Rate My Professor Sungkyoung Lee

Sungkyoung Lee is an associate professor of strategic communication at the Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri. She holds a Ph.D. in communication and cognitive science from Indiana University-Bloomington and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Excellence in Cancer Communication, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where she served as research director leading health communication projects on cancer and smoking cessation messaging. Lee's research centers on developing and testing effective mediated messages in health and science communication. With extensive training in experimentally designed research, she studies media effects and information processing using online and laboratory experiments. Her work examines cognitive and emotional processing aspects of these messages alongside persuasion outcomes.

Lee pursues two main research lines: designing health communication messaging suited for clinical trial recruitment in minority populations and rural communities; and developing message strategies to enhance public understanding of scientific findings, such as those related to autonomous vehicles. Her publications include "Concrete or Abstract? The effects of picture concreteness and mental illness prevalence on destigmatizing mental illness" (Visual Communication Quarterly, in press); "Improving rural White men’s attitudes toward clinical trial messaging and participation: Effects of framing, exemplars, and trust" (Health Education Research, 2022); "Overcoming black Americans’ psychological and cognitive barriers to clinical trial participation: Effects of news framing and exemplar" (Health Communication, 2022); "Comparisons to picture-perfect motherhood: How Instagram’s idealized portrayals of motherhood affect new mothers’ well-being" (Computers in Human Behavior, 2022); "An informed approach to the development of primary care pediatric firearm safety messages" (BMC Pediatrics, 2022); "Effects of Instagram Body Image Portrayals on Attention, State Body Dissatisfaction, and Appearance Management Behavioral Intention" (Health Communication, 2021); and "Effects of Communication Source and Racial Representation in Clinical Trial Recruitment Flyers" (Health Communication, 2021). She also contributes to leadership education initiatives at the university.