Kim, Young Mie

Check out Kim’s current research project, Project DATA (Digital Ad Tracking & Analysis).

Curriculum Vitae

Faculty Affiliate:
Department of Political Science
Science and Technology Studies
Elections Research Center, Department of Political Science
Center for Community and Nonprofits, School of Human Ecology

Young Mie Kim is an Associate Professor of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a Faculty Affiliate of the Department of Political Science. Kim is the Donovan Wright Faculty Fellow of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kim’s research concerns media and politics in the digital age, specifically the role digital media play in political communication among political leaders, advocacy groups, and citizens. During her faculty career, Kim’s research has evolved to develop a program of research on how the “new” media environment—characterized as the development of digital communication technologies and the adoption of entertainment-oriented media formats— contributes to the changing foundation of political communication. Her research demonstrates that the new media environment has set a condition to facilitate the development of passionate publics who care about a particular issue almost exclusively based on their values, identities, and self-interests. Kim’s research offers theoretical explanations for the contemporary outlook of issue publics in the age of digital media and provides strong empirical evidence for the contributions of digital media to the development of issue publics.

Kim’s research has appeared in the flagship journals in the fields of Communication, as well as Political Science: Communication Research, the Journal of Communication, the Journal of Politics, among others. Kim’s research also has received prestigious awards and research grants in social science, including the Best Article of the Year Award (awarded for the best published article on political communication across the fields of Communication, Political Science, and Sociology); the Nafzinger-White Dissertation Award (awarded for the best dissertation in Mass Communication); and the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Research Grant from the National Science Foundation (Directorate for Social, Behavioral, Economic Sciences).

Kim has been teaching 13 different courses on a wide range of subjects including digital media, political communication, mass communication, and strategic communication. Integrating her research expertise and her passion for public service, Kim has developed a service learning course, Communication and Community Service: Technology for Social Change, where her students partner with a community organization and experiment with the democratic potentials of digital communication technologies to build a strong community. The class project, Savor South Madison, garnered considerable local media attention and a number of accolades including the Best Service Learning Practice, Innovator in Community-Campus Partnership.

Kim received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and taught at the Ohio State University as an Assistant Professor before her move to Madison. Kim was also a Visiting Fellow of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.