Xinyan Zhao
Biographic Data
| ID | 4157197 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Xinyan Zhao |
| GIVEN NAMES | Xinyan |
| FAMILY NAME | Zhao |
| SIGNATURE | ZHAO X |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1970-031X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Sexual Identity-Related Shame as a Barrier to Mpox Prevention Among Gay and Bisexual Men
This study explores emotional mechanisms that help explain the relationships between gay and bisexual men’s sexual identity, perceptions of mpox risk, and their intentions to take protective action against mpox. An online survey of cisgender gay and bisexual men (N = 393; 44.8% gay) showed that identity salience was positively associated with fear and perceptions of mpox risk, but risk perceptions were not significantly associated with behavioral…
Automating Content Analysis With Multiple LLM Agents: Impacts of Agent Attributes and Human–AI Collaboration
Emerging research in computational social science has applied LLMs to automate content analysis, often by prompting a single model to act as a human coder. While a single LLM may suffice for a few manifest variables, it still falls short on diverse latent constructs. And the impact of LLM agent attributes on measurement outcomes remains unclear, limiting their validity for communication research. Drawing upon the literature on interacting agents …
Morphometric Analysis of Roman Ceramic Vessels Embedded in Taberna Counters at Pompeii Using 3D Modelling
Exploring the contingent effect of cultural tailoring of GenAI chatbots on multiethnic members’ disaster information seeking and preparation attitude: A cross-group comparison
Delineation of Fallow Priority Areas Under Food Security Constraints Using the Marxan
Fallow is a crucial strategy for sustainable agricultural resource management and environmental conservation. Previous studies have mainly focused on the scale of fallow areas, but have rarely considered the connectivity and spatial prioritization of fallow areas during delineation, resulting in scattered and fragmented outcomes. To address these problems, this study proposes a method for fallow area delineation that considers food security const…
TikTok engagement traces over time and health risky behaviors: Combining data linkage and computational methods
Scenario forecasting of carbon neutrality by combining the Leap model and future land-use simulation: An empirical study of Shenzhen, China
Tailoring generative AI chatbots for multiethnic communities in disaster preparedness communication: Extending the Casa paradigm
This study is among the first to develop different prototypes of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbots powered by GPT-4 to communicate hurricane preparedness information to diverse residents. Drawing from the Computers Are Social Actors paradigm and the literature on disaster vulnerability and cultural tailoring, we conducted a between-subjects experiment with 441 Black, Hispanic, and Caucasian residents of Florida. Our results sugg…
The dynamics of conspiracy theories on social media from the diffusion of innovations perspective: The moderating role of time
Purpose The persistence and virality of conspiracy theories online have raised significant concerns. This study revisits Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory to examine the spread of conspiracy theories on social media, specifically focusing on how factors influencing their diffusion evolve over time. Design/methodology/approach The study analyzes over 1.18 million COVID-19-related tweets using a combination of natural language processing, soc…
How People Process Different Types of Health Misinformation: Roles of Content Falsity and Evidence Type
Emerging communication technologies have seen the proliferation of misleading claims, untruthful narratives, and conspiracies. To understand how people perceive and act on different types of misinformation, this study examines how health misinformation varying in falsity (fabrication versus misuse) and evidence type (statistical versus narrative) affects sharing and verification intentions. Using COVID-19 vaccines as cases, the results from an on…
How Information Repertoire Affects Vaccine Hesitancy: Processes of Information Verification and Cognitive Elaboration
As information consumption plays a critical role in addressing vaccine hesitancy in the hybrid media environment, it becomes crucial to understand how individuals' use of a combination of channels and sources affects their vaccine hesitancy. Based on information repertoire approaches emphasizing the multiplicity of channels and sources, we investigated different patterns of information repertoire related to the COVID-19 pandemic and how these pat…
Impact of Emotional Awareness on Responses to Vaccine-Related Narrative Misinformation
Emotionally evocative narratives are a common strategy to spread vaccine-related misinformation on social media. This study tested the use of two emotional awareness strategies – affect labeling and reflections of feelings – to mitigate the impact of misinformation. The online experiment (N = 143) found that emotional awareness (vs. control) led to greater felt emotions and concerns about HPV vaccine safety among female participants. Felt emotion…
Analyzing narrative contagion through digital storytelling in social media conversations: An AI-powered computational approach
