Research

What psychological processes and outcomes does language reflect and predict?

People share media experience with others in everyday life. Live streaming technologies facilitate the shared experience by allowing people to view and communicate with others synchronously. Do people use different language styles to comment when watching a live stream video compared to a recorded video? Can language characteristics shed lights on psychological mechanisms behind shared-attention? We collect and analyze 670,000 comments on over 300 YouTube videos to address these questions.

Luo, M., Hsu, T., Park, J., Hancock, J. T. (under review) Watching a live video intensifies emotion: A perspective of shared attention using large-scale YouTube comments. Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing [code upon request]

Fake news has become subject to serious scrutiny since the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. We combine dictionary and supervised machine learning methods to understand the linguistic differences between fake and real news articles and to build a statistical model that can classify news as fake or real.

Luo, M., Chang, S., & Hancock, J. T. (November, 2017). An exploratory linguistic analysis of fake news using machine learning. Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Conference, Dallas, TX. [code]

How do people perceive and react to information on social media?

Do people exhibit a natural inclination to perceive a news headline on social media as real? How accurately can people detect fake and real news, compared to messages in human interaction? We examine the truth-bias and detection accuracy of individuals’ perceptions of news headlines, and how social endorsement heuristics may affect these dynamics.

Luo, M., Hancock, J. T., & Markowitz, D. (revise & resubmit) Perceptions and detection accuracy of news on social media: Effects of truth-bias and endorsement cues. Communication Research [OSF]

Social media can extend the reach of health campaign messages via retransmission. What factors may drive message retransmission on Facebook? We examine the effects of opinion climate, message efficacy, and publicness feature of social media on retransmission.

Luo, M., Wang, N., & Bigman, C.A. (in press) Effects of opinion climate, efficacy messages, and publicness of social media on intentions to retransmit anti-binge drinking messages on Facebook. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking

How is social media use associated with psychological well-being?

The debate over how social media use affects psychological well-being is widespread. While previous work has shown mixed findings, much has only focused on a specific behavior and a type of well-being. We conduct a systematic review and a meta-analysis to both qualitatively and quantitatively examine the associations and mechanisms linking the two focal constructs.

Luo, M., & Hancock, J. T.(2019). Self-disclosure and social media: Motivations, mechanisms and psychological well-being. Current Opinion in Psychology. [DOI]

Hancock, J. T., Liu, X., Luo, M., Mieczkowski, H., & French, M. Social media use and psychological well-being: A Meta-analysis. (under review). Psychological Bulletin [code and data visualization upon request]

How does technology alter self-presentation and self-identity?

Self-presentation and social interaction via mediated communication not only affect how others perceive us but also how we see ourselves. We review research on humblebrag - a unique and pervasive self-presentation strategy on social media, the impacts of avatar embodiment in the stereotype threat effect in virtual learning environment, and the effects of social evaluation on identity shift via computer-mediated communication.

Luo, M., & Hancock, J. T. (in press). Complimenting the self online: The humblebrag and self-presentation in social media. In Complimenting behavior across social media: New contexts and emerging trends.

Chang, F., Luo, M., Walton, G., Aguilar, L., & Bailenson, J. (2019). Stereotype threat in virtual learning environments: Effects of avatar gender and sexist behavior on women’s math learning outcomes. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.[DOI]

French, M., Luo, M., & Hancock, J. T. (under review). Addressing the audience: Effects of evaluation on identity shift in computer-mediated environments. Media Psychology.