Research Projects

I study the collective and communicative practices on social media and how these acts uphold or challenge the dominant narratives, power hierarchies, and hegemonic ideologies, with a specific concentration on race and ethnicity. I operate on an interdisciplinary approach to my research; currently, most of my work investigates online communities and their racial discourses mostly in a computational fashion, but I also enjoy working on my research questions qualitatively and conceptually.

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I have accumulated a rich experience during my previous academic and professional experience. My research mainly focused on library science during my undergradaute study. During my master's program, I conducted numerous independent reserach projects with a focus on tracking, modeling, and understanding online communities using data mining approaches. After my graduation, my jobas a data scientist in non-profit research orginations and universities gave me an unique exposure to social sciences research, such as public health and criminal justice.


Ph.D. Period (2023-Present)
project

Digitized Genome, Detailed Maps, and Dazzling Selfies: Platformed Racial Spectacle and DNA Test Results Image Sharing on Social Media

Ph.D. Student

  • Expatiated the collective practices of image sharing of “direct-to-consumer” (DTC) genetic ancestry tests (GAT) results on social media, specifically the strategic, selective, and structural coupling of DNA charts, ancestry maps, and selfies
  • Proposed the concept of “platformed racial spectacle”, fabricating the mythical connections between race, DNA, bodily traits, and geographies
  • Explicated the emergence and existence of platformed racial spectacle, unfurl its texture and format, and expound its functionality of unification and alteration

    • DNA Tests Resultsr/23andMeSpectacleSelfiesBiological Racism
    project

    Subversive Humor and Platformed Asianness: Resisting West Homogenization and Asian Ultranationalism through Satirical Neologism

    Ph.D. Student

  • Analyzed the neologism created on the subreddit r/2Asia4u, exploring the resistance and identity work performed through satire and mediated by the coining of new lexicons
  • Unveiled the major patterns of neologism creation, elucidating specific morphological processes, their pragmatic use, and the context of online Asian discourses
  • Demonstrated a mixed methods approach to analyzing marginalized group identities work with quantitative networks and qualitative codings

    • Subversive HumorPlatformed AsiannessNeologismLinguistic Analysis
    project

    Locating the Asymmetry in Information Flow between Local and National Media on Transgender Discourses

    Ph.D. Student

  • Analyzed the interplay of national and local news on transgender news by employing a combination of causal inference methods and critical discourse analysis
  • Dected whether, and how, transgender discourses spread across local and national media

    • Intermedia Agenda SettingTransgender IssuesNews EcosystemLocal News
    project

    How Social Responses to Online Hate Messages Affect Hatefulness

    Ph.D. Student

  • Explored the premise that the toxicity of hate messaging is affected by social interactions among social media hate posters
  • Analyzed hateful posts on Gab, and Likes, Dislikes, and written replies from other users that affirmed or negated the original posts

    • Hate SpeechSocial Approval TheoryNeed-Threat TheoryGab
    project

    “Just check OP’s post history”: Does Post History Matter for Online Anti-Social Behaviors?

    Ph.D. Student

  • Theorized the link between post history and Hyperpersonal Communication model and Hypernegative Dynamics with online hate
  • Analyzed the effects of calling out one's post history on the evolution of online communications
  • Tested the potential connections between a callout of one's post history and online anti-social behaviors

    • Post HistoryHyperpersonal CommunicationComputer-mediated CommunicationOnline Anti-socail Behaviors
    project

    Understanding the Roles and Scenarios in Self-Disclosure of Everyday Experiences of Racism on Social Media

    Data Scientist/Ph.D. Student

  • Scraped all historical submissions and comments from r/racism
  • Proposed and developed the framework for systematically characterizing experiences of racism using Construal Level Theory and Agent-Structural framework
  • Conducted in-depth analysis on the content and intention of experiences of racism based on the proposed framework

    • Social MediaComputer Mediated CommunicationThematic AnalysisQualatitive Research
    Post-Master Working Professional Period (2020-2023)
    project

