Assistant Professor Contact Info chelsea.ratcliff@uga.edu Office: 604 Caldwell Hall Chelsea Ratcliff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at UGA. She uses social science research methods to address pressing questions in ComSHER (Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk), especially questions about how to effectively convey uncertain scientific evidence. Current projects of the Communicating Uncertain Science to the Public (CUSP) Lab include examining social, ethical, and psychological consequences of approaches to communicating uncertainty in the contexts of precision medicine/genomics and polarized scientific domains (e.g., climate change, vaccines, COVID-19). Dr. Ratcliff draws on a decade of professional experience in health journalism and marketing to inform her research, which has been published in Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Science Communication, Public Understanding of Science, Risk Analysis, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, and American Journal of Public Health, among others. You can learn more about Dr. Ratcliff's CUSP Lab here. Dr. Ratcliff's areas of expertise include: News coverage of health science Message effects Mass media health campaign design Psychological reactance & resistance to persuasion Ethical and social consequences of communication Education: PhD (Communication, University of Utah) MA (Communication, University of Utah) Selected Publications Selected Publications: Ratcliff, C. L., Fleerackers, A., Wicke, R., Harvill, B., King, A. J., & Jensen, J. D. (2023). Framing COVID-19 vaccine preprint research as uncertain: A mixed-method study of public reactions. Health Communication. doi:10.1080/10410236.2023.2164954 Ratcliff, C. L. & Wicke, R. (2022). How the public evaluates media representations of uncertain science: An integrated explanatory framework. Public Understanding of Science. doi:10.1177/09636625221122960 Ratcliff, C. L., Wicke, R., & Harvill, B. (2022). Communicating uncertainty to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review of the literature. Annals of the International Communication Association. doi:10.1080/23808985.2022.2085136 Ratcliff, C. L. (2021). Communicating scientific uncertainty across the dissemination trajectory: A precision medicine case study. Science Communication. doi:10.1177/10755470211038335 Ratcliff, C. L., Wong, B., Jensen, J. D., & Kaphingst, K. A. (2021). The impact of communicating uncertainty on public responses to precision medicine research. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. doi:10.1093/abm/kaab050 Ratcliff, C. L., Krakow, M., Greenberg-Worisek, A., & Hesse, B. W. (2021). Digital health engagement in the US population: Insights from the 2018 Health Information National Trends Survey. American Journal of Public Health. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2021.306282 Ratcliff, C. L. & Sun, Y. (2020). Overcoming resistance through narrative communication: Findings from a meta-analytic review. Human Communication Research. doi:10.1093/hcr/hqz017 Ratcliff, C. L. (2019). Characterizing reactance in communication research: A review of conceptual and operational approaches. Communication Research. doi:10.1177/0093650219872126 Ratcliff, C. L., Jensen, J. D., Scherr, C. L., Krakow, M., & Crossley, K. (2019). Loss/gain framing, dose, and reactance: A message experiment. Risk Analysis. doi:10.1111/risa.13379 Ratcliff, C. L., Kaphingst, K. A., & Jensen, J. D. (2018). When personal feels invasive: Foreseeing challenges in precision medicine communication. Journal of Health Communication. doi:10.1080/10810730.2017.1417514 - Research on public understanding of scientific preprints featured in UGA Today. - Scoping review on COVID-19 uncertainty communication published with students Rebekah Wicke and Blue Harvill in the Annals of the ICA. - Study of how public audiences evaluate media representations of uncertain science with graduate student Rebekah Wicke published in Public Understanding of Science. - Awarded a top faculty paper award with MA student Rebekah Wicke from the Communicating Science, Health, Environment & Risk (comSHER) division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, for the paper "How Lay Audiences Evaluate Scientific Uncertainty Disclosure: The Moderating Roles of Source and Preference for Communication of Uncertainty." - Research featured in an editorial from Annals of Behavioral Medicine about the importance of examining communication of uncertainty in precision medicine. Courses Regularly Taught: COMM 4350/6350 COMM 3700 COMM 8700 COMM 8610 Personal Website: http://www.chelsearatcliff.com