Hello, my name is Lu Tang. I am a Professor of Health Communication at the Department of Communication and Journalism, Texas A&M University. I am also the Director of the Data Justice Lab, a research lab affiliated with the Texas A&M Institute of Data Science. I received my doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California.

I study how emerging technologies such as AI and chatbot can be used for health promotion with a special focus on ethics and social justice. I also study the content and diffusion of health information and misinformation on social media using new computational methods such as natural language processing and social network analysis.

Another line of my research focuses on culture, health communication, and minority health using mixed methods.

My work is supported through funding from the NIH, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.

My work on risk and crisis communication during public health crises and misinformation has been especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic.

·      My recent paper on how YouTube creates filter bubbles of vaccine misinformation was cited in the Surgeon General’s report on Vaccine Misinformation.

·      My work on COVID-19 information seeking and avoidance has been included in the recently published 12th edition of the classic textbook: Theories of Human Communication (Littlejohn, Foss, & Oetzel, 2021).

·      More media coverage in CNBC, Time,  Bloomberg Law, and Houston Chronicle among others.