About

Lee Ann Kahlor is a professor at the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches large-scale undergraduate courses in advertising psychology and research methods, and serves as the Ph.D. Student Advisor for the school. Dr. Kahlor is an international expert in health and environmental risk communication, with a focus on information seeking and avoiding behaviors. Her research spans various contexts including cancer, nanotechnology, and carbon capture and storage, and she has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and white papers, as well as co-edited two books. Her work has been featured in numerous academic journals such as Health Communication, Human Communication Research, Science Communication, and others. She is also Editor Emeritus of the journal Science Communication and has contributed to working groups at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, as well as serving on grant review panels at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Kahlor is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for her distinguished scholarship, teaching, and service in health and environmental risk communication. She has a robust funding portfolio, including being co-principal investigator on a $4.5 million grant from the NSF and receiving additional funding from various foundations, government agencies, and industry. Prior to her academic career, she worked in journalism, corporate communications, as a freelance writer, and as a communication officer for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program. She holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. in Journalism from Marquette University, and a B.A. in English-Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Public relations
• Psychiatry
• Economics
• Economic growth
• Nursing
• Environmental health
• Cognitive psychology
• Medical education
• Family medicine
• Environmental economics
• Environmental resource management
• Gerontology
• Business
• Anthropology
• Socioeconomics
• Public economics
• Pedagogy
• Law

Selected publications

• Social media conversations about community water fluoridation: formative research to guide health communication

  UNC Libraries · 2025-07-04

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVES: Community water fluoridation (CWF) is one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. Despite this achievement, there are still misunderstandings about the safety of water fluoridation. Previous communication campaigns advocating CWF have been unsuccessful in combating these misunderstandings, suggesting a need for a new way to promote CWF. The goal of this article is to guide research for future campaigns by analyzing the digital conversation regarding community water fluoridation and other forms of fluoride in the state of Texas. METHODS: NUVI software extracted tweets from Twitter, and SAS Text Miner 12.1 software revealed topics related to water fluoridation. RESULTS: The results uncovered eight topics related to water fluoridation. Overall, the analysis showed mixed reactions toward water fluoridation, fluoride toothpaste, and children's dental health. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of the text analysis will guide future research, with the goal of building a pro-CWF effort in Texas.

  PublisherDOI

• Fact-checking in the age of AI: Reducing biases with non-human information sources

  Technology in Society · 2024-11-18 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study examines the obstacles to the effectiveness of fact-checking, focusing primarily on the pervasive impact of entrenched biases. Fact-checking efforts often face resistance when linked to mistrusted sources, leading to cognitive dissonance and the rejection of messages in favor of pre-existing beliefs, a phenomenon known as motivated reasoning. This resistance hinders organizations’ ability to correct misconceptions surrounding social issues and entities. The research delves into whether non-human entities such as AI can facilitate less biased information processing due to their perceived impartiality. Applying a moderated mediation model in experimental settings, we found that labeling a source as artificial intelligence is pivotal in evaluating fact-checking. AI labels moderate the impact of partisan biases on the persuasive outcomes of fact-checks, such as message credibility and acceptance, compared to the human source. This study offers valuable insights for enhancing the effectiveness of fact-checking in the context of cognitive and psychological biases by highlighting the critical influence of information sources in reducing polarization in public perceptions of scientific issues. • People's perception of false information's credibility is influenced by their alignment with the political party represented in the misinformation. • AI fact-checking decreases over-trust in in-group-aligned information, promoting a more balanced evaluation of scientific facts. • Human scientists remain more credible than AI, but integrating AI can strategically enhance fact-checking efforts. • Effective AI use in science communication needs cautious application, addressing ethical, trust, and content quality issues.

  PublisherDOI

• Artificial Intelligence in Influencer Marketing: A Mixed-Method Comparison of Human and Virtual Influencers on Instagram