Despite the growing popularity of digital narratives, research on digital storytelling and its spread through social media interactions remains limited. Inspired by the social contagion theory, we introduce the concept of narrative contagion —where a story shared by a person or organization prompts others to share their stories—and investigate its process and outcome in online cancer communities. Utilizing a large dataset of 849 Facebook posts, 4…
Dynamics of Networked Framing: Automated Frame Analysis of Government Media and the Public on Weibo With Pandemic Big Data
Networked framing focuses on how the public becomes gatekeepers on social media. To unpack the dynamics of networked framing, we conducted an automated frame analysis to identify the shift of frame structures of government media ( N = 12,090) and the public ( N = 1.49 million) on Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found a moderate level of frame alignment between government media and the public, with high divergence observed during the pandem…
Interplay of message features and source: Predicting twitter users’ engagement behaviors following a terrorist attack
There has been limited evidence regarding how disaster message features and source of social media communication independently and jointly affect users’ engagement behaviors. We conducted a content analysis of tweets collected from the Ariana Grande concert terrorist attack. Results from negative binomial regressions (N = 687) showed that the social support function of tweets affected reactive engagement, a higher level of content richness increa…
Stories that engage the audience: An investigation of popular breast cancer narratives on social media
Examining the dynamics of interpersonal communication networks for disaster coping among a multiethnic community
Interpersonal communication networks serve as a critical source of disaster support, yet their dynamic role in disaster coping remains less explored. Drawing from the literature on resilience organizing and network social capital, the current study investigates how individuals from diverse backgrounds re-construct their interpersonal communication networks in response to an emerging disaster and the impact of such networks on disaster-coping outc…
How gay and bisexual men respond to mpox messages through risk- versus identity-based mechanisms: An integrated model
To reduce the risk of transmission in the mpox outbreak, it is crucial to provide accurate, tailored, and culturally sensitive risk communication. In an online experiment (N = 372), we tested a theory-informed model on gay and bisexual men's response to mpox risk communication focusing on the ingroup versus the general population. Gay and bisexual men who received an ingroup-framed risk message had a stronger protective behavioral intention throu…
How brand-stakeholder dialogue drives brand-hosted community engagement on social media: A mixed-methods approach
Primacy effect of emotions in social stories: User engagement behaviors with breast cancer narratives on Facebook
How Communication Ecology Impacts Disaster Support Seeking in Multiethnic Communities: The Roles of Disaster Communication Network Size, Heterogeneity, and Localness
Advancing a network concept of disaster communication ecology, the current study explores how key properties of one’s disaster communication network—which consists of interpersonal, media, and organizational ties—influence various kinds of support-seeking processes during a natural disaster, the 2021 Texas Winter Storm. Specifically, the study investigates how the sizes, heterogeneity, and localness of individuals’ disaster communication networks…
Medium and source convergence in crisis information acquisition: Patterns, antecedents, and outcomes
To understand how individuals navigate the complex, dynamic, and bewildering media information environment, we propose a convergence framework theorizing individuals’ acquisition of information from distinct sources on multiple mediums, along with its antecedents and consequences. This study is among the first to test the convergence framework. Using a national sample during the COVID-19 pandemic, our results revealed four convergence patterns an…
A Multilevel Perspective to Social Media Influentials’ Frame Building Across Crises
Social media influentials play key roles in information creation and impact people’s crisis interpretations and behavioral intentions. Applying a multilevel perspective, this study examined how various social media influentials’ frame building was affected by crisis clusters and message characteristics. Social media influentials’ tweets were extracted from over a million tweets from eight crises. A random sample of 2,000 tweets was analyzed by co…
Digital dialogue in online brand communities: Examining the social network outcomes of brands’ dialogue with Facebook users
Assessing Mechanisms Underlying the Sharing of Official and Unofficial Information during a Pandemic
The COVID-19 disease outbreak has seen mixed information flows comprising top-down communication from health authorities to the public and citizen-to-citizen communication. This study aimed to identify mechanisms underlying the sharing of official versus unofficial information during the outbreak. Survey findings based on a nationally representative U.S. sample (N = 856) showed that individuals' predispositions affected their information consumpt…
