Kaiping Chen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4179833 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kaiping Chen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kaiping |
| FAMILY NAME | Chen |
| SIGNATURE | CHEN K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5864-5333 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 139 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
How patronage communicates: Information campaigns and government responsiveness in China
How do social relationships among government officials shape information flows within bureaucratic hierarchies? Classic principal–agent theories emphasize information asymmetries as a source of inefficiency, yet we know far less about the actual nature of communication within bureaucracies. We argue that patron–client ties embedded within formal hierarchies play a central role in structuring internal information flows. Lower-level officials with …
Climate Change Communication in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI), and especially generative AI (GenAI), is rapidly reshaping climate change communication (CCC). Once dominated by news coverage and public campaigns, CCC now extends across scientists, NGOs, corporations, journalists, influencers, and citizens—all increasingly encountering and adopting AI tools. This article provides a comprehensive review of scholarship on the nexus of AI and CCC, synthesizing insights scattered acro…
Refusal as silence: Gendered disparities in Vision-Language Model responses
Refusal behavior by Large Language Models (LLMs) is increasingly visible in content moderation, yet little is known about how refusals vary by the identity of the user making the request. This study investigates refusal as a sociotechnical outcome through a counterfactual persona design. Focusing on a Vision-Language Model (GPT-4V), we examine how gendered persona in prompts influence refusal in binary gender classification tasks. We vary gender …
Between creative identity performance and constrictive empowerment: Case studies of women of color as STEM content creators on social media
The extent of women’s empowerment in the digital world has been debated, given the co-existence of digital feminist activism and enduring gender stereotypes. This study investigates how women of color who work as STEM communicators utilize social media creatively to redraw the boundary of acceptable topics and styles in STEM knowledge production. Through case studies, we identify their identity performance practices, such as sharing about out-of-…
Between Innovation and Standardization: Best Practices and Inclusive Guidelines in Computational Communication Science
Computational communication science is transitioning from an emerging to an established field within communication research, creating a need for proper guidelines and methodological standards. This forum gathers experienced computational communication science scholars to debate the merits and drawbacks of standardization and discuss the tension between innovation, rigor, and inclusion. The assembled perspectives review current standards for data …
Communicating Scientific Norms in the Hybrid Media Environment: A Mixed-Method Analysis of Social Media Engagement With Watchdog Science Journalism
Hybrid media systems have reconfigured online journalism and mass communication such that people can engage more easily in multi-directional discourse about the norms of science. We investigate this reconfiguration with a mixed-methods study of the X page of “Retraction Watch,” which produces hybrid “watchdog science journalism” on violations of scientific norms. Results show that Retraction Watch’s X is not necessarily an inclusive forum for ope…
Bridging digital divides in Wisconsin: An examination of policy efforts and effectiveness over the past five years
The digital divide, generally characterized by unequal Internet access, represents the gap between individuals who benefit from the use of digital technologies and those who do not. Many social inequalities are associated with the prevalence of the digital divide, particularly across the rural-urban divide. This research seeks to characterize the status of the digital divide, and related sociodemographic variables, within the context of the US st…
How collective narcissism became contagious in public conversations of “Stop the Steal” on Twitter
Following the end of the Cold War, the rise of democracy and globalization fostered optimism about global cooperation and economic integration but also sparked debates on equity, leading to challenges such as economic disparities, cultural displacement, and populist movements. Collective narcissism, a concept introduced to understand self-identity and politics amid perceived threats to status, describes beliefs that the in-group is exceptional bu…
Voice and Value: How Elected Officials Evaluate Online and Offline Constituent Feedback
Social media has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via low-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local US policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our …
Constructing Vec-tionaries to Extract Message Features from Texts: A Case Study of Moral Content
While researchers often study message features like moral content in text, such as party manifestos and social media posts, their quantification remains a challenge. Conventional human coding struggles with scalability and intercoder reliability. While dictionary-based methods are cost-effective and computationally efficient, they often lack contextual sensitivity and are limited by the vocabularies developed for the original applications. In thi…
