Jiaying Liu's primary research interest lies at the intersection of health communication, social psychology, message effects, and computational social science methods. She is particularly interested in understanding the factors and the underlying processes that lead to risky health decision-making, and how communications could be optimally leveraged to promote desirable health behavior changes.
Jiaying liu received her Ph.D. from the Annenberg school for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on health communication, persuasion and social influence, message effects, computational and psychophysiological methods. Her recent research projects include conducting longitudinal analysis on nationally representative survey data to identify factors that predispose youth to cigarette and e-cigarette use; implementing online and eye-tracking experiments to identify persuasive message features and inform campaign formative evaluation; combining crowdsourcing and machine-based textual analysis to annotate large media text corpora; and employing neuroimaging methods to examine the underlying mechanisms of successful and counterproductive communication. Dr. Liu is actively involved in highly collaborative, interdisciplinary work. Her research has been published in leading communication, public health and psychology journals including Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Communication Methods and Measures, Health Communication, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and Psychological Bulletin. She currently serves on the editorial board of health communication as an associate editor. Dr. Liu directs the communication, health, and emerging media laboratory (CHARMlab), and currently serves as the principal investigator on k01 and r21 awards from the national institutes of health. She teaches courses in health communication, persuasion and social influence, message effects, and empirical research methods.
The Communication, Health, and Emerging Media (CHARM) Laboratory
The CHARM lab examines the cognitive, emotional, and social mechanisms underlying communication processes that shape people’s behaviors and health decision-making against the backdrop of the current new media landscape. Employing self-report survey measures, online and eye-tracking lab experiments, computerized textual analysis, and neuroimaging methods, researchers in the lab focus on theory-based persuasive health message design, social media analytics to unveil and track user-generated health discussions, and identifying environmental and individual level factors contributing to health behavior outcomes. CHARM lab looks to identify ways in which communication could be optimally leveraged to promote desirable health behavior changes, especially among vulnerable, marginalized, and underserved groups.
Ph.D. (2017), University of Pennsylvania, Communication