About

Suman Lee is a scholar specializing in international public relations, public diplomacy, and global communication. His research has been published in leading journals such as Communication Research, Public Relations Review, Corporate Reputation Review, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, International Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Communication Management, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, and Visual Communication Quarterly. According to a 2017 study by Ki and Ye in Public Relations Review, which analyzed 163 journal articles published between 2001 and 2014, Lee ranked among the most prolific authors in the field of global public relations. His contributions have earned him multiple top paper awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the International Communication Association (ICA). Lee’s research includes comprehensive studies on foreign nations' public relations investments in the United States, focusing on their impact on news content, return on investment through time-series analysis, and public sentiment. His recent work explores the public diplomacy strategies of Japan and South Korea in the context of historical disputes, with a particular emphasis on outreach to younger generations. He currently serves as director of the M.A. in strategic communication and director of the Visiting International Scholars (VIS) Program at the University of North Carolina. Prior to joining UNC, Lee served on the faculty at Iowa State University, where he played a pivotal role in establishing the public relations major. Before entering academia, he worked as a public relations professional at Samsung in Seoul, South Korea. His educational background includes a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, an M.A. from San Diego State University, and a B.A. from Yonsei University.

Research topics

• Genetics
• Cancer research
• Cell biology
• Biology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Business
• Molecular biology
• Geography

Selected publications

• Public Diplomacy and International Communication

  2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introducing the Co-oriented Scansis (CoS) model: A case of chatbot, Lee-Luda

  Public Relations Review · 2023-08-14 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Globalization of the public relations agency industry: a country-level analysis of global public relations agencies and environmental factors

  Journal of Communication Management · 2023-01-02 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Purpose The present study examined the status of globalization of the public relations (PR) agency industry and its environmental factors by analyzing 101 countries. Design/methodology/approach Data were constructed from content analysis and multiple archival sources. Cluster analysis and multiple regressions were used for data analysis. Findings The present study identified the four distinctive groups of countries in the number of global PR agencies per country. These groups are (1) globalized top countries, (2) globalized major countries, (3) globalizing countries and (4) peripheral countries. The study also found that the degree of globalization of the PR agency industry in a country was associated with its democracy, economic system (gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment inflow), legal system (rule of law), cultural system (power distance and long-term orientation) and media system (Internet penetration rate) factors. Originality/value The previous studies on the global PR agency industry was limited to investigating a few leading agencies, but this study analyzed 114 global PR agencies and their diffusion in 101 countries and explored the influence of each country's characteristics (i.e. political, economic, legal, cultural and media factors) identified as the global PR environment factors.

  PublisherDOI

• UPF1 Inhibits Hepatocellular Carcinoma Growth through DUSP1/p53 Signal Pathway

  Biomedicines · 2022 · 11 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Biology
  • Cancer research
  • Cell biology

  Human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a high mortality rate because of the dearth of effective treatments. Multiple studies have shown that overexpression of UPF1, a key nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) factor, reduces HCC growth through various cell signaling pathways. However, the mechanism by which UPF1 expression retards HCC proliferation through the regulation of RNA stability remains unclear. By employing various UPF1 variants and transcriptome analysis, we revealed that overexpression of UPF1 variants, not UPF1-mediated NMD, reduces HCC tumorigenesis. Additionally, UPF1 variant overexpression reduced tumorigenesis in xenografted mice. Transcriptome analysis indicated that the level of dual specificity phosphatase 1 (DUSP1) was increased by UPF1 variants via posttranscriptional regulation. The UPF1 overexpression-mediated increase of DUSP1 activated tumor suppressor signaling, ultimately inhibiting cell growth. In this study, we highlighted the function of UPF1 as a tumor suppressor in HCC growth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Public Diplomacy and International Communication

  2021-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Binding of Endonuclease VII to Cruciform DNA: VISUALIZATION IN THE ELECTRON MICROSCOPE

  UNC Libraries · 2021-07-03

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The binding of Holliday structure resolving endonuclease VII to cruciform DNA was studied in the electron microscope. The protein was found to bind either to the junction or to one of the arms or an end of one of the arms of the construct. The amount of bound protein was determined by measuring the size of the complexes. On average, one complex containing three dimers was found per one molecule of cruciform DNA.

