Taisik Hwang, PhD

Graduate Program Director, Communication

Education

• PhD, University of Georgia
• MA, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• ThM, Harvard University

Research Interests

• Social Media in Strategic Communication
• Public Opinion and Its Perception by the Audience
• Religion and Media

Current Research

With a research grant from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation-Journal Foundation/Walter Jay and Clara Charlotte Damm Fund, I am currently working on a multi-year project titled “Improving Strategic Communication for Government and Public Sector Organizations by Utilizing Social Media.” This project includes five studies whose focus is on examining how various social actors (e.g., government organizations, non-profit organizations, religious institutions, and commercial brands) strategically use social media to fulfill their goals and how individuals interact with their messages. 

For instance, one of the research studies attempted to discover how leading nature education organizations utilize social media to effectively reach and build relationship with their audiences. This paper was presented in June 2019 at the annual colloquium of the Korean Association of Advertising and Public Relations in Seoul, South Korea. Other studies in this project investigate regional governments’ efforts in building a direct and positive relationship with the constituents, differences in brand engagements on Twitter from a predictive analytics perspective, and how megachurches utilize social media to fulfill their missions

Publications & Presentations

Hwang, T. (2019, August). Religiosity as a concept in communication research. (Top Paper, Religion and Media Interest Group) Paper presented at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Toronto, Canada.

Hwang, T. (2019, June). Nature education organizations’ use of Twitter for public engagement. Paper presented at the annual colloquium of the Korean Association of Advertising and Public Relations, Seoul, South Korea.

Hwang, T. (2019, May). Determinants of false consensus on public and political issues. Paper presented at the 69th annual International Communication Association Conference, Washington DC, USA.

Hwang, T. (2019, March). Media skepticism: Explication and scale development. Paper presented at the 44th annual AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, Columbia, SC.

McDevitt, M., Parks, P., Stalker, J., Lerner, K., Benn, J., & Hwang, T. (2018). Anti-intellectualism among US students in journalism and mass communication: A cultural perspective. Journalism, 19(6), 782-799.

Hwang, T. (2016). Newspaper coverage of Christianity in South Korea, 1996–2005. Journal of Media and Religion, 15(4), 196-209.

Hwang, T., Espina, C., & Wojdynski, B.W. (2015, August). The influence of Twitter sources on credibility in online news. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA.

Hwang, T., Himelboim, I., & Shin, S. (2015, August). A social networks approach to understanding political discourse on the Sewol Ferry tragedy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA.

Hwang, T. (2015, May). The relationship between religiosity, media use, and perceived credibility. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico.