Science Communication and Health Lab
The Science Communication and Health lab conducts basic and applied research on science and health communication.
The lab focuses on three areas:
1) Developing and testing warning messages to promote health behaviors and warn about health risks.
2) Researching social influences to understand how social context influences individual behavior.
3) Conducting intervention research designed to improve decision-making.
If you have any questions or would like to collaborate with the lab, please email Zach Massey (zbmassey@missouri.edu) or Tianting Zhang (tzg3d@mail.missouri.edu).
Table of Contents
Meet the Research Team!
Zachary Massey, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Zachary Massey’s research investigates how science communication can improve public health and wellness.
Dr. Massey earned a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma (2019), where he studied health communication and persuasion. Dr. Massey completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University (2021). As a postdoc, Dr. Massey was funded through a NIDA/FDA grant (R01DA04739: PIs Popova & Ashley) and collaborated on projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a postdoc.
A full list of Dr. Massey's work can be found on ResearchGate and Google Scholar.
Tianting Zhang, M.A.
Lab Manager
Tianting Zhang is a doctoral student at the Missouri School of Journalism with an emphasis in media sociology. Her research interests focus on gender representation in media, the construction of gender and racial identity in the digital space, and the rising of feminist activism in digital media.
She’s also interested in how social movements influence journalistic professionalization and push news organizations to reform their norms and practices. Further, her research is to understand the potential values of digital media in engaging with the communities and facilitating collective participation, that is, how different features and content of digital media content (mediated communication) influence audience responses, such as outcomes related to their engagement and collective participation.
Research Collaborators
Damilola Oduolowu is a doctoral student at the Missouri School of Journalism. His research explores the role of citizen journalism and its influence on legacy media and society. His work also focuses on how social media and technology change how people consume news content and audience responses to the evolving style of news delivery and journalism.
Kate Wexell is an undergraduate student at Northwestern University. Her research examines the effectiveness of health warning labels on cannabis products.
Check out our research projects!
Developing and testing health warnings for tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis products
This research takes a communication approach to public health and substance use, focusing on developing and testing message interventions to promote healthy behaviors.
Conference papers
Zhang, T., Massey. Z. B., & Cionea. I. A. (2022). Developing and testing warning labels for retail cannabis products: An experimental test of the Extended Parallel Process Model. Paper presented at the National Communication Association 108th Annual Convention. New Orleans, LA.
Investigating how exposure to ads on social media associates with substance use
This project assesses how exposure to advertising on social media correlates with substance use behaviors.
Conference papers
Massey, Z. B., Duong, H. T., Lawrie, L., Zhang, T. (November 2023). Exposure to cannabis advertising on smartphones and social media: Results from a survey of U.S. adults in legal recreational states. Poster to be presented at the annual conference of the American Public Health Association, Atlanta, GA.
Individual interviews with military veterans
This project will interview military veterans and collect data that will be analyzed to understand veteran substance use.
Progress
Data collection will begin in Fall 2023.
Health warning fMRI brain scan studies
This project seeks to utilize functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural mechanisms underlying emotional, perceptual, and decision-making responses to health warning messages for retail (i.e., non-medical) cannabis products.
Progress
Data collection will begin in Fall 2023.
Social Network Analysis in non-violent ideological groups
This project applied a social network perspective and analysis to understand how a nonviolent ideological group’s communication network structures were associated with its members’ attitudes and behaviors toward nonviolent practices.
Conference papers
Massey, Z. B. & Lee, S. K. (2022). Examining social influence in a nonviolent ideological organization: An analysis of communication networks of a Vietnamese Buddhist meditation monastery. Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Communication Association, Paris, FR.