Hyunjin Seo

School of Journalism and Mass Communications - Journalism

Associate Professor

Docking Young Faculty Scholar

Ph.D., Mass Communications, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University

hseo@ku.edu

Primary office:

785-864-7612

Stauffer-Flint Hall
Room 207A

University of Kansas

1435 Jayhawk Boulevard

Lawrence, KS 66045-7575

Bio
Academics
Publications
Presentations
Contracts/Grants
Awards/Honors

Hyunjin Seo (pronounced: hen-jin suh) is an associate professor and Docking Faculty Scholar in the William Allen School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas as well as founding director of the KU Center for Digital Inclusion. She is also a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University where she was a resident fellow from fall 2018 to summer 2019.

Her research examines how social collaborative networks, facilitated by digital communication technologies, mobilize movements to address social problems. She strives to inform organizations and policies by working closely with community members, policymakers and activists through her research. For example, she leads a National Science Foundation-funded program offering evidence-based technology education to women who were formerly incarcerated and are now restarting their lives outside the criminal justice system. Her research team has recently completed a two-year education program supporting low-income minority seniors’ digital learning about online information assessment and privacy. Seo’s research on teens’ use of social media and collective action, funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, helped Kansas City reshape its youth programs to better meet area youth’s needs.

Her research has received top paper awards at leading international conferences and has been published in top-tier journals such as Journal of Communication and New Media & Society. In 2013 she was named a Docking Faculty Scholar, an award given by the University of Kansas to a faculty member who has “distinguished themselves early through exceptional research and teaching.” In January 2014, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication named her an Emerging Scholar in recognition of my research on social media and social change. Seo received her Ph.D. in mass communications from Syracuse University in 2010 where her dissertation was awarded the all-university Doctoral Prize.

Seo teaches courses on social media, research methods and strategic campaigns. Her “excellence and innovation in teaching” earned her a Promising Professor Award from AEJMC’s Mass Communication and Society Division in 2013. Critical and analytical thinking and independent learning are at the core of her teaching, as she believes these are important tools students will require in whatever profession they pursue in an increasingly complex world. She strives to help students build reasoning abilities and spark their imagination. And her classes combine theoretical and hands-on approaches to issues by enabling students to work with real-world clients. Most of all, she is excited about the idea of potentially helping students realize their dreams.

Seo’s research and teaching are influenced by her professional experience in journalism and strategic communication in South Korea and the United States. Prior to her graduate studies in the United States, Seo was a foreign affairs correspondent for South Korean and international media outlets. During that time, she traveled extensively to cover major international events including six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear issues and gatherings of world leaders such as the United Nations and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit talks. She has also consulted to U.S. and Korea-based nongovernmental organizations regarding their social media strategies and relations with international press.

Education

Ph.D., Mass Communications, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University

M.A., Mass Communications, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri

M.S., International Relations, Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University

B.A., English Education, Kyungpook National University

Teaching Interests

Social media
Strategic campaigns
Research methods
Digital Media

Research Interests

Social Media
Strategic communication
Collective Action
Social Movement
Computational Social Science

Selected Publications

Seo, H. (in press). Media in North Korea. The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society.

Seo, H. (in press). Press freedom in South Korea. In . (Ed.), Press Freedom in Asia. Routledge.

Thorson, S. & Seo, H. (in press). U.S. and North Korea: A Gordian conflict. In . (Ed.), Transforming Intractable Conflicts. Rowman & Littlefield.

Seo, H. (in press). Visual propaganda and social media. In . (Ed.), SAGE International Handbook of Propaganda. SAGE.

Xue, H. Wang, Q. Luo, B. Seo, H. & Li, F. (2019). Content-Aware Trust Propagation Towards Online Review Spam Detection. Journal of Data and Information Quality, 11(3). https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3305258

Seo, H. Erba, J. Altschwager, D. & Geana, M. (2019). Evidence-based digital literacy class for low-income African-American older adults. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 47(2), 130-152. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00909882.2019.1587176?journalCode=rjac20

Ebrahim, H. & Seo, H. (2019). Visual public relations in Middle Eastern higher education: Content analysis of Twitter images. Media Watch, 10(1). https://mediawatchjournal.in/visual-public-relations-in-middle-eastern-higher-education-content-analysis-of-twitter-images/

Seo, H. (2018). Internet connectivity. The SAGE encyclopedia of the Internet, 473-475.

Seo, H. (2018). Social change in networked information age. In . (Ed.), Media Scholarship in a Transitional Age (pp. 11-24). Peter Lang.

Seo, H. Erba, J. Geana, M. & Lumpkins, C. (2017). Calling Doctor Google? Technology Adoption and Health Information Seeking among Low-income African-American Older Adults. Journal of Public Interest Communications, 1(2), 153-173. http://journals.fcla.edu/jpic/article/view/104561/101056

Seo, H. Harn, R. & Husain, S. (2017). Facebook brand communities and social capital. Athens Journal of Mass Media and Communications, 3(1), 7-24. https://www.athensjournals.gr/media/2017-3-1-1-Seo.pdf

Seo, H. & Thorson, S. (2017). Network approach to regime type and global Internet connectedness. Journal of Global Information Technology Management, 20(3), 141-155.

