Qin Li (李沁)

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

My research lies at the intersection of information integrity, technology, and democracy. Specifically, I focus on information manipulation in the digital media environment, and how media and socio-technical factors contribute to misperceptions. In my work, I frequently 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.

During my time at Mizzou, I am working on the following questions: 1) How do both traditional political and medial channels and online channels work together and contribute to the diffusion of political and politicized mis- and disinformation, and of what impact? 2) What role do social identities play in the construction and engagement of political mis- and disinformation, as well as political discussion online? 3) How does mis- and disinformation create political and societal harms by undermining liberal democracy and upholding structural inequalities? To answer these questions, I draw upon both institutional and micro-level political communication theories and use a variety of quantitative and computational methods, including but not limited to surveys, experiments, social media data, and digital trace data. In doing so, I advance a critical, theoretical approach to misinformation studies and computational political communication research more broadly.

I have published as first and co-authors in flagship communication journals including Journal of Communication and Human Communication Research, as well as general and specialized journals including PLOS ONE and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. Check out this page or my Google Scholar profile for more info.

I am Faculty Research Associate of Political Communication Institute (PCI) and The Media and Diversity Center (MDC) at the University of Missouri, as well as student alumnus of 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 (with a concentration on Information Science and Technology) 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.

I spend my spare time wandering in nature, meditating at yoga studios, getting lost in books (mostly non-fictions because social scientist hoo-ray!), dancing, and sketching. I believe in KINDNESS.