  PublisherDOI

• ‘Saccharomyces cerevisiae MSH2/6 Complex Interacts with Holliday Junctions and Facilitates Their Cleavage by Phage Resolution Enzymes

  UNC Libraries · 2021-07-03

  articleOpen access

  Genetic and biochemical studies have indicated that mismatch repair proteins can interact with recombination intermediates. In this study, gel shift assays and electron microscopic analysis were used to show that the Saccharomyces cerevisiae MSH2/6 complex binds to Holliday junctions and has an affinity and specificity for them that is at least as high as it has as for mispaired bases. Under equilibrium binding conditions, the MSH2/6 complex had a Kd of binding to Holliday junctions of 0.5 nM. The MSH2/6 complex enhanced the cleavage of Holliday junctions by T4 endonuclease VII and T7 endonuclease I. This is consistent with the view that the MSH2/6 complex can function in both mismatch repair and the resolution of recombination intermediates as predicted by genetic studies.

  PublisherDOI

• Human p53 Binds Holliday Junctions Strongly and Facilitates Their Cleavage

  UNC Libraries · 2021-07-03

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Holliday junctions in DNA are generated as a product of homologous recombination events. To test the hypothesis that human p53 may bind to Holliday junctions, synthetic junctions with four approximately 75-base pair (Hol75) or approximately 565-base pair (Hol565) arms were generated. As seen by electron microscopy, under conditions in which 50-61% of the Hol565 DNAs were bound by p53, 80-96% of the p53 was located specifically at the junction with, in the latter case, only 4% of the p53 visualized at the DNA ends or along the arms. Given the large number of potential binding sites, this represents very high specificity for the junctions. Gel retardation assays using the Hol75 DNA confirm these observations, and indicate that the tight junction complexes have a half-life of greater than 4 h. The binding of p53 to three-way junctions is severalfold less than to four-way junctions. Addition of p53 greatly increases the rate of resolution of the Hol75 DNA by T4 endonuclease VII and T7 endonuclease I, two enzymes known to cleave such junctions. This latter finding further confirms the interaction of p53 with Holliday junctions and suggests that p53 binding facilitates their resolution in vivo.

  PublisherDOI

• A Time-Series Analysis of Public Diplomacy Expenditure and News Sentiment: A Case Study of the U.S.–Japan Relationship

  DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2020-10-13 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  This study tested a lagged correlation between Japanese public diplomacy expenditure in the United States and U.S. news sentiment about Japan from 1996 to 2018. We conducted a sentiment analysis to measure news sentiment of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal for 45,822 news articles with 30,197 unique bigram tokens. Using a time-series analysis, this study found that Japanese public diplomacy expenditure was positively related to U.S. news sentiment after controlling for Japanese exports to the U.S. and Japanese real GDP. In our test for the opposite direction, U.S. news sentiment was also positively associated with public diplomacy expenditure, after controlling for Japanese exports to the U.S. and Japanese real GDP.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Globally altered epigenetic landscape and lagging osteogenic differentiation in H3.3-G34W-mutant giant cell tumor of bone

  medRxiv · 2020-05-27 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  The neoplastic stromal cells of giant cell tumor of bone (GCTB) carry a mutation in H3F3A, leading to a mutant histone variant, H3.3-G34W, as a sole recurrent genetic alteration. We show that in patient-derived stromal cells H3.3-G34W is incorporated into the chromatin and associates with massive epigenetic alterations on the DNA methylation, chromatin accessibility and histone modification level that can be partially recapitulated in an orthogonal cell line system by the introduction of H3.3-G34W. These epigenetic alterations affect mainly heterochromatic and bivalent regions and provide possible explanations for the genomic instability as well as the osteolytic phenotype of GCTB. The mutation occurs in differentiating mesenchymal stem cells and associates with an impaired osteogenic differentiation. We propose that the observed epigenetic alterations reflect distinct differentiation stages of H3.3 WT and H3.3 MUT stromal cells and add to H3.3-G34W associated changes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jack D. Griffith

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  22 shared

• Richard D. Kolodner

  University of California, San Diego

  17 shared

• Nam Keun Kim

  CHA University

  11 shared

• Lulu Rodriguez

  Iowa State University

  8 shared

• Kyo Won Lee

  Government of the Republic of Korea

  8 shared

• Mark Hartmann

  8 shared

• Sook‐Hwan Lee

  8 shared

• Kwang Yul

  Shanghai Jiao Tong University

  7 shared

Education

• PhD/PI, structural and functional genomics

  Korea National Institute of Health

Awards & honors

• Top paper awards from the Association for Education in Journ…
• Top paper awards from the International Communication Associ…