Seo, H. (2017). Press Freedom Annual Report - South Korea & North Korea.

Seo, H. & Thorson, S. (2016). A mixture model of global Internet capacity distributions. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(8), 2032-2044. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23523/full

Seo, H. & Thorson, S. (2016). Empathy in public diplomacy: Strategic academic engagement with North Korea. In J. Pamment (Ed.), Intersections between public diplomacy & international development: Case studies in converging fields.

Seo, H. Harn, R. Ebrahim, H. & Aldana, J. (2016). International students’ social media use and social adjustment. First Monday, 21(11). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6880/5646

Seo, H. (2016). Press Freedom Annual Report - South Korea & North Korea In . (Ed.), Freedom of the Press 2016.

Seo, H. & Ebrahim, H. (2016). Visual propaganda on Facebook: A comparative analysis of Syrian conflicts. Media, War & Conflict, 9(3). http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1750635216661648

Seo, H. & Thorson, S. (2015). Network approach to Internet bandwidth. Computational Social Networks, 2(11), 1-11. http://www.computationalsocialnetworks.com/content/pdf/s40649-015-0022-7.pdf

Thorson, S. J., & Seo, H. (2014). Building partners through academic science. Asian Perspective, 38(1), 137-161.

Seo, H. Houston, B. Knight, A. T., Kennedy, E. & Inglish, A. B. (2014). Teens’ social media use and collective action. New Media & Society, 16(6), 883-902. DOI:10.1177/1461444813495162 http://nms.sagepub.com/content/16/6/883

Seo, H. (2014). Visual propaganda in the age of social media: Twitter images during 2012 Israeli-Hamas conflict. Visual Communication Quarterly, 21(3), 150-161.

Thorson, S. & Seo, H. (2013). From adversaries to partners: Academic science engagement with North Korea. Global Asia, 8(2), 43-47.

Seo, H. (2013). Online social relations and country reputation. International Journal of Communication, 7, 1-20.

Seo, H. (2013). The ‘virtual last three feet’: Understanding relationship perspectives in network-based public diplomacy. In R. Zaharna, A. Arsenault, & A. Fisher (Eds.), Relational, Networked, and Collaborative Approaches to Public Diplomacy: The Connective Mindshift (pp. 157-169). New York: Routledge.

Seo, H. & Kinsey, D. F. (2013). Three Korean perspectives on U.S. internet public diplomacy. Public Relations Review, 39(5), 594-596.

Houston, B. Seo, H. Kennedy, E. & Knight, A. T. (2013). Urban youth’s perspectives on flash mobs. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41(3), 236-252.

Shoemaker, P. Cohen, A. Seo, H. & Wang, X. (2012). Foreign and international news. In F. Esser & T. Hanitzsch (Eds.), Handbook of comparative communication (pp. 341-351). ICA/Routledge.

Seo, H. & Kinsey, D. (2012). Meaning of democracy around the world: A thematic and structural analysis of videos defining democracy. Visual Communication Quarterly, 19(2), 94-107.

Seo, H. & Thorson, S. (2012). Networks of networks: Changing patterns in country bandwidth and centrality in global information infrastructure, 2002-2010. Journal of Communication, 62(2), 345-358.

Seo, H. (2011). Media and foreign policy: A comparative study of journalists' perceptions of press-government relations. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, 12(4), 467-482.

Seo, H. & Thorson, S. (2010). Evaluating social networks in public diplomacy. In C. G. Reddick (Ed.), Politics, Democracy and E-government: Participation and Service Delivery (pp. 243-259). IGI Global Publishing.

Shoemaker, P. Johnson, P. Seo, H. & Wang, X. (2010). Popular online news in Russia, China, and the United States. In E. Vartanova (Ed.), Content, channels and audiences in the new millennium: Interaction and interrelations (pp. 73-103). Moscow: Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Shoemaker, P. Johnson, P. Seo, H. & Wang, X. (2010). Readers as gatekeepers of online news: Brazil, China, and the United States. Brazilian Journalism Research, 6(1), 55-77.

Seo, H. & Lim, J. (2010). Source credibility and use during the six-party talks. Asian Journal of Communication, 20(4), 440-455.

Seo, H. & Thorson, S. (2009). Academic science engagement with North Korea. The Korea Economic Institute (KEI) Academic Paper Series on Korea, 4(4), 1-10.

Lim, J. & Seo, H. (2009). Frame flow between government and the news media and its effects on the public: Framing of North Korea. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 21(2), 204-223.

Seo, H. Kim, J. & Yang, S. (2009). Global activism and new media: A study of transnational NGOs' online public relations. Public Relations Review, 35(2), 123-126.

Seo, H. (2009). International media coverage of North Korea: Study of journalists and news reports on the six-party nuclear talks. Asian Journal of Communication, 19(1), 1-17.

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