Professor Eun-Ju Lee

Professor Eun-Ju Lee from Seoul National University’s Department of Communication, and director of the SNU Center for Trustworthy AI, has been awarded the 2025 McQuail Award. The prestigious award, established in honor of Denis McQuail, a global scholar who laid the foundation for media and communication studies, is presented to the best paper published in international journals over the past two years that has contributed to the advancement of communication theory. Since its inception in 2006, the McQuail Award has been granted to 16 recipients, with this year marking the first time a Korean researcher has been honored.

Her award-winning paper, “Minding the Source: Toward an Integrative Theory of Human–Machine Communication,” published in the esteemed journal Human Communication Research, introduces a groundbreaking theoretical model for understanding human-machine communication. The study explores why people sometimes treat machines as if they were humans (as proposed by CASA theory) and at other times respond differently. It critiques two existing explanations—automatic reactions (mindlessness) and viewing machines as fundamentally different (machine heuristic)—and proposes a new model that combines these ideas. The study also considers how advances in AI may change our understanding of human-machine communication.

The McQuail award is selected through an independent evaluation process by an International Review Committee and presented by the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR). The award recipient will deliver an invited lecture to celebrate the honor and will be given the opportunity to conduct research as a McQuail Honorary Fellow at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Communication Science for one year. The Department of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam has recently ranked #1 in the world for several years in the field of communication and media in the QS World University Rankings.

* Read the paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqad034