yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang
@yinizhang.bsky.social
450 followers 470 following 30 posts
assistant professor, university at buffalo, social media & computational social science
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Yini Zhang
chrisbail.bsky.social
Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · Aug 27
Open Research (OpenAI-linked research outfit) just put out a new report on using LLMs for public opinion polling that suggests they may improve response rates substantially: www.openresearchlab.org/findings/ai-...
Can Conversational AI Improve Survey Research? | Findings
Early Insights from Testing a Chat-Based Survey
www.openresearchlab.org
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
matthewfacciani.bsky.social
Matthew Facciani @matthewfacciani.bsky.social · Aug 23
”It’s a lot easier to blame food dyes, vaccines, or lack of exercise for every health issue your family faces… It makes you think if you eliminate or do that one thing, or take a supplement instead, it will all be fine. It gives you control — a false sense of control.”
Life is Messy
Holding space for complexity in a world that loves certainty
open.substack.com
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
jolukito.bsky.social
Jo(sephine) Lukito @jolukito.bsky.social · Jul 28
🚨New publication in Social Media + Society🚨

Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections

And it's open access!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections - Josephine Lukito, Maggie Macdonald, Bin Chen, Megan A. Brown, Stephen Prochaska, Yunkang ...
In this multi-platform, comparative study, we analyze social media messages from political candidates (N = 1,517) running for Congress during the 2022 U.S. Midt...
journals.sagepub.com
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
wangrui.bsky.social
Rui Wang @wangrui.bsky.social · May 23
🚨New Pub🚨 Media-bashing became an identity. When Trump attacked the news media on social media, how did political influencers on the left and right amplify his rhetoric? Check out our new article (w/ @yinizhang.bsky.social): www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Z8NQW...
How political influencers amplified Trump’s media-bashing rhetoric on Twitter: from synergistic echoing to strategic avoidance, countering, and retooling
Extending existing research on right-wing populism and how the news media handles right-wing populists and their media-bashing rhetoric, this study examines how such rhetoric is amplified by politi...
www.tandfonline.com
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
computationalcommunication.org
Computational Communication Research @computationalcommunication.org · May 23
📣Call for Papers:

CCR Special Issue on Computational Approaches to Researching Short Videos

co-edited by Jing Zeng, @lrossi.bsky.social, and @rupertkiddle.com

Abstract deadline: 25-Jul-2025
See announcement for more information -

journal.computationalcommunication.org/announcement...
Call for Papers: CCR Special Issue on Computational Approaches to Researching Short Videos | Computational Communication Research
journal.computationalcommunication.org
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
jatucker.bsky.social
Joshua Tucker @jatucker.bsky.social · May 1
💡 Ever wondered how social media and digital technology shapes our democracy?

Join our team @CSMaP_NYU as a Research Engingeer and help us build the tools that power cutting-edge research on the digital public sphere.

🚀 Apply now!

apply.interfolio.com/165833
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
buildwithtori.com
Tori @buildwithtori.com · Apr 30
Reading Careless People makes me appreciative of @bsky.app and the AT Protocol.

The open social web feels like this bright light in a sea of mercurial CEOs.

Seeing teams like @graze.social and @stream.place build on it, solidifies this belief for me.

Grateful to be here 💕
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 30
Couldn’t agree more! @shannimcg.bsky.social's amazing talk at UB last Friday and this clip really helped clarify the current presidential-press relationship for me.
sjjphd.bsky.social
Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · Apr 30
I know I’m annoying with this. But the immediate shift to threat and power wielding, to belittling and gaslighting, the lean forward in the posture, the cadence shift when the interviewer says “it was photoshopped” - abuser tactics 101. When he says “you’re not being very nice,” DARVO 101.
justinbaragona.bsky.social
Justin Baragona @justinbaragona.bsky.social · Apr 30
This exchange is so very telling.

