Chau Tong
What becomes
visible?
People. Platforms. Public information.
I study how search, social platforms, and generative AI shape the information people find and the claims they trust. At Missouri, I lead the Computational Communication Technology Lab, where we examine information access, credibility, and inequality in health and politics.
I am an assistant professor of Strategic Communication, jointly appointed in the Missouri School of Journalism and the Institute for Data Science & Informatics. Originally from Hanoi, I earned my M.A. at Ewha Womans University and my Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, advised by Dr. Hernando Rojas. At Cornell, my postdoctoral mentors were Drs. Jeff Niederdeppe and Drew Margolin.
AI and public information
My group is auditing Google AI Overviews across languages and over time. We examine how answers and sources change, how health guidance communicates uncertainty, and what these answers offer people seeking help.
Research program and collaborationsMaking information visible
My retrieval method recovered health videos that clinical search terms missed. Combining word embeddings, recommendation networks, and human review helps researchers examine the language people use online.
Read the studyThe query matters.
Across three political topics, query wording was the primary source of differences in Google results. My audit separates query choices from variation associated with users’ political identities, changing how we interpret apparent search bias.
Sole author · ACM WebSci · 2025When “fake news” becomes an accusation
Accusations of “fake news” against political opponents were associated with affective polarization. I distinguish these uses from descriptions of false content, examining credibility labels as acts of political communication.
First author · Mass Communication and Society · 2020