    Neighborhood Racial Composition, Built Environment, and Health Outcomes

    Data Scientist

  • Performed clustering analysis with HDBSCAN and CLARA to discover the groupings of tracts based on the built environment indicators
  • Conducted exploratory factor analysis to identify latent factor structure across all built environment variables
  • Performed multi-level regression and mediation analysis to identify the racial disparities in the built enviornment and to what extent the disparities influence health outcomes

    • Built EnvironmentRacial Disparities in HealthMulti-level RegressionMediation Analysis
    project

    Structural Racism in COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

    Data Scientist

  • Developed and standardized the data wrangling pipeline that scraped data from public-facing websites, converting PDFs to machine-readable tables, formatted and geocoded addresses, and merged it with census data
  • Performed secondary regression diagnostics and developed visualizations for the publication
  • Participated in paper writing and assited with paper revisions and resubmision

    • Structural RacismCOVID-19 VaccineVaccine DistributionRegressionsGeocoding
    project

    The Impact of Active Bystander Training on Officer Confidence and Ability to Address Ethical Challenges

    Research Data Scientist

  • Conducted exploratory data analysis on the survey data responses with Exploratory Factor Analysis and Canonical Correlation in R
  • Generated static and interactive data visualizations in Dash and participated in paper writing

    • Active Bystander TrainingEthical ChallengesInterventionVisual Analytics
    project

    Police Union Contracts and Police Accountability

    Research Data Scientist

  • Supervised the qualitative data collection, including MTurk worker management and double-coding review for 100 cities' police union contracts
  • Performed clustering on the coded documents to identify general patterns of contract items across cities
  • Analyzed the LexisNexis news data to identify the progress of police union contract negotiations with NLP techniques in Python

    • Police Union ContractPolice AccountabilityNLPNews Analysis
    project

    Review of the LAPD Response to First Amendment Assemblies and Protests

    Research Data Scientist

  • Identified policing hotspots and community opinion leaders with spatial-temporal clustering, and tweets analysis and developed interactive dashboards
  • Scraped Twitter data and helped the team to identify key opinion leaders for interviews, and key hashtags during the protests
  • Developed an interactive E-report using ArcGIS Story Map which was later presented to the LA City Council

    • After-action ReviewPolice BrutalitySpatial-temporal ClusteringVisual Analytics
    Master's Period (2018-2020)
    project

    A Picture with A Thousand Words: Understanding the Text-Embedded Images on Pinterest

    Independent Study

  • Scraped 0.5 million random images and their metadata from Pinterest and extracted the texts in images using OCR techniques in Python
  • Constructed Genialized Linear Models (Negative Binominal, Logit) to find the relationship between dominant color, probability of image having texts and the image popularity
  • Built Author-Topic Model to find the topic distribution of the embedded among all categories of images
  • Conducted one-mode projection of bipartite and community detection to discover similar image categories

    • Social MediaComputer Mediated CommunicationText-Image IntergrationBipartite MiningPoint Pattern Analysis
    project

    Friends or Foes: Understanding Communication and Interaction Patterns of Homogenous and Cross-Cutting Spaces in Online Activisms

    Master Thesis

  • Classified the standpoint of tweets and users with N-grams, Doc2Vec, and Word2Vec embeddings using Logistic Regression and Neural Network Classifier
  • Conducted non-parametric significant tests to understand the political homophily, linguistic and argumentative style, and hyperlink usage when users interact with people with different standpoints
  • Mined subgraphs of the network by counting triplets in the graphs and compared them with other simulated graphs like ER graph

    • Social MediaCommunication StructureClassificationSubgrah MiningLinguistic Style Analaysis
    project

    “Musicalization of the Culture”: Is Music Becoming Louder, More Repetitive and Monotonous?

