Programs › Davis, CA
Studies how campaign media, news use, and everyday political discussion shape citizens' political understanding and decisions, drawing on information-processing concepts such as priming.
Studies supportive communication, how people seek, give, and respond to comfort and advice across cultures, genders, close relationships, online communities, and doctor-patient visits.
Studies the role of digital information and algorithms in complex social systems, from measuring the world's information capacity to digital development policy, using computational social science.
Studies cognition, affect, and behavior in video games, virtual environments, and online groups, including priming and impression formation, using experiments, content analysis, and text analysis.
Studies multimodal misinformation in AI-mediated environments and the structure and impact of social networks on online platforms, using computational social science and network analysis.
Studies uses and effects of entertainment media on relationship beliefs, gender stereotypes, body perceptions, and health, and the motives of fans of fiction, celebrities, and sports teams.
Studies how people select political information online, media effects on polarization and misperceptions, and interventions targeting users and platform algorithms, including YouTube algorithm audits.
Studies how child and adolescent development shapes media use and effects, including social media and teen mental health, learning from media, and moral reasoning, using experiments and surveys.
Studies self-governance and common-pool resource institutions, treating online communities and games as models, using computational modeling, large datasets, and web-based experiments.
Studies how the brain processes motivationally relevant information in persuasion, media selection, and decision-making, combining fMRI, EEG, computational modeling, and behavioral experiments.
Studies how emotion and memory interact in information processing under cognitive and emotional overload, using self-report, behavioral, and physiological measures to inform message design.
Studies how persuasive technologies such as social media, mobile apps, and conversational AI chatbots change health attitudes and behaviors, designing and testing them in clinical trials.
Studies how communication and media design shape the pursuit of compatible relationships, such as online dating, using online experiments, large-scale content analysis, and multilevel surveys.
Studies inequality, disparity, and risk in health, environment, and governance, and how people perceive and share information online, using computational and quantitative methods.