Unraveling China’s digital traces: Evaluating communication scholarship through a sociotechnical lens
In the growing trend of research using digital trace data to study human activities and opinions across different contexts, networked China has emerged as a prominent area of interest. However, research that critically examines the use, strengths, and weaknesses of existing digital trace methods, and the extent to which they can reveal the true landscape of digital China remains limited. To address these gaps, this study proposes a framework for …
Fostering Accurate Reasoning About Outgroups: Experimental Evidence From Intergroup Relation Frames on Conspiracy Beliefs Amid Sino–U.S. Tensions
In an era of intergroup tensions and conspiracy theories, our study examines whether threat-mitigation news frames can counter U.S. public beliefs in China-related conspiracy theories. Using a preregistered online survey experiment, we analyzed the effects of news articles that either emphasize or mitigate threats from China. Results show that threat-emphasizing frames did not heighten conspiracy beliefs, likely due to preexisting media framing. …
The Impact of Public Deliberation and Identity-Based Storytelling on Civic Empowerment among Latinx Communities on Environmental Issues
Environmental issues already disproportionately impact communities of color in the U.S., where there is a long and well-established history of environmental racism. Despite efforts to diversify voices in deliberation, engaging marginalized populations remains a key challenge. Drawing from environmental communication, civic empowerment, and social identity literatures, this study conducted a field experiment within an environmental deliberative ev…
Computational methods in Chinese Internet studies— An overview and looking ahead
This essay offers a perspective of the evolution and current landscape of computational methods in Chinese Internet studies, paralleled with a personal academic journey. Starting from a project at Columbia University in 2012, I discussed the challenges and advancements in studying online interactions between Chinese local governments and citizens. Examining existing publications about Chinese Internets, I highlight several key shifts in research …
Going Beyond Affective Polarization: How Emotions and Identities are Used in Anti-Vaccination TikTok Videos
The rise of social media as a source of science and health information has brought challenges to informed citizenship and social trust due to the spread of misinformation, particularly anti-vaccination messages that incite hatred and discourage necessary health precautions. These messages often employ emotional appeals and identity cues. However, scholarship examining emotional appeals and identity cues in anti-vax messages is still at the nascen…
How Science Influencers Polarize Supportive and Skeptical Communities Around Politicized Science: A Cross-Platform and Over-Time Comparison
Contention over COVID-19 is only a recent example of increasing social division around science in the U.S. Many blame these divisions on actors who have strategically sowed doubt and distrust around expert supported positions and policies. However, this overlooks how scientists have fueled narratives of social and political conflict around science. This study explores how science influencers on social media have used group identity language in wa…
Communicating Agriculture AI Technologies: How American Agricultural Producers’ Perception of Trustworthiness, Risk Perception, and Emotion Affect Their Likelihood of Adopting Artificial Intelligence …
The recent decade has witnessed a rise in novel agriculture AI technologies in the USA to improve productivity and sustainability in food systems. However, there lacks scholarship that investigates how agricultural producers, one of the most important stakeholders in this technological development, perceive the risks of and their trustworthiness in these emerging technologies. We addressed this knowledge gap by surveying a diverse producer popula…
Pandemic Nationalism: Use of Government Social Media for Political Information and Belief in Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories in China
The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a torrent of conspiracy theories across different social media platforms. Parallel to this conspiracy wave was a heightened sense of nationalism, which manifested through both in-group solidarity and perceived out-group threats. In this study, we examine how individuals’ use of government social media to gather political information correlated with nation-related conspiracy beliefs during the pandemic. Data were co…
Uncovering gender stereotypes in controversial science discourse: Evidence from computational text and visual analyses across digital platforms
This study examines how gender stereotypes are reflected in discourses around controversial science issues across two platforms, YouTube and TikTok. Utilizing the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects, we developed hypotheses and research questions about how content creators might use gender-related stereotypes to engage audiences. Our analyses of climate change and vaccination videos, considering various modalities such as captions an…
Media Systems and Attention Cycles: Volume and Topics of News Coverage on Covid-19 in the United States and China
We examined initial newspaper coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak (January–May 2020) in the United States and China, countries with contrasting media systems and pandemic experiences. We join the context-rich media systems literature and the longitudinal nature of the issue-attention literature to expand each by providing more system-level context for explaining how media cover an issue over time. U.S. coverage peaked later and stayed consistently …
