Chau Tong, Ph.D.

Chau Tong, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication

Publications

01 / Selected studies

My publications examine how information gains visibility and authority in health, politics, and journalism. Selected studies appear first, followed by the full publication list. My name is in bold in the citations. See my CV for manuscripts under review and presentations.

Health information and inequality

What information is available to circulate?

Practical screening information was scarce in the posts we coded, and broker accounts offered connections to audiences with few other expert ties. I led the framing, design, and definitions of disseminator and broker accounts, linking colorectal cancer racial equity content with network measures of exposure opportunities.

The content of health equity posts
Outcome disparities
641 / 1,134 posts
Calls to action
505 / 1,134 posts
Screening information
159 / 1,134 posts
Symptoms
11 / 1,134 posts
Selected, overlapping categories among 1,134 posts mentioning a historically minoritized racial group. Tong et al., 2025, Table 3.
First & corresponding authorJournal of Medical Internet Research · 2025Read article
Credibility and political identity

“Fake news” as an accusation

Politicized uses of “fake news” were associated with affective polarization. I led the framing and survey design that distinguished accusations against opponents from descriptions of false content, connecting credibility judgments with political identity.

First author · Mass Communication and Society · 2020PDFRead article
Computational measurement · 2026

What does a topic model contribute?

Our AURA demonstration found broad correspondence between model outputs and human coding, with limited additional thematic discovery. The workflow evaluates correspondence, usefulness to experts, and additional discovery separately.

First author · International Journal of Qualitative MethodsRead article
Computational health communication

What does a clinical search term miss?

The retrieval method recovered relevant health videos expressed in language that clinical search terms missed. I led the design and combined word embeddings, recommendation networks, and human review to improve coverage while assessing relevance.

Finding health information
21 of 51

relevant videos omitted
the word “colonoscopy.”

30 included the term21 omitted it
Among the 51 relevant videos in a validation sample of 150 videos. Tong et al., 2022.
First & corresponding authorJMIR Medical Informatics · 2022Read article
02 / Full publication list

Journal articles · Peer reviewed

  1. Tong, C., Eyinla, T., & Bautista, J. R. (2026). Comparing BERTopic outputs with human-coded themes: The Alignment and Usefulness Rating Audit (AURA) workflow for qualitative analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069261486252
  2. Shea, A., Omapang, A., Cho, J. Y., Ginsparg, M., Bazarova, N., Winice, H., Kizilcec, R., Tong, C., & Margolin, D. (2025). Beyond ad hominem attacks: A typology of the discursive tactics used when objecting to news commentary on social media. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0328550
  3. Massey, Z., Tong, C., Zhang, T., Wexell, K., Li, Y., & Zhao, J. (2025). Assessing responses to cannabis health warnings among adults in U.S. recreational states. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2025.107998
  4. Tong, C., Margolin, D., Niederdeppe, J., Chunara, R., Liu, J., Jih-Vieira, L., & King, A. J. (2025). Colorectal cancer racial equity post volume, content, and exposure: An observational study using Twitter (now X) data. Journal of Medical Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.2196/63864
  5. Liu, J., Niederdeppe, J., Tong, C., Margolin, D., Chunara, R., Smith, T., & King, A. J. (2024). Associations between news coverage, social media discussions, and search trends about celebrity deaths, screening, and other colorectal cancer-related events. Preventive Medicine, 185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2024.108022
  6. King, A. J., Dunbar, N. M., Margolin, D., Chunara, R., Tong, C., Jih-Vieira, L., Matsen, C., & Niederdeppe, J. (2023). Global prevalence and content of information about alcohol use as a cancer risk factor on Twitter. Preventive Medicine, 177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2023.107728 · PDF
  7. Tong, C., Margolin, D., Chunara, R., Niederdeppe, J., Taylor, T., Dunbar, N., & King, A. J. (2022). Search term identification methods for computational health communication: A word embedding and network approach for health content on YouTube. JMIR Medical Informatics, 10(8). https://doi.org/10.2196/37862
  8. Suk, J., Lukito, J., Su, M.-H., Kim, S. J., Tong, C., Sun, Z., & Sarma, P. (2022). Do I sound American? How message attributes of Internet Research Agency (IRA) disinformation relate to Twitter engagement. Computational Communication Research, 4(2), 590–628. https://doi.org/10.5117/CCR2022.2.008.SUK · PDF
  9. Ghosh, S., Su, M.-H., Abhishek, A., Suk, J., Tong, C., Kamath, K., Hills, O., Correa, T., Garlough, C., Borah, P., & Shah, D. (2022). Covering #MeToo across the news spectrum: Political accusation and public events as drivers of press attention. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 27(1), 158–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220968081 · PDF
  10. Tong, C., Winckler, H., & Rojas, H. (2021). The connection between perceptions of media bias and influence and affective polarization: An examination in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. Revista de Comunicación Política, 3, e1. https://doi.org/10.29105/rcp3-1
  11. Lukito, J., Loya, L., Dávalos, C., Li, J., Tong, C., & McLeod, D. M. (2021). Chiming in: A computer-assisted analysis of popular musicians’ political engagement on Twitter. Social Media + Society, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211019013 · PDF
  12. Tong, C., Gill, H., Li, J., Valenzuela, S., & Rojas, H. (2020). “Fake news is anything they say!” Conceptualization and weaponization of fake news among the American public. Mass Communication and Society, 23(5), 755–778. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2020.1789661 · PDF
  13. Xia, Y., Lukito, J., Zhang, Y., Wells, C., Kim, S. J., & Tong, C. (2019). Disinformation, performed: Self-presentation of a Russian IRA account on Twitter. Information, Communication & Society, 22(11), 1646–1664. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1621921 · PDF

Conference proceedings · Peer reviewed

  1. Tong, C. (2025). Searching for BLM: Google search results during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 33rd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP Adjunct ’25). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3708319.3733704
  2. Tong, C. (2025). Unite or divide? Biased search queries and Google Search results in polarized politics. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Web Science Conference 2025 (WebSci ’25), 158–168. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3717867.3717888

Editorially reviewed journal letter

King, A. J., Margolin, D., Tong, C., Chunara, R., & Niederdeppe, J. (2023). Making sense of social media data about colorectal cancer screening. Journal of the American College of Radiology, 21(4), 543–544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacr.2023.06.045

Book reprint

Tong, C., Gill, H., Li, J., Valenzuela, S., & Rojas, H. (2021). “Fake News Is Anything They Say!” Conceptualization and Weaponization of Fake News among the American Public. In D. Pompper & L. Hoffman (Eds.), What IS News? Routledge. Reprinted from Mass Communication and Society, 23(5), 755–778 (2020). Publisher page

For manuscripts under review, research presentations, and invited talks, see my complete CV.