COMAP LAB

The Computational Media and Politics (COMAP) Lab is an interdisciplinary research group led by Dr. Yingdan Lu in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. 

Our mission is to advance interdisciplinary scholarship on how digital technologies are transforming political communication globally. We aim to inform public policy, guide platform design, and enrich scholarly debates on the social, political, and global implications of digital media and artificial intelligence, contributing to democratic and more resilient information ecosystems worldwide.

Apr 2025 

COMAP has three papers accepted to the 2026 International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2).

Apr 2025 

COMAP PI Yingdan Lu gave an invited talk, "Recommending the State: How Social Media Algorithms Curate State-Created Content in China" at 2026 Comparative Politics Annual Conference, Washington University in St. Louis.

March 2025 

COMAP has two papers accepted to the 2026 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting.

March 2025 

COMAP PI Yingdan Lu gave an invited talk, "Computational Video Analysis in Social Science Research" at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Jan 2025 

COMAP has four papers accepted for presentation at the Annual International Communication Association (ICA) 2026 Conference.

December 2025 

COMAP PI Yingdan Lu gave an invited talk, "Reimagining Computational Multimodal Analysis in Social Science Research" at HSBC Business School, Peking University.