Xiaoya Jiang

Xiaoya Jiang, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of computational communication in the Department of Mass Communication, Advertising, and Public Relations. Her research centers on public opinion on contentious societal issues. It includes assessing public opinion using computational methods, detecting predictors for public opinion, and providing communication strategies to promote pro-social public opinion.

Dr. Jiang uses survey, experiment, news content, and social media data to examine public opinion dynamics with statistical modeling, natural language processing techniques, time series analysis, and social network analysis. She also proposes intervention strategies to shape public opinion based on empirical evidence and grounded in social science theory. Her research has covered topics such as vaccination, immigration, and artificial intelligence.

Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Political Communication, Journal of Health Communication, Health Communication, Social Media + Society, Journal of Medical Internet Research, and Human Communication Research, and presented at conferences including International Communication Association (ICA) and Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). She promotes collaboration in research, emphasizing that bringing together diverse expertise and insights from researchers in communication and in other fields helps advance theory and address real-world communication challenges. In addition to her research, Dr. Jiang teaches courses in communication research methods.