Yilang Peng

Education

Research

My scholarship is at the intersection of computational social science, visual communication, and media effects. My research applies cutting-edge computer vision methods to investigate the production and effects of visual media, an increasingly prevalent component of today’s digital media environment. My works have been published in leading venues both in communication and human-computer interaction, including the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, New Media & Society, the International Journal of Press/Politics, the International Journal of Communication, Public Understanding of Science, and the Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Teaching

FHCE 8000 Research Methods in FHCE

FHCE 4000/6000 Consumer Analytics: Evidence-Based Strategy

FHCE 4900/6900 Strategic Storytelling

FHCE 4051/6051 Social Impact Communication

Awards

Publications

Peng, Q., Lu, Y., Peng, Y., Qian, S., Liu, X., & Shen, C. (In Press). Crafting synthetic realities: examining visual realism and misinformation potential of photorealistic AI-Generated images. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI LBW).

Peng, Y., Lock, I., & Salah, A. A. (2024). Automated visual analysis for the study of social media effects: Opportunities, approaches, and challenges. Communication Methods and Measures, 18(2), 163–185.

Lu, Y., & Peng, Y. (2024). The mobilizing power of visual media across stages of social-mediated protests. Political Communication, 41(4), 531–558.

Zhang, H., & Peng, Y. (2024). Image clustering: An unsupervised approach to categorize visual data in social science research. Sociological Methods and Research, 53(3), 1534–1587.

Sharma, M., & Peng, Y. (2024). How visual aesthetics and calorie density predict food image popularity on Instagram: A computer vision analysis. Health Communication. 39(3), 577–591.

Peng, Y., Wen, T. J., & Yang, J. (2024). A computer vision methodology to predict brand personality from image features. Journal of Advertising. 53(4), 628–638.

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

Warmath, D., Peng, Y., Winterstein, A. P. (2024). “Letter to my future self” as a device for assessing health education effectiveness. Patient Education and Counseling, 123, 108217.

Peng, Y., Yang, T., & Fang, K. (2023). The dark side of entertainment? How viral entertaining media build an attention base for the far-right politics of The Epoch Times. New Media & Society. Advance online publication.

Mukerjee, S., Yang, T., & Peng, Y. (2023). Metrics in action: How social media metrics shape news production on Facebook. Journal of Communication, 73(3), 260–272.

Peng, Y., Lu, Y., & Shen, C. (2023). An agenda for studying credibility perceptions of visual misinformation. Political Communication, 40(2), 225–237.

Peng, Y. (2023). The role of ideological dimensions in shaping acceptance of facial recognition technology and reactions to algorithm bias. Public Understanding of Science, 32(2), 190–207.

Peng, Y. (2022). Athec: A Python library for computational aesthetic analysis of visual media in social science research. Computational Communication Research. 4(1), 323–349.

Peng, Y. (2022). Give me liberty or give me COVID-19: How social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, and libertarianism explain Americans’ reactions to COVID-19. Risk Analysis, 42(12), 2607–2846.

Peng, Y., & Yang, T. (2022). Anatomy of audience duplication networks: How individual characteristics differentially contribute to fragmentation in news consumption and trust. New Media & Society, 24(10), 2270–2290.

Yang, T., & Peng, Y. (2022). The importance of trending topics in the gatekeeping of social media news engagement: A natural experiment on Weibo. Communication Research, 49(7), 994–1015.

Peng, Y. (2022). Politics of COVID-19 vaccine mandates: Left/right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and libertarianism. Personality and Individual Differences, 194, 111661.

Peng, Y. (2021). What makes politicians’ Instagram posts popular? Analyzing social media strategies of candidates and office holders with computer vision. International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(1), 143–166.

Murashka, V., Liu, J, & Peng, Y. (2021). Fitspiration on Instagram: Identifying topic clusters in user comments to posts with objectification features. Health Communication, 36(12), 1537–1548.

Peng, Y. (2020). The ideological divide in public perceptions of self-driving cars. Public Understanding of Science, 29(4), 436–451.

Peng, Y. (2018). Same candidates, different faces: Uncovering media bias in visual portrayals of presidential candidates with computer vision. Journal of Communication, 68(5), 920–941.

Peng, Y., & Jemmott, J. B., III. (2018). Feast for the eyes: Effects of food perceptions and computer vision features on food photo popularity. International Journal of Communication, 12, 313–336.

Kohl, P. A., Kim, S. Y., Peng, Y., Akin, H., Koh, E. J., Howell, A., & Dunwoody, S. (2016). The influence of weight-of-evidence strategies on audience perceptions of (un)certainty when media cover contested science. Public Understanding of Science, 25(8), 976–991.

Peng, Y. (2017). Time travel with one click: Effects of digital filters on perceptions of photographs. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 6000–6011).