Combating misinformation through strategic communication

Yuming Fang takes the “critical thinkers” part of Augsburg’s mission statement seriously. Now in her second year as an assistant professor of communication studies, she is an expert in misinformation—how it spreads, why we believe it, and how to disrupt it.

Fang’s research has shown that familiarity leads to credulousness: the more familiar a piece of misinformation feels, the more likely people are to agree with it, regardless of prior exposure to the misinformation. Media literacy and numeracy as well as deliberative information processing are critical in prompting individuals to be more suspicious when encountering misinformation, she says, noting that people are also more likely to believe false claims that contain statistics.

Fang is a key faculty member in Augsburg’s strategic communications major at a time when the world is grappling with misinformation challenges fueled by the explosive rise of generative AI and social media. First introduced two years ago, the strategic communication concentration equips students to navigate complex communication challenges in a range of settings, from traditional agency work in advertising, public relations, and marketing to in-house roles focusing on social media, content creation, and crisis management for major companies.

But Fang notes that students should think broadly about their career options. The strong written, oral, and visual communication skills that are foundational to strategic communication are relevant across many contexts, including big tech, the nonprofit sector, government and public affairs, health, sports, entertainment and media, and more. Whether individually or at the societal level, the ability to create messages that break through and influence behavior is increasingly valuable.

This fall, Fang’s classes—Principles of Strategic Communication, Organizational Communication, and Mass Media and Popular Culture—address both the micro and macro. “If you think of an inverted pyramid,” she says, “at the top is the societal level, where we think about what emerging trends need to inform strategy. Below that is the organizational level, where communication helps to reach the goals and objectives of an organization. Then you move down to the communication level, where all the elements of a campaign come together to persuade.”

Prior to pursuing a PhD in mass communication and media studies at the University of Minnesota, Fang received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School. In that program, students ran a newsroom and graduated with a set of published projects that spanned print, video, and interactive multimedia. The deadline-driven environment was “stressful but worth it,” she says, and she carried the hands-on approach forward into her own classrooms. She asks her students to develop a communications campaign for a real-world client of their choosing—for example, a coffee shop, an immigration nonprofit, or a local retailer. Over the course of the semester, they come up with the strategic plan, key messages, creative design elements, budget, execution, and evaluation plan. In a competitive job market, Fang wants her students to graduate with a tangible portfolio in hand and the experience to back it up.

This experiential approach is a natural fit at Augsburg, where Fang appreciates the culture of welcome on campus. As a first-generation college graduate herself, the sense of connection has made a deep impression, both in terms of the support she has received as a new faculty member and the ease with which students and faculty interact every day.

“Students are really seen here,” she says. “It feels great to work at Augsburg.”

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Top image: Beginning her second year at Augsburg, Yuming Fang dedicates much of her work toward media literacy and numeracy. (Photo by Courtney Perry)