Xinyue (Selene) Zhang
I am a graduate student jointly trained at Tsinghua University (M.A. in Communication Data Science) and the University of Southern California (M.S. in Data Science). I study misinformation, focusing on how it is produced, why it spreads, and what happens when AI systems try to contain it.
My current work sits at the intersection of misinformation research, AI-mediated communication, and computational social science. I ask questions like: Why do otherwise careful people share things they suspect are not true? When an LLM moderates speech, whose harms does it overlook? What features of false claims, such as moral language, coalitional cues, and narrative framing, make them travel further than accurate ones?
To answer these, I combine large-scale computational text analysis (LLM-as-judge, RAG pipelines, topic modeling), experimental and survey designs, and machine learning for social inference. A secondary line of my work brings these tools to health risk communication, particularly around adolescent and college-student well-being.
Selected Highlights
- 🏆 ICA 2026 Top Student Paper, Science Communication Division — When Morality Kidnaps Science
- 📄 Forthcoming in Mass Communication and Society (SSCI Q1)
- 🎤 Two papers accepted at ICA 2026 (Science Communication & Computational Methods)
- 🎓 GPA 4.00/4.00 at both Tsinghua (ranked 1/114) and USC
Research Interests
- Misinformation, fact-checking, and moral psychology
- AI-mediated communication and LLM-based content governance
- Computational social science and large-scale text analysis
- Health risk communication
Education
- M.S. in Data Science, University of Southern California (2025 – 2026, expected) · GPA 4.00/4.00
- M.A. in Communication Data Science, Tsinghua University (2024 – 2027, expected) · Dual degree with USC · GPA 4.00/4.00, ranked 1/114
- B.A. in Communication, Wuhan University (2020 – 2024) · Outstanding Graduate
Beyond Research
When I’m not writing papers, you’ll most likely find me in the kitchen. I’m a devoted home cook who takes Chinese cuisine seriously and has a growing love for Western pastries. Hiking is how I recharge — there’s nothing like a long trail to clear a cluttered mind. I’m also an enthusiastic runner of TV marathons and a dedicated K-pop fan who occasionally dances along. My most loyal companion through all of this is my miniature schnauzer, who has strong opinions about my screen time.