Office Location
340D Agricultural Hall
1450 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Office Schedule
Office Hours: Tuesdays: 11:30 am-12:30 pm and 1:30 pm-2:30 pm by appointment
Sedona Chinn is an associate professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also a faculty affiliate in the Information School, the Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, and Life Sciences Communication. She researches how communities navigate and make sense of competing and contradictory information about health and science, as well as how social influence via new media affect relationships with expertise and institutions.
In recent work, she has investigated how aspirational lifestyle content produced by social media influencers affects attitudes towards politics, health, the environment, and expertise. In addition, recent work explores ‘do your own research’ narratives that reflect both anti-establishment views and reasonable skepticism of information in a high-volume, low-trust information environment.
Currently, she is active in exploring the intersection of politics, health, and wellness on social media. In these spaces, she focuses on social and technological dynamics affecting perceptions of expertise, influence, and information behaviors.
Selected publications:
Hasell, A., & Chinn, S. (2023). The political influence of lifestyle influencers? Examining the relationship between aspirational social media use and anti-expert attitudes and beliefs. Social Media+ Society, 9(4).
Chinn, S., Hasell, A., & Shao, A. (2024). What does it mean to “do your own research?” A comparative content analysis of DYOR messages in Instagram and Facebook posts about reproductive health, food, and vaccines. New Media & Society.
Xenos, M. A., Chinn, S., & Monroe, H. (2025). Balancing relevance and rigor: Analyzing a quarter century of issue-case selection in science communication research. Public Understanding of Science.
Hasell, A., & Chinn, S. (2025). Influence You Can Trust? Exploring Trust in Social Media Influencers for Political Information. American Behavioral Scientist.
Chinn, S., Hasell, A., Roden, J., & Zichettella, B. (2024). Threatening experts: Correlates of viewing scientists as a social threat. Public Understanding of Science, 33(1), 88-104.
Chinn, S., Hart, P. S., & Soroka, S. (2020). Politicization and polarization in climate change news content, 1985-2017. Science Communication, 42(1), 112-129.
Hart, P. S., Chinn, S., & Soroka, S. (2020). Politicization and polarization in COVID-19 news coverage. Science communication, 42(5), 679-697.