Medium and source convergence in crisis information acquisition: Patterns, antecedents, and outcomes
To understand how individuals navigate the complex, dynamic, and bewildering media information environment, we propose a convergence framework theorizing individuals’ acquisition of information from distinct sources on multiple mediums, along with its antecedents and consequences. This study is among the first to test the convergence framework. Using a national sample during the COVID-19 pandemic, our results revealed four convergence patterns an…
Segmenting and Understanding Publics in a Social Media Information Sharing Network: An Interactional and Dynamic Approach
This study segments social media publics and analyzes their informational behaviors during organizational crises. With a public-centric perspective, our study highlights how social media publics interact with each other (i.e., interdependence) and share different information through crisis stages (i.e., dynamics). Following the situational approach to segmentation, we identify different types of social media publics (i.e., influentials, broadcast…
Proattitudinal versus counterattitudinal messages: Message discrepancy, reactance, and the boomerang effect
A boomerang effect involves the movement of a message recipient's belief, attitude, or behavior in a direction contrary to the advocated position in the message. There has been limited scholarly attention to the mechanism of belief boomerang. To better understand boomerang effects, we tested the effect of message discrepancy on belief boomerang and the mechanism underlying such an effect with a between-subjects factorial study (N = 458). Our resu…
Effects of Perceived Media Diversity and Media Reliance on Public Opinion Expression
This study investigates the effects of different types of perceived media diversity and media reliance on individuals’ public opinion expressions in China. Using data from a survey of 327 undergraduates in Shanghai, it was found that: (1) respondents perceived more diverse media contents on the Internet than on the traditional media; (2) people’s perceived Internet diversity directly predicted their opinion expression in public; (3) people’s perc…
The dynamics of conspiracy theories on social media from the diffusion of innovations perspective: The moderating role of time
Purpose The persistence and virality of conspiracy theories online have raised significant concerns. This study revisits Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory to examine the spread of conspiracy theories on social media, specifically focusing on how factors influencing their diffusion evolve over time. Design/methodology/approach The study analyzes over 1.18 million COVID-19-related tweets using a combination of natural language processing, soc…
Analyzing narrative contagion through digital storytelling in social media conversations: An AI-powered computational approach
Despite the growing popularity of digital narratives, research on digital storytelling and its spread through social media interactions remains limited. Inspired by the social contagion theory, we introduce the concept of narrative contagion —where a story shared by a person or organization prompts others to share their stories—and investigate its process and outcome in online cancer communities. Utilizing a large dataset of 849 Facebook posts, 4…
Examining the dynamics of interpersonal communication networks for disaster coping among a multiethnic community
Interpersonal communication networks serve as a critical source of disaster support, yet their dynamic role in disaster coping remains less explored. Drawing from the literature on resilience organizing and network social capital, the current study investigates how individuals from diverse backgrounds re-construct their interpersonal communication networks in response to an emerging disaster and the impact of such networks on disaster-coping outc…
How gay and bisexual men respond to mpox messages through risk- versus identity-based mechanisms: An integrated model
To reduce the risk of transmission in the mpox outbreak, it is crucial to provide accurate, tailored, and culturally sensitive risk communication. In an online experiment (N = 372), we tested a theory-informed model on gay and bisexual men's response to mpox risk communication focusing on the ingroup versus the general population. Gay and bisexual men who received an ingroup-framed risk message had a stronger protective behavioral intention throu…
How Communication Ecology Impacts Disaster Support Seeking in Multiethnic Communities: The Roles of Disaster Communication Network Size, Heterogeneity, and Localness
Advancing a network concept of disaster communication ecology, the current study explores how key properties of one’s disaster communication network—which consists of interpersonal, media, and organizational ties—influence various kinds of support-seeking processes during a natural disaster, the 2021 Texas Winter Storm. Specifically, the study investigates how the sizes, heterogeneity, and localness of individuals’ disaster communication networks…
A Microfluidic Device for Continuous Sensing of Systemic Acute Toxicants in Drinking Water
A bioluminescent-cell-based microfluidic device for sensing toxicants in drinking water was designed and fabricated. The system employed Vibrio fischeri cells as broad-spectrum sensors to monitor potential systemic cell toxicants in water, such as heavy metal ions and phenol. Specifically, the chip was designed for continuous detection. The chip design included two counter-flow micromixers, a T-junction droplet generator and six spiral microchann…