  Journal of Interactive Advertising · 2024-04-02 · 58 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The prominence and profitability of influencer marketing have facilitated a proliferation of virtual influencers-fictitious digital personalities created and managed using artificial intelligence. Virtual influencers may offer advertisers greater creative control and yield greater engagement than human influencers. Hence, we investigated these claims by comparing the persuasion strategies and outcomes between human and virtual influencers. We retrieved 99,680 English-language Instagram posts uploaded by 424 human and virtual influencers within the beauty, fashion, and lifestyle domains from 2020 to 2022. Dictionary-based sentiment analysis (replicated across the AFINN and Bing lexicons) indicated that Instagram posts from both types of influencers predominantly conveyed positive sentiment. Latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling revealed that both types of influencers asserted opinion leadership differently: Human influencers engaged in active self-promotion, while virtual influencers emphasized their identity. A natural experiment found that human influencers elicited greater engagement than virtual influencers. Influencer tier also significantly interacted with Instagram verification to affect engagement. Theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Communicating Benefits and Risks About Carbon Capture and Storage (Ccs): Understanding Stakeholder Mental Models to Inform Effective Messaging

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Application of Ai in Fact-Checking for Science: Interaction between Source Labeling and Partisan Bias

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Roles of Social Media Use and Medical Mistrust in Black Americans’ COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: The RISP Model Perspective

  Health Communication · 2023-08-08 · 25 citations

  article

  = 1,136; 53.5% female) showed that social media use and medical mistrust were positively associated with belief in misinformation related to the COVID-19 vaccine, which, in turn, was positively related to vaccine hesitancy through perceived information insufficiency and information seeking intentions. Furthermore, we found that belief in misinformation and subjective norms toward anti-vaccination also serially mediated the association between social media use and medical mistrust with vaccine hesitancy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction to Sharon Dunwoody Memorial Issue

  Science Communication · 2023-02-01

  articleCorresponding

  This introduction to our February 2023 issue is intended to provide context for the issue content, which presents multiple examples of the ongoing influence of the work of the late Sharon Dunwoody. Contemporary research articles, commentary pieces, and the introduction itself reflect Sharon’s deep influence on science communication and science communication researchers and their work.

  PublisherDOI

• The Planned Risk Information Seeking Model Applied to Vaccine Information Avoidance and the Role of Affect, Emotion and Perceived Benefits

  Health Communication · 2023-10-23 · 12 citations

  articleSenior author

  = 1,508), we examined intentions to avoid information about vaccination against COVID-19. The study was guided by the planned risk information seeking model (PRISM), also taking into consideration benefit perceptions, positive affective responses, and discrete emotions. Our findings generally supported the utility of the extended PRISM to predict information avoidance intentions; most of the hypothesized relationships were supported and the model accounted for 58.8% of the variance in intentions to avoid information about COVID-19 vaccination. Furthermore, perceived benefits of vaccination, and positive affect felt toward vaccination played significant roles in explaining intentions to avoid information about vaccination. A more nuanced view on affective predictors showed that hope and interest were weakly associated with less pronounced avoidance intent, whereas we found no link between avoidance intent and fear, anxiety, and anger.

  PublisherDOI

• COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Cameroon: The Role of Medical Mistrust and Social Media Use

  Journal of Health Communication · 2023-08-25 · 15 citations

  article

  Most African countries report low COVID-19 vaccination rates (Msellati et al., 2022; WHO Africa; 2020). This study focuses on factors associated with vaccine hesitancy specifically in the country of Cameroon. Social media use and medical mistrust have been suggested as key variables that may increase vaccine hesitancy. Adopting the information-related perspective guided by the risk information seeking and processing model, the current research explored how social media use and medical mistrust are related to vaccine hesitancy among Cameroonians. Survey results from a sample of 1,000 Cameroonians fielded in early 2022 showed that social media use and medical mistrust were positively associated with belief in misinformation related to the COVID-19 vaccine. Belief in misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine was negatively associated with perceived information insufficiency. A positive relationship between perceived information insufficiency and information seeking, as well as a negative relationship between information seeking and vaccine hesitancy were also found. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Science Communication · 2023-04-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ming-Ching Liang

  Metropolitan State University

  12 shared

• Shelly R. Hovick

  Ohio University

  11 shared

• Won-Ki Moon

  University of Florida

  9 shared

• Lucy Atkinson

  The University of Texas at Austin

  9 shared

• Janet Z. Yang

  University at Buffalo, State University of New York

  7 shared

• Z. Janet Yang

  7 shared

• Hilary Clement Olson

  6 shared

• Wan Wang

  6 shared

Labs

• The LabPI

Education

• Ph.D. Mass Communication, Journalism

  University of Wisconsin Madison

  2003

Awards & honors

• Moody College Teaching Excellence Award
• University of Texas System Regents Outstanding Teaching Awar…
• The William David Blunk Memorial Professorship
• Services for Students with Disabilities Clock Award
• President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award