Yingdan Lu

Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Studies
School of Communication
Northwestern University
Email: yingdan [at] northwestern.edu

Peer-reviewed Publications

Authoritarian Information Control in the Digital Age

Lu, Y. (2025). Performative Propaganda Engagement: How Celebrity Fans Engage with State Propaganda on Weibo. Political Communication, Online First in November 2025. 1-29. (DOI, Replication)

Lu, Y., Pan, J., Xu, X., & Xu, Y. (2025). Decentralized Propaganda in the Era of Digital Media: The Massive Presence of the Chinese State on Douyin. American Journal of Political Science. Online First in May 2025. (DOI, Replication)

Hanley, H., Lu, Y., & Pan, J. (2025). Across the Firewall: Foreign Media’s Role in Shaping Chinese Social Media Narratives on the Russo-Ukrainian War. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(1), e2420607122. (DOI, Replication)

Lu, Y., Schaefer, J., Park, K., Joo, J., & Pan, J. (2024). How Information Flows from the World to China. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 29(2), 305-327. (DOI, Replication)

Chen, A., Lu, Y., Chen, K., & Ng, A. (2024). Pandemic Nationalism: Use of Government Social Media for Political Information and Belief in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories in China. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 29(3), 710-732. (DOI)

Lu, Y., & Pan, J. (2022). The Pervasive Presence of Chinese Government Content on Douyin Trending Videos. Computational Communication Research, 4(1), 68-97. (DOI, Replication)

Lu, Y., Pan, J., & Xu, Y. (2021). Public Sentiment on Chinese Social Media during the Emergence of COVID-19. Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 1, 2021, 1-47. (DOI, Replication)

Lu, Y., & Pan, J. (2021). Capturing Clicks: How the Chinese Government Uses Clickbait to Compete for Visiblity. Political Communication, 38(1-2), 23-54. (DOI, Appendix, Replication)

Multimodal Communication in AI-mediated Environments

Dahlke, R., Tu, F., Wang, Y.C., Lu, Y., Engeda, B.W. & Hancock, J. (2025). Contextualizing Misinformation: A User-Centric Approach to Linguistic and Topical Patterns in News Consumption. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(7), 1-40. (DOI)

Lu, Y., & Peng, Y. (2024). The Mobilizing Power of Visual Media Across Stages of Social-Mediated Protests. Political Communication, 41(4), 531-558. (DOI)

Qian, S., Lu, Y., & Peng, Y., Shen, C. & Xu, H. (2024). Convergence or divergence? A cross-platform analysis of climate change visual categories, features, and user engagement on Twitter and Instagram. Public Relations Review, 50(2), 102454. (DOI)

Christin, A., & Lu, Y. (2024). The Influencer Pay Gap: Platform Labor Meets Racial Capitalism. New Media & Society, 26(12), 7212-7235. (DOI)

Lu, Y., & Shen, C. (2023). Unpacking Multimodal Fact-checking: Features and Engagement of Fact-checking Videos on Chinese TikTok (Douyin). Social Media + Society, 9(1), 20563051221150406. (DOI)

Peng, Y., Lu, Y., & Shen, C. (2023). An Agenda for Studying Credibility Perceptions of Visual Misinformation. Political Communication, 40(2), 225-237. (DOI)

Muise, D., Lu, Y., Pan, J., & Reeves, B. (2022). Selectively Localized: Temporal and Visual Structure of Smartphone Screen Activity across Media Environments. Mobile Media & Communication, 10(3), 487–509. (DOI)

Reeves, B., Ram, N., Robinson, T. N., Cummings, J. J., Giles, L., Pan, J., Chiatti, A., Cho, M., Roehrick, K., Yang, X., Gagneja, A., Brinberg, M., Muise, D., Lu, Y., Luo, M., Fitzgerald, A., Yeykelis, L. (2021). Screenomics: A Framework to Capture and Analyze Personal Life Experiences and the Ways that Technology Shapes Them. Human-Computer Interaction, 36(2), 150-201. (DOI. New York Times report)

Advancing Computational Social Science Research

Kim, S., Lu, Y., & Peng, Y. (2025). Unmasking Deception: How Computer Vision Could Empower Visual Journalism in Unveiling Visual Misinformation. In Thompson, T. J., and Dahmen N. S. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism, 39: 471-482. Routledge. (Book chapter link)

Chen, K., Lu, Y., & Wang, Y. (2024). Unraveling China’s digital traces: evaluating communication scholarship through a sociotechnical lens. Chinese Journal of Communication, 17(2), 127-150. (DOI)

Peng, Y., & Lu, Y. (2023). Computational Visual Analysis in Political Communication. In D. Lilleker & A. Veneti (eds.), Research Handbook on Visual Politics, 4: 42-54. Edward Elgar Publishing. (Book chapter link)