How Climate Movement Actors and News Media Frame Climate Change and Strike: Evidence from Analyzing Twitter and News Media Discourse from 2018 to 2021
Twitter enables an online public sphere for social movement actors, news organizations, and others to frame climate change and the climate movement. In this paper, we analyze five million English tweets posted from 2018 to 2021 demonstrating how peaks in Twitter activity relate to key events and how the framing of the climate strike discourse has evolved over the past three years. We also collected over 30,000 news articles from major news source…
The use of emotions in conspiracy and debunking videos to engage publics on YouTube
With the rise of digital media, conspiracy theories infamous for their emotional manipulation have challenged science epistemology and democratic discourse. Despite extensive literature on misinformation and the role of emotion in persuasion, less is understood about how emotion is used in conspiracy and debunking messages on video platforms and the impact of emotional framing on public engagement with science on social media. Our article fills t…
When national identity meets conspiracies: The contagion of national identity language in public engagement and discourse about Covid-19 conspiracy theories
There are growing concerns about the role of identity narratives in spreading misinformation on social media, which threatens informed citizenship. Drawing on the social identity model of deindividualization effects (SIDE) and social identity theory, we investigate how the use of national identity language is associated with the diffusion and discourse of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on Weibo, a popular social media platform in China. Our results…
Science Factionalism: How Group Identity Language Affects Public Engagement with Misinformation and Debunking Narratives on a Popular Q&a Platform in China
Misinformation and intergroup bias are two pathologies challenging informed citizenship. This article examines how identity language is used in misinformation and debunking messages about controversial science on the Chinese digital public spheres and their impact on how the public engage with science. We collected an 8-year time series dataset of public discussion ( N = 6,039) on one of the most controversial science issues in China (GMO) from a…
The Science of Open (Communication) Science: Toward an Evidence-Driven Understanding of Quality Criteria in Communication Research
Paralleling very visible debates in psychology, some parts of the communication field have recently pushed for a wholesale endorsement of the principles of open science and its practices, including a particular focus on replicability and reproducibility as quality criteria. Unfortunately, these discussions have been plagued by a set of at least 3 interrelated problems: A lack of conceptual clarity when defining open science-related challenges to …
Concealing Corruption: How Chinese Officials Distort Upward Reporting of Online Grievances
A prerequisite for the durability of authoritarian regimes as well as their effective governance is the regime's ability to gather reliable information about the actions of lower-tier officials. Allowing public participation in the form of online complaints is one approach authoritarian regimes have taken to improve monitoring of lower-tier officials. In this paper, we gain rare access to internal communications between a monitoring agency and up…
How Climate Movement Actors and News Media Frame Climate Change and Strike: Evidence from Analyzing Twitter and News Media Discourse from 2018 to 2021
Twitter enables an online public sphere for social movement actors, news organizations, and others to frame climate change and the climate movement. In this paper, we analyze five million English tweets posted from 2018 to 2021 demonstrating how peaks in Twitter activity relate to key events and how the framing of the climate strike discourse has evolved over the past three years. We also collected over 30,000 news articles from major news source…
Framing the Global Youth Climate Movement: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Greta Thunberg’s Moral, Hopeful, and Motivational Framing on Instagram
Climate change is a critical global problem that requires immediate action to mitigate its effects. In recent years, youth climate activists have mobilized worldwide protests to demand action, using social media platforms to communicate and broadcast their message. This study examines Greta Thunberg's rise to global prominence through an analysis of her first year and a half of Instagram posts from June 2018 to January 2020, including visual and …
How Science Influencers Polarize Supportive and Skeptical Communities Around Politicized Science: A Cross-Platform and Over-Time Comparison
Contention over COVID-19 is only a recent example of increasing social division around science in the U.S. Many blame these divisions on actors who have strategically sowed doubt and distrust around expert supported positions and policies. However, this overlooks how scientists have fueled narratives of social and political conflict around science. This study explores how science influencers on social media have used group identity language in wa…
Using Data from Reddit, Public Deliberation, and Surveys to Measure Public Opinion about Autonomous Vehicles
