Associate Professor
About
Hang Lu is a scholar in science, health, environmental, and risk communication (ComSHER) with a specialization in media psychology. His research program revolves around understanding how different audience segments respond to media messages regarding SHER issues, and how these messages can be crafted to maximize their effectiveness. He has cultivated four main research streams, each addressing distinct aspects of psychological mechanisms that both enhance and limit the effectiveness of media messages on individual behaviors and policy support. These streams are: 1) the dynamic role of emotions in audience responses to media messages, 2) predictors of information behaviors (i.e., information seeking, processing, and sharing), 3) media effects on (de)stigmatization, and 4) the prosocial use of artificial intelligence (AI) in sensitive and controversial domains. Lu has developed his research in multiple contexts, including emerging infectious diseases (e.g., COVID-19, Zika virus), climate change, vaccination, genetically modified food, obesity, addiction, mental well-being, emerging technologies, and human-wildlife conflicts.
Lu's research has been published in various peer reviewed journals across disciplines, including Journal of Communication, Journal of Environmental Psychology, New Media and Society, Risk Analysis, Renewable Energy, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Climatic Change, Public Understanding of Science, Science Communication, Appetite, and Health Communication. Lu's research has received a dozen top paper awards from the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), and the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA).
Lu is on sabbatical in the fall semester of 2025.
Lu currently serves as the vice chair of the Environmental Communication Division of the International Communication Association (ICA).
Lu directs the Media and Risk (MaR) lab at the University of Michigan.
Prior to joining the University of Michigan in the fall of 2019, Lu was the Gloria T. and Melvin J. “Jack” Chisum Postdoctoral Fellow in Science of Science Communication at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
