Sedona Chinn

Sedona Chinn is an assistant professor in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Chinn’s teaching responsibilities include courses in misinformation and health communication for undergraduate students and graduate students including those in the newly renamed Ph.D. in Science Communication. 

Dr. Chinn researches how individuals make sense of competing claims about science, health, and the environment, as well as how social influence via new media affect perceptions of credibility and expertise. 

Dr. Chinn is currently active in exploring the intersection of politics, health, and wellness on social media. Recent work has demonstrated how aspirational lifestyle and wellness content impact health, science, and political attitudes, including how aspirational social media associates with anti-expert attitudes. She also currently researches the roles of social media influencers in shaping science communication, as well as other environmental and health behaviors. 

In addition, Dr. Chinn investigates ‘Do Your Own Research’ narratives and how they are related to expertise, information seeking, and science beliefs.  Related work concerns the social dynamics surrounding polarization of science. Part of this work explores features and affordances of social media platforms that facilitate and hinder the spread of misinformation online. Other work draws on social identity theories and science populism to explain recent hostility toward scientific experts by some amid generally high levels of trust in scientists. 

Past work has investigated the prevalence and effects of scientific disagreements in media to better understand when and why people question science. In this research, she has used computational content-analytic methods to measure politicization and polarization in climate change news and COVID-19 news. In experimental work, Dr. Chinn has investigated effects of civil and uncivil scientific disagreement messages, as well as the efficacy of consensus messages in the context of climate change. 

Dr. Chinn’s research has been published in New Media & Society,  Political Communication, Science Communication, Environmental Communication, Health Communication, Public Understanding of Science, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, among others. 

She received her Ph.D. in Communication and Media from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in International Relations (minors in French and Asian Studies) from Saint Anselm College. 

You can find a list of her publications on Google Scholar.