My research examines how political communication unfolds within an evolving and fragmented media ecosystem, with a focus on the interplay between elite messaging, national and local media environments, and democratic outcomes. I study how candidates and news institutions use social media to shape public opinion, and how citizens’ news consumption—across platforms and ideological slants—affects their beliefs, trust, and polarization.
Drawing on survey experiments, panel data, and computational analysis of digital trace data, my work investigates both the drivers and consequences of misinformation, affective polarization, and democratic backsliding. Across these projects, I aim to identify communication strategies and platform policies that can foster intergroup understanding and strengthen democratic resilience in a digitally saturated public sphere.
Publications
Wang, Y., Shen, L., & Chen, K. (2024), Fostering Accurate Reasoning about Outgroups: Experimental Evidence from Intergroup Relation Framing on Conspiracy Beliefs amid Sino-U.S. Tensions. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Online first in December 2024. (DOI)
Wang, Y., Borah, P., & Wagner, M. (2024), Does the Losing Side Lose the Democratic Faith? Partisan Media Flow and Democratic Values during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Political Communication, 41(5), 857-865. (DOI)
Wang, Y., Sang, J., Shan, Y., Sun, Y., Lee, H., Jiang, X., Borah, P., Wagner, M., & Shah, D. (2024), Slant, Extremity, and Diversity: How the Shape of News Use Explains Electoral Judgments and Confidence. Public Opinion Quarterly, 88(S1), 708-734. (DOI)
Dempsey, S., Li, J., Witkovsky, B., Wang, Y., Friedland, L., Wagner, M., & Shah, D. (2024), Manufacturing January 6th: How Republican County Parties Mobilized Anger to #StopTheSteal. Politics & Society. Online First in October 2024. (DOI)
Wang, Y., Chen, J., Tao, R., & Yang, S. (2024). Coronaphobia or Sinophobia: How Journalistic Practices in Early COVID-19 Coverage and Online Commentary Affect Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the U.S. Journalism, 26(2), 345-364. (DOI)
Chen, K., Lu, Y., & Wang, Y. (2023). Unraveling China’s Digital Traces: Evaluating Communication Scholarship through a Sociotechnical Lens. Chinese Journal of Communication, 17(2), 127-150. (DOI)
Li, M., Sun, L., Wang, Y., Sun, Y., Kwon, H., Yang, J., & Shah, D. (2023). Computational Approaches to Online Political Expression: A Framework for Research. In S. Coleman and L. Sorenson (Eds.), Handbook of Digital Politics. 2nd Edition. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar. (DOI)