Qin Li

Welcome! I am a PFFIE Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri.

As a political communication researcher and a computational social scientist, I combine traditional quantitative methods with computational methods to answer questions on political communication. Specifically, I study how both the information and social environment impact factual beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. In my work, I frequently use and combine various data and methods, including panel surveys, digital trace data, network data, behavioral experiments, geographic data, and text data. In my dissertation, I developed dyadic and triadic online experiments to examine how dyadic trust and network closure impact factual beliefs and (mis)information sharing, providing novel insights on the social contexts of (mis)information exposure. My ongoing research involves developing computational methods to detect identity-based disinformation, leveraging NLP to study extremists’ discourse on race-related issues, dehumanization and stereotypes in traditional media, among others.

My work has been published in Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, PLOS ONE, and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. Check out this page or my Google Scholar profile for more info.

I am affiliated with Political Communication Institute (PCI) and The Media and Diversity Center (MDC) at the University of Missouri, as well as Violence, Ideology, and Extremism (VIEW) Working Group and Computational and Statistical Models group (COSMOS) at The Ohio State.

I obtained my M.A. degree in Communication at Washington State University and a B.A. degree in Journalism at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Prior to the graduate program, I interned as a reporter and a data journalist. You can also find my CV here.

Below you will find my email address and social media accounts. Please reach out to me if you are interested in my work.