process health information and formulate health knowledge and
- extend and modify existing health information processing theories in cancer-related contexts.
His recent works have been published in Journal of Medical Internet Research and won the Top Student-Led Paper Award at International Communication Association Annual Conference.
Thomas’ research agenda primarily encloses the three general research questions:
- What are the roles of psychological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors in the intricate process of health learning?
- How do different normative social influences function in designing narrative persuasion for health promotion?
- To what extent health inequalities on cancer issues can be addressed through effective health messaging in multiethnic and multireligious Asian societies such as Malaysia and Singapore?
Twitter: @thomashzhang