Jingyuan Jolie Shi

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Hong Kong Baptist University

The Internet widely display interactions between various parties, calling for research to understand how message- and source-related factors in these easily observed interactions influence observers’ attitudes in health contexts. From a masspersonal communication perspective, we investigated how reading a conversation about seeking counseling betwe...

In this study, we tested the core premise of the risk perception attitude framework—that perceived risk and perceived efficacy jointly affect intention—and identified consideration of future consequences (CFC) as a boundary condition of the premise in the context of mitigating climate change. Our two-wave survey ( N = 439) revealed that perceived i...

We proposed a dual typology of audiences for social media communication campaigns: the participating audience, who interacts with campaign planners, and the observing audience, who observes those interactions. Situated in a context of promoting seeking counseling for depression, our online experiment (N = 570) demonstrated that the similarity of th...

Amid mounting interest in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, communication scholars have sought to understand humans’ perceptions of and attitudes toward AI’s predictions, recommendations, and decisions. Meanwhile, scholars in the nascent but growing field of explainable AI (XAI) have aimed to clarify AI’s operational mechanisms and make them...

In our research, we examined how three dimensions of opinion leadership—connectivity, maven, and persuasiveness—are associated with sharing positive and negative information about vaccines among parents in Hong Kong through a mixed-methods approach. In two studies, we assessed opinion leadership following a sociometric approach that involved using...

We extended the influence of presumed media influence model by taking interpersonal communication into account. Our survey (N = 642) results revealed that individuals’ attention to COVID-19 information on social media and their engagement in interpersonal communication about the disease independently and jointly affected presumed others’ attention....

Online information seekers often do not actively post or engage in interactions with others, inviting research on how passive users of online communities benefit from the information they see. Based on the social identity model of deindividuation effects model (SIDE) and social identity theory, we proposed and tested the idea that observers of a su...

News media can influence citizens' health beliefs about COVID-19 and eventually their vaccination intention. However, existing literature has rarely investigated how such effect is contingent upon a country-level factor: press freedom. Situated in the Health Belief Model, this study draws upon a multi-national survey (N = 3,599), involving 10 major...

While there is support for regulatory fit theory in predicting the communication effectiveness of promotion-framed and prevention-framed messages in advertisements, it is not certain if the theory can be extended to predict the effectiveness of promotion-oriented and prevention-oriented advertising appeals. This study examines the interplay of regu...

To examine how cancer fatalism, stigma, and risk perception influence information seeking and avoidance among Chinese adults in Hong Kong. We administered an online survey to 616 Hong Kong Chinese adults using quota sampling and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling. Fatalism was positively associated with susceptibility (β = .25,...

To identify the psychosocial determinants of individuals’ intention to engage in collective actions against cancer, we extended and tested the risk perception attitude (RPA) framework at the level of social perceptions. The results of a large online survey of Hong Kong citizens (N = 1,005) revealed that perceived societal risk and perceived collect...

Following the COVID-19’s outbreak in China, wildlife-related issues such as wildlife management and conservation made headlines around the world due to the potential zoonotic nature of the newly discovered coronavirus. In our study, we examined the dynamic interaction of the news agenda and public agenda concerning wildlife-related issues on social...

BACKGROUND Although recent developments in mobile health (mHealth) have elevated the importance of assessing the extent to which smartphones empower individuals to seek information online, research in Asian countries investigating the behavior of seeking health information on smartphones has been rare. OBJECTIVE The twofold goal of our study was t...

Background Although recent developments in mobile health have elevated the importance of how smartphones empower individuals to seek health information, research investigating this phenomenon in Asian countries has been rare. Objective The goal of our study was to provide a comprehensive profile of mobile health information seekers and to examine...

Mental illness is a prevalent and pressing public health problem among the Asian population, especially among young adults. This study examined the psychosocial predictors of the intention to seek counseling based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the effects of mental health conditions on the relative contributions of the TPB predictors...

To examine the nature and content of messages presented in a popular Chinese online community about intimate partner violence (IPV), this study utilized a two-step analytic approach that combined quantitative content analysis and automatic content analysis. We collected 90,040 messages from the online community’s IPV group. Study 1 analyzed 8,343 r...

