Ji-young Han
Ewha Womans University · Social Sciences
About the Lab
Professor Ji-young Han's research lab specializes in media psychology, political communication, and social polarization, with a focus on how news framing, emotional responses, and digital media environments shape public opinion and ideological polarization. The lab investigates the role of emotions—particularly anger—in spreading misinformation, the impact of conflict framing along identity lines (such as partisanship and gender), and the dynamics of digital echo chambers in online news environments. Using experimental and survey-based methodologies, the lab explores mechanisms like motivated reasoning, self-categorization, and ideological identity salience in shaping political attitudes and social behavior.
Research Overview
Research Output Trend
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Selected Papers
15A survey conducted over South Korean adults (N=513) reveals that emotions, specifically anger, contribute to the broader spread of misinformation on COVID-19 by leading angry individuals to consider false claims to be “scientifically credible.” This pattern is more evident among conservatives than liberals. Our finding sheds light on new measures and journalistic interventions that could alleviate the public’s anger and foster science-based conversations during a public health crisis.
Existing research on conflict framing in the news-media has focused disproportionately on political-party membership, where prior polarization between party elites implies strong pre-existing differences of opinion. To determine whether conflict framing can elicit polarization in the context of other important social identities, we compare the polarizing effects of conflict framing along partisan versus gender lines. In two experimental studies using different samples—i.e., college students (Stu
Two experiments tested whether exposure to partisan conflict-framed news polarizes news consumers along party lines. Partisan self-categorization and motivated reasoning were examined as potential mediators of this effect. In two samples, path analyses showed that Democrats and Republicans exposed to partisan conflict-framed news adopted more polarized opinions on a disputed issue. This polarization effect was consistently mediated by perceived argument validity, an indicator of motivated reason
This study explored the presence of digital echo chambers in the realm of partisan media’s news comment sections in South Korea. We analyzed the political slant of 152 K user comments written by 76 K unique contributors on NAVER, the country’s most popular news aggregator. We found that the political slant of the average user comments to be in alignment with the political leaning of the conservative news outlets; however, this was not true of the progressive media. A considerable number of comme
The goal of this study is to theorize the relationship between the news and political polarization through a lens of group dynamics. Consistent with the salience hypothesis of the category fit and category accessibility interaction, we first articulate when and how news exposure makes news consumers think of themselves as Democrats or Republicans instead of unique individuals. Drawing on group polarization literature, we further hypothesize partisan self-stereotyping—an automatic reaction to par
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between depression and social/emotional isolation of sport participation and club participation. The subjects of this study were selected by cluster random sampling of university students in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do. There were 337(participation), 381(non-participation) used for the analysis. The total was 718. CES-D(Center For Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale) Radloff(1977) translated by Lee, M. K.(1992) and ESLI(Emotional/Socia
Informed by uncertainty–identity theory, this study tested the polarizing effect of partisan-led politicization of science and ways to combat it. Using a national sample of South Koreans ( N = 840), our online experiment found that when partisan elites, as opposed to scientists (or civic activists), spearheaded politicization, attitude polarization emerged via partisan motivated reasoning. Such polarizing effects of party cues did not persist when subjective certainty and self-affirmation enhanc
Abstract. Although there is growing evidence that partisans believe they are further apart than they actually are, the causes and consequences of this misperception are not always clear. Informed by the literature on news framing and self-categorization theory, we hypothesize that the media’s focus on partisan conflict increases partisans’ perceptions of public polarization, which fuels partisan attitude polarization on disputed issues in news coverage. Study 1 supports this contention in the po
The purpose of the study was aimed to verify the effect of activity classes on physical self-concept , outcome expectation and exercise adherence of college students. Data were collected from participants in required general activity classes of 'N' university. Using convenience sampling method a total of 278 samples were used for this study. The statistical techniques for data analysis were descriptive statistics analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis and two-way repeated AN
We conducted two studies to compare how anxiety and anger influence the online spread of information. Study 1 found that tweets expressing anger reached more people and had deeper retweet chains than tweets expressing anxiety, across all measures of retweet cascades (i.e., size, depth, maximum breadth, and structural virality). Study 2 used an online survey and confirmed anger’s supremacy in information sharing. Individuals who were angry indicated a higher intention to share emotional tweets of
The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences of the degree of obesity and the stages of change for exercise on the Body Attitudes, Eating Attitude and Life Stress of female college students and their relationship. A total of 366 female college students province were recruited for the current study. Body fat, Stages of change for exercise, Body Attitudes Questionnaire(BAQ), Eating Attitude Test(EAT-26), Life Stress Questionnaire were used to evaluate the degree of obesity, the lev
This study analyzes the political slants of user comments on Korean partisan media. We built a BERT-based classifier to detect political leaning of short comments via the use of semiunsupervised deep learning methods that produced an F1 score of 0.83. As a result of classifying 21.6K comments, we found the high presence of conservative bias on both conservative and liberal news outlets. Moreover, this study discloses an asymmetry across the partisan spectrum in that more liberals (48.0%) than co
우리나라는 모성보호와 일 ․ 가정 양립관련 법률을 제․개정함으로써 많은 제도를 새로이 도입하고 개선해왔다. 그러나 이러한 제도도입과 개선에도 불구하고 일하는 부모가 제도를 제대로사용하지 못하고 있어 부모 모두의 돌봄권과 노동권을 성평등하게 확보하기에는 현행 일․가정양립제도 전반의 실효성이 부족한 상태이다. 본 연구는 이러한 문제인식을 토대로 현행 우리나라 육아휴직 제도를 중심으로 보편적인 돌봄권 확보, 즉 가정 내 돌봄노동의 성평등한 분배를 위한 입법개선방안을 구체적으로 제시하는것을 목적으로 한다. 특히 북구유럽(스웨덴, 아이슬란드)을 중심으로 이미 도입되어 시행되고있는 ‘부모휴가 할당제’가 여성과 남성간의 동등한 돌봄노동 분배에 미친 영향을 검토한다. 이를 통해 현행 우리나라 육아휴직제도의 문제점을 짚어내고 보편적 돌봄권을 현실화하기 위한육아휴직 제도 개선방안으로 1) 육아휴직 부모할당기간 도입, 2) 육아휴직 급여 수준 인상을위한 급여체계 변경을 제안한다.
Research Areas
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