Design and Experimental Approach to the Construction of a Human Signal-Molecule-Profiling Database
The human signal-molecule-profiling database (HSMPD) is designed as a prospective medical database for translational bioinformatics (TBI). To explore the feasibility of low-cost database construction, we studied the roadmap of HSMPD. A HSMPD-oriented tool, called "signal-molecule-profiling (SMP) chip" was developed for data acquisition, which can be employed in the routine blood tests in hospitals; the results will be stored in the HSMPD system a…
Effects of Perceived Media Diversity and Media Reliance on Public Opinion Expression
This study investigates the effects of different types of perceived media diversity and media reliance on individuals’ public opinion expressions in China. Using data from a survey of 327 undergraduates in Shanghai, it was found that: (1) respondents perceived more diverse media contents on the Internet than on the traditional media; (2) people’s perceived Internet diversity directly predicted their opinion expression in public; (3) people’s perc…
Segmenting and Understanding Publics in a Social Media Information Sharing Network: An Interactional and Dynamic Approach
This study segments social media publics and analyzes their informational behaviors during organizational crises. With a public-centric perspective, our study highlights how social media publics interact with each other (i.e., interdependence) and share different information through crisis stages (i.e., dynamics). Following the situational approach to segmentation, we identify different types of social media publics (i.e., influentials, broadcast…
Baby Wants Tacos”: Analysis of Health-Related Facebook Posts from Young Pregnant Women
Proattitudinal versus counterattitudinal messages: Message discrepancy, reactance, and the boomerang effect
A boomerang effect involves the movement of a message recipient's belief, attitude, or behavior in a direction contrary to the advocated position in the message. There has been limited scholarly attention to the mechanism of belief boomerang. To better understand boomerang effects, we tested the effect of message discrepancy on belief boomerang and the mechanism underlying such an effect with a between-subjects factorial study (N = 458). Our resu…
Digital dialogue in online brand communities: Examining the social network outcomes of brands’ dialogue with Facebook users
Assessing Mechanisms Underlying the Sharing of Official and Unofficial Information during a Pandemic
The COVID-19 disease outbreak has seen mixed information flows comprising top-down communication from health authorities to the public and citizen-to-citizen communication. This study aimed to identify mechanisms underlying the sharing of official versus unofficial information during the outbreak. Survey findings based on a nationally representative U.S. sample (N = 856) showed that individuals' predispositions affected their information consumpt…
How brand-stakeholder dialogue drives brand-hosted community engagement on social media: A mixed-methods approach
Primacy effect of emotions in social stories: User engagement behaviors with breast cancer narratives on Facebook
How Communication Ecology Impacts Disaster Support Seeking in Multiethnic Communities: The Roles of Disaster Communication Network Size, Heterogeneity, and Localness
Advancing a network concept of disaster communication ecology, the current study explores how key properties of one’s disaster communication network—which consists of interpersonal, media, and organizational ties—influence various kinds of support-seeking processes during a natural disaster, the 2021 Texas Winter Storm. Specifically, the study investigates how the sizes, heterogeneity, and localness of individuals’ disaster communication networks…
Medium and source convergence in crisis information acquisition: Patterns, antecedents, and outcomes
To understand how individuals navigate the complex, dynamic, and bewildering media information environment, we propose a convergence framework theorizing individuals’ acquisition of information from distinct sources on multiple mediums, along with its antecedents and consequences. This study is among the first to test the convergence framework. Using a national sample during the COVID-19 pandemic, our results revealed four convergence patterns an…
A Multilevel Perspective to Social Media Influentials’ Frame Building Across Crises
Social media influentials play key roles in information creation and impact people’s crisis interpretations and behavioral intentions. Applying a multilevel perspective, this study examined how various social media influentials’ frame building was affected by crisis clusters and message characteristics. Social media influentials’ tweets were extracted from over a million tweets from eight crises. A random sample of 2,000 tweets was analyzed by co…
Dynamics of Networked Framing: Automated Frame Analysis of Government Media and the Public on Weibo With Pandemic Big Data
