The Computational Multi-Modal Communication Lab is a collaborative initiative led by Cuihua (Cindy) Shen at the University of California, Davis, Yilang Peng at the University of Georgia, and Yingdan Lu at Northwestern University. Our overarching aim is to leverage state-of-the-art computational social science methodologies, including computer vision, video analysis, audio processing, and natural language processing, to investigate the creation, dissemination and effects of visual, audio, and multimodal media in diverse topical and technological contexts, covering a broad range of topics such as the spread of visual misinformation, political propaganda, climate change, social movements, and the implications of AI-infused media. We are also interested in examining AI’s potential to advance social science research in general.
September, 2025: We will present our paper, "Understanding the Influence of Visual Features and Formats on Credibility Perceptions of Social Media Posts," at the poster session of the Stanford Trust and Safety Conference 2025, Palo Alto, USA.
September, 2025: CMMC Lab welcome three new PhD students to join our lab!
August, 2025: Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen and Dr. Yingdan Lu were invited to present in Computational Visual Media Research (CVMR) Workshop at the University of Zurich.
July, 2025: We presented two lab research projects at the 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2) in Norrköping, Sweden. Dr. Yingdan Lu received the Best Lightning Talk Award.
June, 2025: Our paper, "Large Language Model-Informed Feature Discovery Improves Prediction and Interpretation of Credibility Perceptions of Visual Content" was presented and received the Top Paper Award from the Computational Methods Division at the 75th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), Denver, USA.
June, 2025: Dr. Yingdan Lu delivered a guest lecture, “Computational Multimodal Analysis in Social Science Research", in Summer Workshop on Computational Social Science at University of Minnesota.
May, 2025: We presented our research "Developing a Comprehensive Media Literacy Scale" at the Communication Horizons 2025 Conference, UC Davis.
May, 2025: Dr. Yilang Peng gave an invited talk, “Visual Media for Informed and Engaged Citizenship: A Computational Research Agenda", in C-Center Communication Seminar Series at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
April, 2025: Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen gave an invited talk, “From Photoshop to Midjourney: Building resilience against visual misinformation in the age of Generative AI,” at the Communication Department Speaker Series, University of Connecticut.
April 2025: We presented our lab paper, "Crafting Synthetic Realities: Examining Visual Realism and Misinformation Potential of Photorealistic AI-Generated Images," at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025) Poster Session, Yokohama, Japan. We presented "Large Language Model-Informed Feature Discovery Improves Prediction and Interpretation of Credibility Perceptions of Visual Content" at the HEAL workshop at CHI 2025