When and how can researchers synthesize survey data with analyses of social media content to study public opinion, and when and how can social media data complement surveys to better inform researchers and policymakers? This paper explores how public opinions might differ between survey and social media platforms in terms of content and audience, focusing on the test case of opinions about autonomous vehicles. The paper first extends previous ove…
Going Beyond Affective Polarization: How Emotions and Identities are Used in Anti-Vaccination TikTok Videos
The rise of social media as a source of science and health information has brought challenges to informed citizenship and social trust due to the spread of misinformation, particularly anti-vaccination messages that incite hatred and discourage necessary health precautions. These messages often employ emotional appeals and identity cues. However, scholarship examining emotional appeals and identity cues in anti-vax messages is still at the nascen…
A Mixed Methods Study of Public Perception of Social Distancing: Integrating Qualitative and Computational Analyses for Text Data
In a rapidly changing public health crisis such as COVID-19, researchers need innovative approaches that can effectively link qualitative approaches and computational methods. In this article, computational and qualitative methods are used to analyze survey data collected in March 2020 ( n = 2,270) to explore the content of persuasive messages and their relationship with self-reported health behavior—that is, social distancing. Results suggest th…
Mobilizing mini-publics: The causal impact of deliberation on civic engagement using panel data
Deliberative exercises may reinvigorate civic life by building citizens’ capacity to engage in other types of civic activities. This study examines members of a citizens’ panel ( n = 56) who participated in a 6-day deliberative event on climate change and energy transition in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada), in 2012. We compared panellists’ civic engagement, political interest, and political knowledge with those of the general population using a concu…
When national identity meets conspiracies: The contagion of national identity language in public engagement and discourse about Covid-19 conspiracy theories
There are growing concerns about the role of identity narratives in spreading misinformation on social media, which threatens informed citizenship. Drawing on the social identity model of deindividualization effects (SIDE) and social identity theory, we investigate how the use of national identity language is associated with the diffusion and discourse of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on Weibo, a popular social media platform in China. Our results…
Science Factionalism: How Group Identity Language Affects Public Engagement with Misinformation and Debunking Narratives on a Popular Q&a Platform in China
Misinformation and intergroup bias are two pathologies challenging informed citizenship. This article examines how identity language is used in misinformation and debunking messages about controversial science on the Chinese digital public spheres and their impact on how the public engage with science. We collected an 8-year time series dataset of public discussion ( N = 6,039) on one of the most controversial science issues in China (GMO) from a…
Twitter as research data: Tools, costs, skill sets, and lessons learned
Scholars increasingly use Twitter data to study the life sciences and politics. However, Twitter data collection tools often pose challenges for scholars who are unfamiliar with their operation. Equally important, although many tools indicate that they offer representative samples of the full Twitter archive, little is known about whether the samples are indeed representative of the targeted population of tweets. This article evaluates such tools…
Pandemic Nationalism: Use of Government Social Media for Political Information and Belief in Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories in China
The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a torrent of conspiracy theories across different social media platforms. Parallel to this conspiracy wave was a heightened sense of nationalism, which manifested through both in-group solidarity and perceived out-group threats. In this study, we examine how individuals’ use of government social media to gather political information correlated with nation-related conspiracy beliefs during the pandemic. Data were co…
The use of emotions in conspiracy and debunking videos to engage publics on YouTube
With the rise of digital media, conspiracy theories infamous for their emotional manipulation have challenged science epistemology and democratic discourse. Despite extensive literature on misinformation and the role of emotion in persuasion, less is understood about how emotion is used in conspiracy and debunking messages on video platforms and the impact of emotional framing on public engagement with science on social media. Our article fills t…
Platform Effects on Alternative Influencer Content: Understanding How Audiences and Channels Shape Misinformation Online
People are increasingly exposed to science and political information from social media. One consequence is that these sites play host to “alternative influencers,” who spread misinformation. However, content posted by alternative influencers on different social media platforms is unlikely to be homogenous. Our study uses computational methods to investigate how dimensions we refer to as audience and channel of social media platforms influence emo…
A critical appraisal of diversity in digital knowledge production: Segregated inclusion on YouTube
