Political Communication

People do not merely respond to the outside world; they recognize, process, and make choices. I am interested in how this psychological process is achieved within media interactions among the sender, carrier, and receiver. This also makes my research different from the prevalent political-communication studies that focus on the content and means of the media. Instead, I focus more on how people respond to them, for instance, what the audience actually feels, understands, and does when they are exposed to a political message from the government. Even the more basic question is still puzzling and intriguing for research, such as who is the audience of state media, political propaganda, ideological arguments, etc, especially in the Chinese media environment.

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Selected Publications

Hu, Yue, Yufei Sun, and Donald Lien. 2022. “The Resistance and Resilience of National Image Building: An Empirical Analysis of Confucius Institute Closures in the U.S.” Chinese Journal of International Politics 15(3): Forthcoming. (Pre-print available here)