PhD student Jessica Ryu and Associate Professor Shelly Hovick received a Top Paper Award in the Health Communication Division for their manuscript titled "Current Approaches and New Directions for Research and Theorizing on Health and Risk Information Behavior” at the National Communication Association 109th Annual Convention in National Harbor, Maryland, Nov. 16-19. 

In the paper, they present a “state of the science” on health and risk information acquisition, where they discuss how scholars in communication have conceptualized, theorized about and measured important concepts such as information seeking and scanning. They also present a roadmap for future theory and research on information behavior that better reflects how people acquire health and risk information today.