People

Principal Investigator

Yingdan Lu

Yingdan Lu (PhD, Stanford University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She is the director of the Computational Media and Politics Lab, and the co-director of the Computational Multimodal Communication Lab. Her research focuses on digital technology, political communication, and information manipulation. She uses computational and qualitative methods to understand the evolution and engagement of digital propaganda in authoritarian regimes and how individuals encounter and communicate multimodal information in AI-mediated environments. Her work has appeared in flagship journals across disciplines such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), American Journal of Political Science, Political Communication, New Media & Society, Human-Computer Interaction, and among other peer-reviewed journals.

PhD Researchers

Xinyi Liu

Xinyi Liu is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on digital media, generative AI, and social media algorithms, using both computational and experimental methods to explore their uses and implications.

Haohang "Otto" Xin

Haohang “Otto” Xin is a Ph.D. student 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 information and sway public opinion. He also develops multimodal models and computational methods that advance large-scale analysis of political communication.

Fatima Gaw

Fatima is a PhD candidate at Northwestern University and a researcher at the Center for Communication and Public Policy. She investigates how media logics, platforms, and ecosystems shape contemporary politics. Her research focuses on social media influencers, alt-tech platforms, and propaganda using multimodal computational methods, network analysis, and quantitative methods.

Qiyao Peng

Qiyao Peng is a Ph.D. student in Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on persuasion, health communication, and computational social science, with an emphasis on how message design and digital media environments influence behaviors and health-related decision-making.

Cong Lin

Cong Lin is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, China. His research focuses on using experimental and computational methods to study AI algorithms and social impacts, multimodal formation and user effects.