Biography

Dr. Lu Tang is Professor of Communication and the Director of the Data Justice Lab affiliated with the Texas A&M Institute of Data Science. She received her doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California.

She studies how emerging technologies such as AI, chatbots, and Virtual Reality can be used for health promotion with a special emphasis on ethics and social justice. She also studies the content and diffusion of health information and misinformation on social media using computational methods such as natural language processing and social network analysis. Another line of her research focuses on culture, health communication, and minority health using mixed methods. Her work is supported through funding from the NIH, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.

 

ResearchGate

Courses Taught

  • COMM 305: Theories of Communication
  • COMM 470:  Topics on Health Communication (Communication in Health Organizations)
  • COMM 471: Media, Health, and Medicine
  • COMM 616:Topics in Communication Research Method (Social Network Analytics)
  • COMM 670: Seminar in Health Communication (Culture and Health Communication)

Research Interests

  • Communication & Media Science
  • Health Communication

Selected Publications

  • * denotates graduate student coauthors at the time of collaboration    

    1. Tang, L., Li, J.*, & Fantus, S. (2023). Medical AI ethics: A systematic review of empirical studies. Digital Health, 9. https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076231186064 [Full text]
    2. Tang, L., Liu, W., Thomas, B., Tran, M., Zou, W.*, Zhang, X., & Zhi, D. (2021). Texas public agencies’ tweets and public engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Natural language processing approach. Journal of Medical Internet Research: Public Health and Surveillance. 7(4): e26720. http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/26720 [Full text]
    3. York, F.* & Tang, L. (2021). “Picture me heart disease free”: Understand the cardiovascular disease experiences of African Americans through a culture-centered approach. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 49(3): 247-266. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2021.1912377 [Full text]
    4. Zou, W.*, & Tang, L. (2021). Rumors and processing strategies during the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Public Understanding of Science, 30(2): 153-168. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520979459 [Full text]
    5. Tang, L., Fujimoto, K., Amith, M., Cunningham, R., Costantini, R.A.*, York, F.*, Xiang, G., Boom, J., & Tao, C. (2021). “Down the rabbit hole” of vaccine misinformation on YouTube: Network exposure study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(1): e23262. https://www.jmir.org/2021/1/e23262 [Full text]

     

Scholars@TAMU Google Scholar Profile