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Principle Investigators
Principle Investigators
Cuihua (Cindy) Shen is a professor of communication at the University of California, Davis, and the co-director of the Computational Communication Research lab. Her recent research focuses on computational social science and multimodal (mis)information in AI-mediated environments. She is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and a current Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (2025-2029). Previously, she served as an associate editor of Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication and the founding associate editor of the journal Computational Communication Research. She is a recipient of numerous Top Paper Awards from ICA as well as a Fulbright US Scholar Award. She received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California.
Yilang Peng (PhD, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Financial Planning, Housing, and Consumer Economics at the University of Georgia. His research lies at the intersection of computational social science, visual communication, political communication, and social media. His work uses computational methods to understand content production and consumption on social media, with a specific emphasis on analyzing visual and multimodal content through computer vision techniques. His works have appeared in leading venues in multiple social science disciplines, including the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, New Media & Society, Sociological Methods & Research, and the Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. He has received multiple top paper awards from the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association.
Yingdan Lu (PhD, Stanford University) is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on digital technology, political communication, and information manipulation in authoritarian and democratic contexts. Her research employs both computational and qualitative methods to understand how authoritarian governments use digital media and artificial intelligence to maintain their rule, and how individuals experience digital technology in different media environments. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Political Communication, New Media & Society, Human-Computer Interaction, Computational Communication Research, and among other peer-reviewed journals. For more information, see her website: https://yingdanlu.com/.
PhD Student Project Leaders
PhD Student Project Leaders
Xinyi Liu
Xinyi Liu
Xinyi Liu is a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University, School of Communication. Her research focuses on using experimental and computational methods to understand the use and implications of digital media, generative AI, and social media algorithms, with a special focus on political context.
Salman Khawar
Salman Khawar is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Davis. His research interests include sensationalism in online news, (visual) misinformation, multimodal communication, and political communication. His preferred computational methods include text analysis and computer vision. Salman has master's degrees from Columbia University and the University of Amsterdam.
Cong Lin
Cong Lin
Lin Cong is a Ph.D. student at the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University. His research interests lie in computational social science, algorithm studies, and multimodal research.
Jiyoung Yeon
Jiyoung Yeon is a Ph.D. student at Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of Georgia. Her research interests center around the impact of online humor and entertainment media on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors in the context of political and science communication. She is currently paying attention to the societal roles of memes/parody with uncivil cues and AI-manipulated multimodal content (i.e., deepfakes, AIGI).
Qiyao Peng is a PhD student at University of California Santa Barbara. She is dedicated to uncovering the impact of new media and emerging technologies on health-related behaviors and outcomes. She is also engaged with the investigation of (health) misinformation dynamics, especially in the context of AI-generated content.
Haohang "Otto" Xin
Haohang “Otto” Xin is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His work combines data science with communication theory to reveal how generative AI and algorithm-driven messaging systems shape the spread of misinformation and sway public opinion. He also develops multimodal models and computational methods that advance large-scale analysis of political communication.
Chaeeun Ko
Chaeeun Ko is an incoming Ph.D. student in Communication at the University of California, Davis. Her research interests lie in online safety issues, including misinformation, harmful content, AI ethics, and users’ digital well-being. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Media and Communication from Korea University.
Mengxin Shi
Mengxin Shi
Mengxin Shi is a Ph.D. candidate in Journalism and Communication at Zhejiang University, with a current visiting student status at UC Davis. Her research interests lie in human-robot interaction and AI trust.
Alumni
Alumni
Sijia Qian (PhD, UC Davis) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Data Science at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research interests center around information integrity, media literacy, and multimodal misinformation. Her current research focuses on developing and examining the effects of digital media literacy interventions on combating multimodal misinformation.
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