Diversity in knowledge production is a core challenge facing science communication. Despite extensive works showing how diversity has been undermined in science communication, little is known about to what extent social media augments or hinders diversity for science communication. This article addresses this gap by examining the profile and network diversities of knowledge producers on a popular social media platform—YouTube. We revealed the pat…
Data Science and Political Economy: Application to Financial Regulatory Structure
Sharyn O'Halloran, Sameer Maskey, Geraldine McAllister, David K. Park, Kaiping Chen, Data Science and Political Economy: Application to Financial Regulatory Structure, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 7, Big Data in Political Economy (November 2016), pp. 87-109
How collective narcissism became contagious in public conversations of “Stop the Steal” on Twitter
Following the end of the Cold War, the rise of democracy and globalization fostered optimism about global cooperation and economic integration but also sparked debates on equity, leading to challenges such as economic disparities, cultural displacement, and populist movements. Collective narcissism, a concept introduced to understand self-identity and politics amid perceived threats to status, describes beliefs that the in-group is exceptional bu…
Voice and Value: How Elected Officials Evaluate Online and Offline Constituent Feedback
Social media has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via low-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local US policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our …
Computational methods in Chinese Internet studies— An overview and looking ahead
This essay offers a perspective of the evolution and current landscape of computational methods in Chinese Internet studies, paralleled with a personal academic journey. Starting from a project at Columbia University in 2012, I discussed the challenges and advancements in studying online interactions between Chinese local governments and citizens. Examining existing publications about Chinese Internets, I highlight several key shifts in research …
Uncovering gender stereotypes in controversial science discourse: Evidence from computational text and visual analyses across digital platforms
This study examines how gender stereotypes are reflected in discourses around controversial science issues across two platforms, YouTube and TikTok. Utilizing the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects, we developed hypotheses and research questions about how content creators might use gender-related stereotypes to engage audiences. Our analyses of climate change and vaccination videos, considering various modalities such as captions an…
Data Science and Political Economy: Application to Financial Regulatory Structure
Sharyn O'Halloran, Sameer Maskey, Geraldine McAllister, David K. Park, Kaiping Chen, Data Science and Political Economy: Application to Financial Regulatory Structure, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 7, Big Data in Political Economy (November 2016), pp. 87-109
Concealing Corruption: How Chinese Officials Distort Upward Reporting of Online Grievances
A prerequisite for the durability of authoritarian regimes as well as their effective governance is the regime's ability to gather reliable information about the actions of lower-tier officials. Allowing public participation in the form of online complaints is one approach authoritarian regimes have taken to improve monitoring of lower-tier officials. In this paper, we gain rare access to internal communications between a monitoring agency and up…
Mobilizing mini-publics: The causal impact of deliberation on civic engagement using panel data
Deliberative exercises may reinvigorate civic life by building citizens’ capacity to engage in other types of civic activities. This study examines members of a citizens’ panel ( n = 56) who participated in a 6-day deliberative event on climate change and energy transition in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada), in 2012. We compared panellists’ civic engagement, political interest, and political knowledge with those of the general population using a concu…
The Science of Open (Communication) Science: Toward an Evidence-Driven Understanding of Quality Criteria in Communication Research
Paralleling very visible debates in psychology, some parts of the communication field have recently pushed for a wholesale endorsement of the principles of open science and its practices, including a particular focus on replicability and reproducibility as quality criteria. Unfortunately, these discussions have been plagued by a set of at least 3 interrelated problems: A lack of conceptual clarity when defining open science-related challenges to …
How deliberative designs empower citizens’ voices: A case study on Ghana’s deliberative poll on agriculture and the environment
Empowering ordinary citizens with the capacity to deliberate is a core issue in science communication. Despite growing deliberative practices in developed nations, it is significantly less understood how public deliberation can happen among populations who live with limited educational resources and poor urban infrastructure in developing countries. This article studied a case of a well-designed deliberation method, Deliberative Poll, in Tamale, …
Narratives in Public Deliberation: Empowering Gene Editing Debate with Storytelling
Gene editing in the environment must consider uncertainty about potential benefits and risks for different populations and under different conditions. There are disagreements about the weight and balance of harms and benefits. Deliberative and community‐led approaches offer the opportunity to engage and empower diverse publics to co‐create responses and solutions to controversial policy choices in a manner that is inclusive of diverse perspective…