    Independent Research

  • Validated a sociomusicological theory about mainstream music with data mining techniques
  • Collected, wrangled, and merged lyrical and acoustic data from existing music datasets and Spotify’s API
  • Proposed and evaluated novel metrics for repetitiveness measurement using closed itemset mining, improving the previous compression approach of computing lyric repetitiveness
  • Performed Time-Series analysis with trend detection and Time-lagged Cross Correlation (TLCC) analysis

    • Music AnalyticsText MiningTime-Series AnalysisItemset MiningRepetitiveness
    project

    Sleeping Beauties in Music: Predicting Sleeper Hits with Lyrical and Acoustic Features

    Class Teamwork Project

  • Constructed a comprehensive music dataset by scraping, cleaning, and merging data from Spotify API and MetroLyrics and Billboard datasets
  • Proposed a novel metric, 'Beauty Coefficient', to measure the sleeper-hit level of a song using chart data
  • Built a predictive Huber regression model of the sleeper hits using the word embedding features and acoustic data

    • Music AnalyticsText MiningRegressionSleeper HitsVisual Analytics
    project

    When Power Goes Wild Online: How Did A Voluntary Moderator's Abuse of Power Affect an Online Community?

    Independent Research

  • Conducted an event study of an infamous excessive moderation event on Reddit using timeseries analysis with intervention, breakpoint detection, and social network analysis in R
  • Scrapped and cleaned historical posts and comments of subreddit r/xkcd and r/xkcdcomic
  • Connected the data analysis result with sociology theories, such as social movement theories and community choices theories

    • Power AbuseVoluntary ModerationRedditOnline CommunityTime-series AnalysisSocial Network Analysis
    project

    Dumping the Closet Skeletons Online: Exploring the Guilty Information Disclosure Behavior on Social Media

    Independent Research

  • Retrieved, cleansed 225k posts and comments from a forum of Reddit and visualized the topics created with LDA using Python
  • Constructed a thematic model capturing the intents, contents, and interactions of the guilty information sharing behavior on social media with sampled data

    • Guilty Information DisclosureOnline ConfessionRedditPrivacy ParadoxMixed MethodlogySementic ModelLDA
    Undergradaute Period (2014-2018)
    project

    Fortunes on Fingertips: Research on the Online Praying Behaviors on Chinese Social Media,Focusing on the Retweets of “Koi Fish”

    Independent Research

  • Collected, cleansed, and visualized 110k+ social media posts from a Chinese Microblog Website using Python, OpenRefine, and Gephi to investigate the posts spreading pattern, user characters, social network, and text contents
  • Conducted a confirmatory factor analysis using questionnaire responses to explore the incentives of online praying behavior

    • Online PrayingSocial MediaKoi FishMicroblogsStructure Equation ModelSocial Network Analysis
    project

    Research on the Construction of Library Technologies’ Performance Appraisal Index System and Its Empirical Study - From the Perspective of Life Cycle

    Research Assistant

  • Constructed the qualitative and quantitative evaluation indexes for the technologies applied in libraries
  • Explored the theoretical logic, practical difficulties and future paths using artificial intelligence in libraries in China
  • Wrote research proposals for fund application and designed the research roadmap

    • Libraries TechnologiesPerformance AppraisalTechnology Life CycleAI in LibraryTheoretical Research
    project

    Research on the Strategy of Cooperation and Information Resource Sharing among the Public Libraries in Xi'an Serving for Mass Innovation

    Research Assistant

  • Analyzed the data with SPSS Statistics, primarily with Chi-square Test and Rank-sum Test
  • Expatiated the Xi’an citizens’status quo of information need and real-life innovation
  • Proposed suggestions for public libraries to prompt mass innovation based on the data analysis

    • Information NeedPublic LibrariesInformation Resource Sharing
    project

    Research on the Library Service Innovation Based on Social Media Users’ Information Behaviors

    Research Team Leader

  • Investigated on the online service effectiveness of libraries’ WeChat official accounts by conducting a comparative test on information retrieval, browsing, and interaction with 10 representatives
  • Analyzed the strategies on the application of WeChat Mini-Program in libraries using the SWOT-AHP method
  • Explored the user, information, and environment factors influencing information serendipity in the social media with Partial Least Squares Regression (PLS) method

    • Social MediaLibrary ServiceInformation BehaviorSerendipityWeChatSWOT-AHP