Trump repeatedly claims the photoshopped MS-13 on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's knuckles is real, Terry Moran keeps telling him it isn't, prompting Trump to say this:

"I never heard of you. I picked you. You’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed... Just say yes!"
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
This paper is in collaboration with @jiyoun-suk.bsky.social, @dongdongyang, @zhiyingyue, @wangrui.bsky.social, @xinxiadong, @zijianan,
@kennyjoseph.bsky.social. Check out the full paper here: journalqd.org/article/view.... We’d love to hear your feedback!
Center-Left and Right-Wing News, YouTube, and Twitter as Key Connectors in the Social Media System: A Cross-Media and Cross-Platform Analysis of Hyperlinks | Journal of Quantitative Descript...
journalqd.org
yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
Thus, if we want to tackle today’s information challenges, we must study how news media and social media together drive information flows across the broader social media system.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
While most cross-platform research focuses on differences between platforms, we highlight something critical: news media serves as the connective tissue across social media platforms.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
Our key takeaway: users’ linking practices shape how information flows across platforms; news outlets and social media sites act as key information pathways in the system.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
After news sites, social media platforms were the next most linked. YouTube stood out across different types of platforms, followed by Twitter, which was especially prominent on forums.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
So, what did we find? News media sites dominated the link-sharing landscape (68.5% of all links for immigration and 48.4% for sexual violence), especially center-left (e.g., nytimes.com, cnn.com) and right-wing (e.g., breitbart.com, foxnews.com) outlets.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
Using two massive datasets on #MeToo and immigration, we analyzed linking patterns in 60+ million posts across 186 social network sites and forums.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
Specifically, we focus on hyperlinks—traces of cross-platform and cross-media sharing that not only enable information diffusion but also reveal key connectors across the social media system.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Apr 28
🚨 New paper out in @journalqd.bsky.social! 🚨
How do different social media platforms connect to each other? In our latest study, we propose that social media can be understood as a system made up of differentiated yet interconnected platforms, shaped by how users share information. #socialmedia🧵
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
jiyoun-suk.bsky.social
Jiyoun Suk @jiyoun-suk.bsky.social · Apr 16
🌟pub🌟 "Communicative AI in the scientific public sphere" is out in Telematics & Informatics! w/ @yinizhang.bsky.social Jiawei Liu & Yukyung Yang

We examine public discussions on generative AI tools from both cognitive and affective dimensions.

first 50 copies 👇
authors.elsevier.com/a/1kmCI2dUkY...
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
matthewfacciani.bsky.social
Matthew Facciani @matthewfacciani.bsky.social · Apr 1
Over the past two decades, online news headlines have become longer, more negative, and increasingly use features linked to clickbait. This shift is widespread across outlets of all political leanings and journalistic quality.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The evolution of online news headlines - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - The evolution of online news headlines
www.nature.com
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
angus.bsky.social
Angus Johnston @angus.bsky.social · Mar 9
Columbia grad student with a green card and a pregnant US citizen wife, abducted by ICE because of his political organizing, and now his lawyers can't find him.

Hey, @schumer.senate.gov. This is your constituent. Bring him back home.
premthakker.bsky.social
Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · Mar 9
UPDATE—Mahmoud's attorney says they do NOT know where he is.
They were first told he was sent to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, NJ. But when his 8-month-pregnant wife tried to visit him, she was told he's not there.
They've received reports he may be sent as far away as Louisiana.
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
brendannyhan.bsky.social
Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Mar 9
Reminder: When a person or institution you hate is targeted for illiberal persecution by an aspiring authoritarian, you have to defend them EVEN IF you don't like them. It doesn't matter if you don't like campus protestors or Columbia or the law firms. We must defend them or we're all at risk next.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Feb 26
This makes our understanding of “trading up the chain” a mockery. Conservative activists have direct access to power via Twitter: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/u...
On X, Conservative Activists Find a Direct Pipeline to Musk’s Team
Prominent conservative activists with a presence online have appeared to wield extraordinary access to Elon Musk’s team, and the power to sway policy through it.
www.nytimes.com
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
jeremylittau.com
Jeremy Littau @jeremylittau.com · Feb 25
The pool reporter is the eyes and ears of all the press not in the room (because they cannot all be in the room). There's a reason why WHCA journalists choose this person; it depends on being able to trust the source, a basic reporter question.

What favors/obeyances are required to get picked now?
justinbaragona.bsky.social
Justin Baragona @justinbaragona.bsky.social · Feb 25
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announces that the White House Correspondents' Association will no longer choose the pool reporter.

"Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team."
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Reposted by Yini Zhang
chrisbail.bsky.social
Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · Feb 1
Tiktok boosted Republican messages 11.8% more than Democrat messages during the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race according to this new study that employed bots to view ~394,000 videos.
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yinizhang.bsky.social
Yini Zhang @yinizhang.bsky.social · Jan 15
Yes, good for research (as we need to update many existing knowledge about social media), but really bad for users and society.
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