Networked framing focuses on how the public becomes gatekeepers on social media. To unpack the dynamics of networked framing, we conducted an automated frame analysis to identify the shift of frame structures of government media ( N = 12,090) and the public ( N = 1.49 million) on Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found a moderate level of frame alignment between government media and the public, with high divergence observed during the pandem…
Interplay of message features and source: Predicting twitter users’ engagement behaviors following a terrorist attack
There has been limited evidence regarding how disaster message features and source of social media communication independently and jointly affect users’ engagement behaviors. We conducted a content analysis of tweets collected from the Ariana Grande concert terrorist attack. Results from negative binomial regressions (N = 687) showed that the social support function of tweets affected reactive engagement, a higher level of content richness increa…
Stories that engage the audience: An investigation of popular breast cancer narratives on social media
Examining the dynamics of interpersonal communication networks for disaster coping among a multiethnic community
Interpersonal communication networks serve as a critical source of disaster support, yet their dynamic role in disaster coping remains less explored. Drawing from the literature on resilience organizing and network social capital, the current study investigates how individuals from diverse backgrounds re-construct their interpersonal communication networks in response to an emerging disaster and the impact of such networks on disaster-coping outc…
How gay and bisexual men respond to mpox messages through risk- versus identity-based mechanisms: An integrated model
To reduce the risk of transmission in the mpox outbreak, it is crucial to provide accurate, tailored, and culturally sensitive risk communication. In an online experiment (N = 372), we tested a theory-informed model on gay and bisexual men's response to mpox risk communication focusing on the ingroup versus the general population. Gay and bisexual men who received an ingroup-framed risk message had a stronger protective behavioral intention throu…
How People Process Different Types of Health Misinformation: Roles of Content Falsity and Evidence Type
Emerging communication technologies have seen the proliferation of misleading claims, untruthful narratives, and conspiracies. To understand how people perceive and act on different types of misinformation, this study examines how health misinformation varying in falsity (fabrication versus misuse) and evidence type (statistical versus narrative) affects sharing and verification intentions. Using COVID-19 vaccines as cases, the results from an on…
How Information Repertoire Affects Vaccine Hesitancy: Processes of Information Verification and Cognitive Elaboration
As information consumption plays a critical role in addressing vaccine hesitancy in the hybrid media environment, it becomes crucial to understand how individuals' use of a combination of channels and sources affects their vaccine hesitancy. Based on information repertoire approaches emphasizing the multiplicity of channels and sources, we investigated different patterns of information repertoire related to the COVID-19 pandemic and how these pat…
Impact of Emotional Awareness on Responses to Vaccine-Related Narrative Misinformation
Emotionally evocative narratives are a common strategy to spread vaccine-related misinformation on social media. This study tested the use of two emotional awareness strategies – affect labeling and reflections of feelings – to mitigate the impact of misinformation. The online experiment (N = 143) found that emotional awareness (vs. control) led to greater felt emotions and concerns about HPV vaccine safety among female participants. Felt emotion…
Analyzing narrative contagion through digital storytelling in social media conversations: An AI-powered computational approach
Despite the growing popularity of digital narratives, research on digital storytelling and its spread through social media interactions remains limited. Inspired by the social contagion theory, we introduce the concept of narrative contagion —where a story shared by a person or organization prompts others to share their stories—and investigate its process and outcome in online cancer communities. Utilizing a large dataset of 849 Facebook posts, 4…
Exploring the contingent effect of cultural tailoring of GenAI chatbots on multiethnic members’ disaster information seeking and preparation attitude: A cross-group comparison
Delineation of Fallow Priority Areas Under Food Security Constraints Using the Marxan
Fallow is a crucial strategy for sustainable agricultural resource management and environmental conservation. Previous studies have mainly focused on the scale of fallow areas, but have rarely considered the connectivity and spatial prioritization of fallow areas during delineation, resulting in scattered and fragmented outcomes. To address these problems, this study proposes a method for fallow area delineation that considers food security const…
TikTok engagement traces over time and health risky behaviors: Combining data linkage and computational methods
Psychology (20 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Social Psychology (18 works) · Public Relations and Crisis Communication (11 works) · Social media (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · World Wide Web (10 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (8 works)