What Makes COVID-19 Charts Understandable?
Science Communication

Why are some charts easier to understand than others? I develop a framework for measuring the complexity of COVID-19 data visualizations.

Disentangling the Three Facets of Mass Ideological Polarization
Public Opinion Quarterly

Using data from 78 societies, we show that mass ideological polarization takes several distinct forms with different structural drivers.

Visual Matters

We examine photos, infographics, and data visualizations to understand how aesthetic appeal and production quality shape credibility perceptions.

Seeing the Surreal
Computational Communication Research

Using nearly 30,000 AI-generated Instagram images, we introduce the idea of algorithmic surrealism to characterize photorealistic AI-generated media.

From Verification to Amplification

We show that reverse image search can return the same misinformation users are trying to verify, while debunking information remains harder to find.

• I am excited to share that I am currently working on a book manuscript Visual Credibility in the Age of AI: How Images Earn Trust, in collaboration with Cambridge University Press. The book is expected to be released in late 2026 or early 2027. For a detailed description, check this page.
• I am pleased to announce that I will be serving as Associate Editor for the journal Communication and the Public.
• The University of Georgia published a profile highlighting my research.
• We have a new paper published in the Journal of Communication: “Are partisan, unreliable, digital-born, and mass-oriented media more likely to thrive on social media? Comparing four information ecosystems” (with Tian Yang, Xuzhen Yang, and Subhayan Mukerjee).
• We have a new book chapter out in The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism: “Unmasking Deception: How computer vision could empower journalists in unveiling visual misinformation” (with Sang Jung Kim and Yingdan Lu).
• We have four papers accepted at IC2S2 this year, focusing on topics including LLMs in credibility evaluations, belief networks in polarization, and fact-checking visual misinformation.
• Our team received three Top Paper Awards at the International Communication Association Annual Conference this year: Two from the Computational Methods Division and one from the Political Communication Division.
• I am thrilled to share that I’ve received two research awards: the Charles B. Knapp Early Career Scholar Award at the University of Georgia and the Early Career Faculty Research Award from the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
• Our lab’s paper, “Crafting synthetic realities: Examining visual realism and misinformation potential of photorealistic AI-generated images,” was accepted as a CHI Late-Breaking Work.

• Our paper “Convergence or divergence? A cross-platform analysis of climate change visual content categories, features, and social media engagement on Twitter and Instagram” (co-authored with Sijia Qian, Yingdan Lu, Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, and Huacen Xu) is online at Public Relations Review!
• Our paper “‘Letter to my future self’ as a device for assessing health education effectiveness” (co-authored with Dee Warmath and Andrew P. Winterstein) is online at Patient Education and Counseling!
• Our paper titled “The mobilizing power of visual media across stages of social-mediated protests,” co-authored with Yingdan Lu, has been published by Political Communication!

2023

• Three papers and two panels accepted to ICA24 in Gold Coast! My collaborators and I will present works on many exciting topics such as AI-generated images, visuals in social movements, and the platformization of news. Stay tuned with our panel (co-organized with Subhayan Mukerjee and Tian Yang) titled “Computational communication research in the Global South: Unpacking theoretical, methodological, and professional challenges for an inclusive and globally informed future.” I will also serve as the discussant for panel “Image-as-data methods in the age of Generative Artificial Intelligence.”
• Keep an eye out for the two pre-conferences we are organizing for ICA24! The first preconference “A computational turn in journalism: Opportunities and challenges in a cross-disciplinary field” (with Subhayan Mukerjee, Tian Yang, Wu Shangyuan, Sílvia Majó-Vázquez, and Thorsten Quandt) is scheduled to take place in June 2024 in Singapore. Please check our Call for Papers for more information (deadline 26 January, 2024). The second preconference, titled “The future of computational message science: Theoretical advances, computational frontiers, and grand societal challenges” (with Kaiping Chen, Sijia Yang, and Yingdan Lu), is scheduled for June 2024 in Brisbane. Please stay tuned for more updates.
• Our paper “The dark side of entertainment? How viral entertaining media build an attention base for the far-right politics of The Epoch Times” (with Tian Yang and Kecheng Fang) is online at New Media & Society. Check this X thread for a quick summary.
• Our paper “A computer vision methodology to predict brand personality from image features” (with Taylor Jing Wen and Jing Yang) is online at the Journal of Advertising!
• Thrilled to learn that our paper “The mobilizing power of visual media across cycles of social movements” (with Yingdan Lu) received a Top Student Paper at ICA!
• Our paper “Metrics in action: How social media metrics shape news production on Facebook” (with Subhayan Mukerjee and Tian Yang) is online at the Journal of Communication!
• Two papers accepted by IC2S2 2023! We will be discussing the impact of social media metrics on news coverage as well as the prevalence and effects of toxicity in social media discourses.
• Our paper “How visual aesthetics and calorie density predict food image popularity on Instagram: A computer vision analysis” (with Muna Sharma) was featured by various news outlets including UGA Today, Atlanta News First, and the Washington Post.

• Two papers/abstracts accepted for APSA23 in L.A.! My collaborators and I will talk about how visual messages mobilize participation in online activism as well as how we can investigate misinformation perceptions using computer vision methods.
• Our forum article “An agenda for studying credibility perceptions of visual misinformation” (coauthored with Yingdan Lu and Cindy Shen) is online at Political Communication. Check this thread.
• Our paper “How visual aesthetics and calorie density predict food image popularity on Instagram: A computer vision analysis” (coauthored with Muna Sharma) is online at Health Communication. For a quick overview, check out this Twitter thread.
• Our book chapter “Computational visual analysis in political communication” (with Yingdan Lu), included in the Research Handbook on Visual Politics, is out now!
• Seven papers/abstracts accepted to ICA23 in Toronto! My collaborators and I will present works on many exciting topics such as social media metrics, visual misinformation, morality in pandemics, and political memes. Also, stay tuned with our panel (co-organized with Subhayan Mukerjee and Tian Yang) titled “Modeling time: Computational approaches for the analysis of longitudinal, temporal, and time-dynamic data.” I will also serve as the discussant for panel “Video-as-data in computational communication: Toward a mixed-method pathway.”