Rita Tang
Affiliated Faculty
Dr. Rita Tang (Ph.D. 2026, University of Minnesota) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona. She studies how people encounter, evaluate, and respond to contested information on social media, and how organizations can use AI and other tools to counter misinformation in health, science, and crisis communication. Her recent work examines how people understand, trust, and develop literacy about AI, how journalists respond to misinformation, and how individuals' correction experiences relate to their beliefs, democratic attitudes, and political participation. She uses mixed methods, including experiments, surveys, computational approaches, interviews, and thematic analysis. At Arizona, she teaches courses in health communication as well as social media and communication.
Her research has appeared in journals including New Media & Society, Health Communication, Journalism, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Social Media + Society, and Journalism Practice.
She completed her Ph.D. in Mass Communication, with a minor in Political Psychology, at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and holds an M.A. in Anthropology and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a B.A. in Advertising from Fudan University.