CRSI Lab

Xiaoya Jiang is an assistant professor of computational communication in the Department of Mass Communication, Advertising, and Public Relations. Her research centers on public opinion on societal issues. She uses a variety of methodological perspectives, such as based on data from survey, experiment, and social media platforms, she conducts statistical modeling, machine-learning, time series analysis, and social network analysis to answer research questions. Her studies cover a variety of topics in political, health, and technology related issues.

Qixuan (Cherry) He is the current graduate student lab manager. She is a Master's student in Emerging Media Studies at Boston University. Her research interests lie in stereotyping and emerging media (such as social media and generative AI). Specifically, her research examines how stereotypes are produced, circulated, perceived, and evaluated in mediated environments, and how emerging media dismantle or reinforce the stereotypes that sustain prejudice. Drawing on perspectives from social psychology, political communication, and platform studies, she tries to figure out how information environments might foster greater understanding across social differences.

Zhiyuan Liu is the previous lab manager (2025-2026). His research interests lie at the intersection of political communication, human-computer interaction, and public opinion in digital media environments. Broadly, his work examines how digital technologies shape political information flows, public opinion, political attitudes, and civic participation. He is also interested in how people interact with technology and how digital systems can be designed to better support users. Methodologically, he uses computational methods, experiments, and other empirical approaches to study these questions. Through this work, he aims to use data-driven evidence to address practical communication challenges and contribute to more responsible, human-centered, and socially aware media and AI systems. 

Xiaoke Pu got a Master's degree in Marketing Communication Research at Boston University. Now she is a Ph.D. student in Communication Science and Social Cognition at the University of Maryland. She studys how and why communication effects vary in technology-mediated environments. In particular, she is interested in how technological and social features shape people's perceptions and responses to communication, and why similar mediated experiences can lead to different judgments, psychological responses, and communication behaviors across individuals.

Ruochen (Anastasia) Lyu is interested in technologically mediated relationships between humans and AI agents, with particular attention to how interaction modalities and communication styles of AI companions shape users’ psychological and relational outcomes. Her research examines how human–AI interaction may generate relational harm, including disruptions to offline interpersonal connections and diminished relational capacity. She is also interested in how users recalibrate expectations and trust in response to memory failures, shifts in conversational patterns, and disruptions in interaction rhythms, as well as the conditions under which users pause, continue, or disengage from AI interaction. Through this work, she aims to inform the design of AI companions that balance emotional support with safeguards against misuse and dependency. 

Jiaxin (Jimmy) Liu is a Master's student in Emerging Media Studies at Boston University. His research focuses on public opinion toward emerging technologies, especially how people perceive and respond to innovations such as generative AI, and why attitudes toward the same technology differ across individuals and platforms. He is drawn to computational approaches, combining large-scale social media data with text analysis and network analysis to trace how opinion on technology takes shape and changes over time. He hopes this work can help identify communication strategies that support more informed and constructive public engagement with technological change.

Yu Zhang is a Master's student in Emerging Media Studies at Boston University, with a background in  journalism and communication. She is  broadly interested in AI-generated media, representation, and bias, as well as the relationships between emerging media, human behavior, and society. Her research experience includes quantitative content analysis, critical discourse analysis, and computational approaches to study media.

Batyrkhan Baimukhanov got a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence at Boston University and a researcher with the Communication Research Center. He works on large-scale web scraping and dataset construction for computational analysis of news media. His research interests include reinforcement learning, computer vision, and applied machine learning. Batyrkhan Baimukhanov is a lab affiliate.