Platform Effects on Alternative Influencer Content: Understanding How Audiences and Channels Shape Misinformation Online
People are increasingly exposed to science and political information from social media. One consequence is that these sites play host to “alternative influencers,” who spread misinformation. However, content posted by alternative influencers on different social media platforms is unlikely to be homogenous. Our study uses computational methods to investigate how dimensions we refer to as audience and channel of social media platforms influence emo…
Framing the Global Youth Climate Movement: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Greta Thunberg’s Moral, Hopeful, and Motivational Framing on Instagram
Climate change is a critical global problem that requires immediate action to mitigate its effects. In recent years, youth climate activists have mobilized worldwide protests to demand action, using social media platforms to communicate and broadcast their message. This study examines Greta Thunberg's rise to global prominence through an analysis of her first year and a half of Instagram posts from June 2018 to January 2020, including visual and …
A Mixed Methods Study of Public Perception of Social Distancing: Integrating Qualitative and Computational Analyses for Text Data
In a rapidly changing public health crisis such as COVID-19, researchers need innovative approaches that can effectively link qualitative approaches and computational methods. In this article, computational and qualitative methods are used to analyze survey data collected in March 2020 ( n = 2,270) to explore the content of persuasive messages and their relationship with self-reported health behavior—that is, social distancing. Results suggest th…
A critical appraisal of diversity in digital knowledge production: Segregated inclusion on YouTube
Diversity in knowledge production is a core challenge facing science communication. Despite extensive works showing how diversity has been undermined in science communication, little is known about to what extent social media augments or hinders diversity for science communication. This article addresses this gap by examining the profile and network diversities of knowledge producers on a popular social media platform—YouTube. We revealed the pat…
Twitter as research data: Tools, costs, skill sets, and lessons learned
Scholars increasingly use Twitter data to study the life sciences and politics. However, Twitter data collection tools often pose challenges for scholars who are unfamiliar with their operation. Equally important, although many tools indicate that they offer representative samples of the full Twitter archive, little is known about whether the samples are indeed representative of the targeted population of tweets. This article evaluates such tools…
Using Data from Reddit, Public Deliberation, and Surveys to Measure Public Opinion about Autonomous Vehicles
When and how can researchers synthesize survey data with analyses of social media content to study public opinion, and when and how can social media data complement surveys to better inform researchers and policymakers? This paper explores how public opinions might differ between survey and social media platforms in terms of content and audience, focusing on the test case of opinions about autonomous vehicles. The paper first extends previous ove…
Media Systems and Attention Cycles: Volume and Topics of News Coverage on Covid-19 in the United States and China
We examined initial newspaper coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak (January–May 2020) in the United States and China, countries with contrasting media systems and pandemic experiences. We join the context-rich media systems literature and the longitudinal nature of the issue-attention literature to expand each by providing more system-level context for explaining how media cover an issue over time. U.S. coverage peaked later and stayed consistently …
How Climate Movement Actors and News Media Frame Climate Change and Strike: Evidence from Analyzing Twitter and News Media Discourse from 2018 to 2021
Twitter enables an online public sphere for social movement actors, news organizations, and others to frame climate change and the climate movement. In this paper, we analyze five million English tweets posted from 2018 to 2021 demonstrating how peaks in Twitter activity relate to key events and how the framing of the climate strike discourse has evolved over the past three years. We also collected over 30,000 news articles from major news source…
The use of emotions in conspiracy and debunking videos to engage publics on YouTube
With the rise of digital media, conspiracy theories infamous for their emotional manipulation have challenged science epistemology and democratic discourse. Despite extensive literature on misinformation and the role of emotion in persuasion, less is understood about how emotion is used in conspiracy and debunking messages on video platforms and the impact of emotional framing on public engagement with science on social media. Our article fills t…
When national identity meets conspiracies: The contagion of national identity language in public engagement and discourse about Covid-19 conspiracy theories
There are growing concerns about the role of identity narratives in spreading misinformation on social media, which threatens informed citizenship. Drawing on the social identity model of deindividualization effects (SIDE) and social identity theory, we investigate how the use of national identity language is associated with the diffusion and discourse of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on Weibo, a popular social media platform in China. Our results…
