Dam Hee Kim

About Dam Hee Kim

Dam Hee Kim (Ph.D., University of Michigan, Homepage) is an Assistant Professor of Communication. With her cross-disciplinary background in communication and business, Dam Hee Kim’s research focuses on the social, political and economic implications of individuals’ engagement with news and entertainment content in the evolving media environment. With an emphasis on social media, she investigates news sharing and political engagement. On media diversity, she empirically examines the normative claim that individuals who value and consume news from diverse viewpoints will become highly-aware and involved democratic citizens.

In addition, Dam Hee Kim explores the practical implications of media diversity policies as well as strategies in the news and entertainment industries. At the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in summer 2011, she examined the nexus among minority ownership, employment and content. Her on-going research topics involve social media strategies of news media outlets, specifically predicting user engagement, and brand extension strategies involving sequels across genres and adaptations in the U.S. and South Korea.

Overall, her work has earned her 11 research awards including two Top Paper awards from the AEJMC (Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication) in 2021. Her work has appeared in Communication Research, Digital Journalism, Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and New Media & Society among others.

At Arizona, Dam Hee Kim teaches courses on communication technology theory and mass media effects. At Michigan, she taught courses of her design, Social media practices: New vs. enduring principles and New media and the audience: Social, political, and economic engagement.

Research Interests

Engagement with (inaccurate) news and politics on social media
Exposure to/avoidance of news from diverse perspectives
The business of news and entertainment media

Selected Publications

Kim, D. H., & Kwak, N. (2022). When does incidental exposure prompt political participation? Cross-national research on the importance of individualism and collectivism. International Journal of Communication.

Kenski, K., Kim, D. H., Jones-Jang, S. M. (Accepted). Candidate evaluations and social media following during the 2020 presidential campaign. Journal of Political Marketing.

Kim, D. H., & Ellison, N. B. (2021). From observation on social media to offline political participation: The social media affordances approach. New Media & Society.

Kim, D. H., Weeks, B. E., Lane, D. S., Hahn, L. B., & Kwak, N. (2021). Sharing and commenting facilitate political learning on Facebook: Evidence from a two-wave panel study. Social Media + Society.

Kim, S., Baek, H., & Kim, D. H. (2021). OTT and live streaming services: Past, present, and future. Telecommunications Policy. (Editorial paper)

Kim, D. H., & Desai, M. (2021). Are social media worth it for news media?: Explaining news engagement on Tumblr and digital traffic of news websites. International Journal on Media Management.

Kim, D. H., Jones-Jang, S. M., & Kenski, K. (2021). Unfriending and muting during elections: The antecedents and consequences of selective avoidance on social media. Mass Communication & Society.

Kim, D. H., Jones-Jang, S. M., & Kenski, K. (2021). Why do people share political information on social media?. Digital Journalism, 9(8), 1123-1140.

Kim, D. H., & Pasek, J. (2020). Explaining the diversity deficit: Value-trait consistency in news media exposure and democratic citizenship. Communication Research. 47(1), 29-54.

Jones-Jang, S. M., Kim, D. H., & Kenski, K. (2020). Perceptions of mis- or disinformation exposure predict political cynicism: Evidence from a two-wave survey during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. New Media & Society.

Kim, D. H., & Kim, S. (2020). A comparative study: Performance of Hollywood and Korean sequel films in Korea. Journal of Media Economics.

Lane, D. S., Lee, S. S., Liang, F., Kim, D. H., Shen, L., Weeks, B. E., & Kwak, N. (2019). Social media expression and the political self. Journal of Communication, 69(1), 49-72.

Kwak, N., Lane, D. S., Weeks, B. E., Kim, D. H., Lee, S. S., & Bachleda, S. (2018). Perceptions of social media for politics: Testing the Slacktivism hypothesis. Human Communication Research, 44(2), 197-221.

Kim, D. H., & Kwak, N. (2017). Media diversity policies for the public: Empirical evidence examining exposure diversity and democratic citizenship. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 61(4), 682-702.