Grantee: Ganna Kostygina, PhD

Ganna Kostygina, PhD

• NORC at the University of Chicago

Current Title
Principal Research Scientist

Describe your scientific identity.
I am a health communication and media effects scientist. My research agenda centers on advancing communication science and technology for health education and disease prevention, for instance, in the domain of tobacco use prevention.

What are your research interests?
My research employs innovative methodological approaches, including machine learning methods, to generate insights about the process by which messages encouraging behaviors that are harmful to health (e.g., tobacco marketing) or how prevention messages communicating health risks are shared and processed across a variety of mediated and interpersonal channels (e.g., social networking platforms), as well as how these messages influence and reflect behavior.

What is the significance of your current research project?
Social media are an important, yet understudied, platform for marketing tobacco products, including cigars and cigarillos, smokeless tobacco, and electronic cigarettes. Currently, my research focuses on documenting and characterizing novel strategies to promote tobacco products such as influencer marketing, as well as developing effective counter-marketing strategies in the context of the complex and evolving media environment, characterized by an influx of tobacco and nicotine product promotion and advocacy, potentially resulting in audience confusion and misinformation. The findings from this research build a scientific and methodological base for surveillance and potential regulation of commercial advertising messages on social media platforms.

What motivated you to work in health communication research?
My current interests build on my prior training at the University of California, San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, where I worked on a study exploring non-cigarette marketing and counter-marketing strategies. This work involved analysis of previously secret tobacco industry documents on cigar/cigarillo and smokeless tobacco promotion strategies targeting youth and disparity populations. My agenda is also informed by my prior community-based work on an intervention project aimed to evaluate messages promoting smoke-free policies in rural Kentucky communities.

Describe something that had a profound influence on your program of research or scientific interests (an "ah-ha!" moment).
My early collaborative work helped me realize that new technologies carry tremendous potential for advancing the science of health communication, yet this potential is largely underleveraged. This research involved participating as a graduate assistant in innovative projects aiming to design, test, and evaluate the effectiveness of AI architecture (Personality-enabled Architecture for Cognition) for creating realistic and engaging agents with personality, culture, and emotion for modeling and changing human behavior. These intelligent agents can be utilized to build a much more lifelike interactive virtual environment that can serve as not only a communication intervention for changing health outcomes but also as a scientific test-bed for advancing communication research and theory.

Selected training, awards, and honors:

• Ph.D., Communication, University of Southern California (2007)
• Postdoctoral Scholar, Tobacco Policy Research Program, University of Kentucky (2011)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco (2014)
• Annenberg Scholarship for Advanced Training in Statistical Research (2005)
• Outstanding Academic Achievement Award, University of Southern California (2007)