Science Factionalism: How Group Identity Language Affects Public Engagement with Misinformation and Debunking Narratives on a Popular Q&a Platform in China
Misinformation and intergroup bias are two pathologies challenging informed citizenship. This article examines how identity language is used in misinformation and debunking messages about controversial science on the Chinese digital public spheres and their impact on how the public engage with science. We collected an 8-year time series dataset of public discussion ( N = 6,039) on one of the most controversial science issues in China (GMO) from a…
Communicating Agriculture AI Technologies: How American Agricultural Producers’ Perception of Trustworthiness, Risk Perception, and Emotion Affect Their Likelihood of Adopting Artificial Intelligence …
The recent decade has witnessed a rise in novel agriculture AI technologies in the USA to improve productivity and sustainability in food systems. However, there lacks scholarship that investigates how agricultural producers, one of the most important stakeholders in this technological development, perceive the risks of and their trustworthiness in these emerging technologies. We addressed this knowledge gap by surveying a diverse producer popula…
Pandemic Nationalism: Use of Government Social Media for Political Information and Belief in Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories in China
The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a torrent of conspiracy theories across different social media platforms. Parallel to this conspiracy wave was a heightened sense of nationalism, which manifested through both in-group solidarity and perceived out-group threats. In this study, we examine how individuals’ use of government social media to gather political information correlated with nation-related conspiracy beliefs during the pandemic. Data were co…
Uncovering gender stereotypes in controversial science discourse: Evidence from computational text and visual analyses across digital platforms
This study examines how gender stereotypes are reflected in discourses around controversial science issues across two platforms, YouTube and TikTok. Utilizing the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects, we developed hypotheses and research questions about how content creators might use gender-related stereotypes to engage audiences. Our analyses of climate change and vaccination videos, considering various modalities such as captions an…
Unraveling China’s digital traces: Evaluating communication scholarship through a sociotechnical lens
In the growing trend of research using digital trace data to study human activities and opinions across different contexts, networked China has emerged as a prominent area of interest. However, research that critically examines the use, strengths, and weaknesses of existing digital trace methods, and the extent to which they can reveal the true landscape of digital China remains limited. To address these gaps, this study proposes a framework for …
Fostering Accurate Reasoning About Outgroups: Experimental Evidence From Intergroup Relation Frames on Conspiracy Beliefs Amid Sino–U.S. Tensions
In an era of intergroup tensions and conspiracy theories, our study examines whether threat-mitigation news frames can counter U.S. public beliefs in China-related conspiracy theories. Using a preregistered online survey experiment, we analyzed the effects of news articles that either emphasize or mitigate threats from China. Results show that threat-emphasizing frames did not heighten conspiracy beliefs, likely due to preexisting media framing. …
The Impact of Public Deliberation and Identity-Based Storytelling on Civic Empowerment among Latinx Communities on Environmental Issues
Environmental issues already disproportionately impact communities of color in the U.S., where there is a long and well-established history of environmental racism. Despite efforts to diversify voices in deliberation, engaging marginalized populations remains a key challenge. Drawing from environmental communication, civic empowerment, and social identity literatures, this study conducted a field experiment within an environmental deliberative ev…
Computational methods in Chinese Internet studies— An overview and looking ahead
This essay offers a perspective of the evolution and current landscape of computational methods in Chinese Internet studies, paralleled with a personal academic journey. Starting from a project at Columbia University in 2012, I discussed the challenges and advancements in studying online interactions between Chinese local governments and citizens. Examining existing publications about Chinese Internets, I highlight several key shifts in research …
Going Beyond Affective Polarization: How Emotions and Identities are Used in Anti-Vaccination TikTok Videos
The rise of social media as a source of science and health information has brought challenges to informed citizenship and social trust due to the spread of misinformation, particularly anti-vaccination messages that incite hatred and discourage necessary health precautions. These messages often employ emotional appeals and identity cues. However, scholarship examining emotional appeals and identity cues in anti-vax messages is still at the nascen…
Political science (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Social Media and Politics (18 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Social media (15 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (12 works)