Matthew Seeger
Professor of Communication
Matthew Seeger
Biography
Matthew Seeger, Ph.D., is a professor of communication. His research concerns crisis and emergency risk communication and infectious disease outbreaks; health promotion; agency response coordination; the role of media, including new media; failure of complex systems; and post-crisis resilience and renewal. He has worked with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, and he is a member of the World Health Organization Guidelines Development Group for Emergency Risk Communication. His work has been supported by the CDC, National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the State of Michigan. He is involved in a multi-year, interdisciplinary project focusing on critical infrastructure and the creation of resilience.
Dr. Seeger’s work has appeared in more than 200 journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings. He is the co-author of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “Handbook for Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication” (Second Edition, 2015). His other books include “Communication and Organizational Crisis” (2003), “Crisis Communication and the Public Health” (2008), “Effective Crisis Communication” (2007), “Effective Risk Communication” (2009), “Theorizing Crisis Communication” (2014), “Narratives of Crisis: Stories of Ruin and Renewal” (2016) and the “International Handbook of Crisis Communication” (2016).
He was the founding editor of The Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research. He has been quoted in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal Constitution and Rolling Stone.
He is the recipient of the National Communication Association’s Service Engagement Award and the Gerald M. Phillips Award for Distinguished Applied Communication Scholarship. He is a member of the Public Relations Society of America, Detroit Chapter, Hall of Fame.
Courses taught by Matthew Seeger
Winter Term 2025 (future)
- COM7172 - Risk Communication: Disasters, Hazards, and the Media
- COM7220 - Professional Issues in Applied Communication