I am an assistant professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Three keywords, Generative AI, Computational Social Science, and Strategic Communication, characterize my research. My earlier work examined the intersection of the latter two, and my current work focuses on generative AI and its differential effects across levels of communicative entities.

On the empirical front, I started out examining issues related to information, communication, and organizations using computational methods and causal inference. My recent projects extend that agenda to generative AI, which does not affect all communicative entities equally. It privileges certain messages, benefits certain organizations, and reshapes what individuals encounter. Much of this plays out in strategic communication, where campaigns, brands, advocacy groups, and government communicators now distribute their messages through the same systems that decide which messages circulate, and I am interested in where those advantages come from and what they mean for prosocial outcomes. As a computational social scientist, I also use AI as a method to answer these questions. To that end, I enjoy working with students and collaborators who boast solid project management and programming skills, test big ideas that can inform social theories or have applied implications, and appreciate intuitive and clever research designs.

On the theoretical front, my work extends the sociological perspective on communication. I treat generative AI as a technology that enters an existing ecology of messages, organizations, and publics and rearranges the advantages already distributed there. The same perspective led my earlier work to consider stakeholder engagement and public relationships as pathways through which organizations change their network ecologies.

My work has appeared in general communication journals (e.g., New Media & Society, Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and Mass Communication and Society), field-top journals (e.g., Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Advertising, Political Communication, and Management Communication Quarterly), and computer science conference proceedings (e.g., CSCW). I serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of Communication and six top strategic communication journals, and have edited two special issues, one on Generative AI for Computational Communication Research and one on computational strategic communication for Public Relations Review. I received my Ph.D. in Communication from UPenn Annenberg. Prior to that, I obtained an M.A. in Statistics and Data Science from the Wharton School and an M.A. in Strategic Public Relations from USC Annenberg. I graduated from Tsinghua University with dual bachelor's degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Journalism.