About

Juwon Hwang is an assistant professor of media science in the College of Communication at Boston University. Her research focuses on the intersections of health communication and new media technologies, investigating mechanisms through which individuals engage in behavioral changes that can lead to beneficial health outcomes. She designs evidence-based health campaign messages to promote compliance with preventive measures such as vaccination. Hwang combines conventional and computational approaches to study how new media technology influences mental well-being and how political polarization affects individual views on scientific and health issues. Her recent work explores the potential of Virtual Reality as a tool to mitigate mental distress. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Vaccine Confidence Fund. She has authored over 20 articles in leading communication and health informatics journals, including the Journal of Health Communication, Health Communication, New Media and Society, Journal of Medical Internet Research, PLOS One, and Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Research topics

• Computer Security
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Social psychology
• Criminology
• Psychology
• Political economy
• Geography
• Human–computer interaction
• Public relations
• Law
• Operating system

Selected publications

• Does Health Aid Mitigate Interstate Hostility? Evidence from the US and China

  Asian Survey · 2026-01-01

  article

  Does health aid mitigate interstate hostility between donors and recipients? By analyzing the effects of health aid from the US and China on interstate hostility from 1990 to 2010, we test this “peace-through-aid” hypothesis. We find that US health aid significantly reduces hostility with recipient states, but see no such effect for Chinese health aid. The pacifying effect of US health aid is particularly pronounced when the aid is directed toward recipients with foreign policy preferences that differ from those of the US. These findings suggest that health aid serves as an effective policy tool for the US to improve relations with states that are otherwise unfriendly or hostile.

  PublisherDOI

• Health aid for states with dissimilar foreign policy preferences, a tool for peace?

  International Area Studies Review · 2023-01-19 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  Due to its exigency and humanitarian nature, health aid is less political and thus less vulnerable to domestic and international criticism than other types of foreign aid. Ironically, this makes health aid an effective policy tool for donors to cultivate or improve relations with recipients that have divergent foreign policy preferences from donors. This implies that health problems caused by pandemics/epidemics and associated health aid can create an opportunity to ameliorate historically troubled relationships between states. By examining the link between bilateral health aid flows and differences in foreign policy preferences between 24 donors and their recipients from 1990 to 2017, this paper presents findings that support this claim. The theoretical arguments and empirical findings of this paper offer novel insights into the politics of health aid.

  PublisherDOI

• North Korean Cyber Attacks and Policy Responses: An Interdisciplinary Theoretical Framework

  CrimRxiv · 2022-02-22

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• North Korean Cyber Attacks and Policy Responses: An Interdisciplinary Theoretical Framework

  International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime · 2021-08-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study conducts a qualitative analysis of the objectives, forms, current trends, and characteristics of North Korean cyber terror attacks and suggests a way to ensure further progress towards a successful international policy response.Despite the capricious changes that have recently occurred within the international political atmosphere, North Korea continues to constitute a threat to international stability through its ongoing advancement of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.The difficulty of attribution and the relatively low costs associated with launching cyber offensives make cyber terrorism an attractive option for North Korea.In an effort to direct attention to these circumstances, this study aims to share explicit experts' perspectives in the field of cyberterrorism in South Korea.Consequently, the study purports to contribute to existing academic discussion and practices on cyber terror and cybercrime.Furthermore, this study adopts perspectives from criminological theoretical frameworks and the network theory of world politics to substantiate a more comprehensive view of North Korea's cyberterrorism which considers the multifaceted and asymmetrical nature of cyberterrorism within the context of postmodern international politics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Are Online and Offline Delinquency Mutually Exclusive? Blurred Boundaries between Cyber Space and the Real-World

  KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems · 2021 · 2 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Security

  This study examines the similarities and differences between the causes of juvenile delinquency in online and offline environments and in personal characteristics. The study utilizes data from the '2014 Survey on Juvenile Victimization in Korea'. The population of this survey is students attending middle and high schools across the country. While this paper is based on the Self-Control theory, opportunity factors based on the Routine Activity theory and the Situational Action theory are also applied. Results show that the causes of offline delinquency are low self-control, routine activity and frequent gaming and SNS use. The causes of online delinquency are high self-control, existence of communication with unknown persons and the spectrum of personal information online. The common element of offline and online delinquency was the presence of delinquent peers. These results show that while online and offline delinquency cannot be explained with the same methodology, at the same time they are not mutually exclusive.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• North Korean Cyber Attacks and Policy Responses: An Interdisciplinary Theoretical Framework

  International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime · 2021 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Security
  • Sociology

  Study conducts a qualitative analysis of the objectives, forms, current trends, and characteristics of North Korean cyber terror attacks and suggests a way to ensure further progress towards a successful international policy response. Despite the capricious changes that have recently occurred within the international political atmosphere, North Korea continues to constitute a threat to international stability through its ongoing advancement of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. The difficulty of attribution and the relatively low costs associated with launching cyber offensives make cyber terrorism an attractive option for North Korea. In an effort to direct attention to these circumstances, this study aims to share explicit experts’ perspectives in the field of cyberterrorism in South Korea. Consequently, the study purports to contribute to existing academic discussion and practices on cyber terror and cybercrime. Furthermore, this study adopts perspectives from criminological theoretical frameworks and the network theory of world politics to substantiate a more comprehensive view of North Korea’s cyberterrorism which considers the multifaceted and asymmetrical nature of cyberterrorism within the context of postmodern international politicsfections.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kyung-Shick Choi

  9 shared

• EuiGab Hwang

  1 shared

• Myeong-Gi Hong

  1 shared

• Nayoung Ko

  Kyonggi University

  1 shared

• Wonjae Hwang

  University of Tennessee at Knoxville

  1 shared

• Chang Jeong-Hyeon

  Kyonggi University

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Top Paper Award from the Association for Education in Journa…