Online health information, as an emerging field in health communication research, has attracted close attention from researchers. To identify major determinants of why individuals seek health information online, we conducted a meta-analysis that systematically accumulates the existing research findings. To that end, by integrating three theories or...

To elucidate the Chinese public's awareness of cancer and its possible prevention, we investigated cancer-prevention messages presented on Weibo, a Twitter-like Chinese social media platform, with reference to the extended parallel process model (EPPM) and attribution theory. With a sample of 16,654 cancer-related messages, we analyzed whether the...

Mental disorder is a pressing public health issue in Singapore, especially among young adults. By integrating the risk perception attitude (RPA) framework and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study examines psychosocial factors underlying two mental health promotion behaviors – seeking counseling and employing self-help methods – among yo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare haze-related content between traditional and social media in China by applying agenda-setting theory and the extended parallel process model (EPPM). Specifically, this paper examines the correlation between the two forms of media in terms of the ranking of the attributes of haze (i.e. the...

Although critical in practice, as well as prevalent, limited effort has gone into understanding the driving factors behind the diffusion of cancer information on social media. This study seeks to comprehensively examine both the content and sender factors that determine cancer information diffusion. Specifically, a multidimensional measure is propo...

Background: Although a number of studies have examined social support needs among women with breast cancer, little attention has been paid to the burden and needs for social support among their family caregivers, who often report mental and physical problems associated with caregiving. Objective: This study aims to examine the role of social med...

Background: Due to a double stigma against HIV/AIDS and homosexuality, gay men living with HIV/AIDS (GMLHA) have used social media to exchange social support. The current study aims to examine the influence of perceived threat on seeking social support on social media among Chinese GMLHA. Methods: First, Weibo posts from 133 GMLHA were content a...

The present research aims to comprehensively and systematically examine the effectiveness of parental mediation. Specifically, this study examined the magnitude of effects of three main parental mediation strategies on reducing the amount of media use and incidence of media-related risks. A meta-analysis was conducted using 54 empirical studies inv...

This research refined the notion of attitude based on the reasoned action perspective of organ donation research at both the conceptual and operational levels in the Chinese context. In Study 1, a multi-dimensional attitude scale was developed based on the salient beliefs of the Chinese toward registering to become an organ donor, and the scale’s r...

Background: In the recent years, social networking sites (SNSs, also called as social media) are a popular platform for organ donation promotions, and recruiting opinion leaders for such campaigns has been found effective in promoting behavioral changes. Objective: The current paper focuses on the dissemination of organ donation tweets on Weibo, t...

The past decade has witnessed a rapid increase in the use of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in health communication campaigns seeking to achieve an ambitious range of health-related impacts. This article provides a review of 40 studies and research protocols, with a focus on two key factors that differentiate SNSs from more traditional health commu...

The theory of normative social behavior (TNSB) describes the moderators of the descriptive norm-behavior relationship. Although specified in revisions to the model, the role of involvement as a moderator has not been fully explored. As such, this article predicts that different forms of involvement (i.e., value-, impression-, and outcome-relevant i...

This study investigated the driving mechanism of building interaction ties among the people living with HIV/AIDS in one of the largest virtual HIV communities in China using social network analysis. Specifically, we explained the probability of forming interaction ties with homophily and popularity characteristics. The exponential random graph mode...

This study examined the effect of moderately repeated exposure (three times) to a fear appeal message on the Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM) variables of threat, efficacy, and behavioral intentions for the recommended behaviors in the message, as well as the proportions of systematic and message- related thoughts generated after each mess...

A network perspective was adopted in this study to identify influential users in an online HIV community in China. Specifically, the indegree centrality, outdegree centrality, betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and clustering coefficient of individuals were evaluated to measure the user influence in such a community. Moreover, this stu...

In recent years, social media has become an important source of social support. People living with HIV/AIDS in China created an online support group (the HIV/AIDS Weibo Group) on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, in January 2011. The current study examined how social support transmitted in this social media community. First, messages over five...

The Internet has recently become an important source of social support. People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in China created an online support group (the HIV/AIDS Weibo Group) on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, in January 2011. To investigate social support in the HIV/AIDS Weibo Group, the content of all 7215 messages posted in this Weibo...