Hi! I am Shengchun, a PhD Candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, affiliated with the Center for Information Networks and Democracy and Penn Human-Computer Interaction Lab. I am currently a visitor of the COSMOS group at The Ohio State University. I will join the School of Journalism at Moody College, UT Austin as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in August 2025.  

My research advances the scholarship on AI-driven media systems and democracy, investigating how AI and algorithms shape users' news behaviors and perceptions in digital media environments and the societal consequences. (1) From the sociotechnical perspective, I examine how algorithmic curation influences news exposure and engagement using computational methods and causal inference; (2) From the sociopsychological perspective, I introduce the concept of Perceptions of Personalized News Environments (PoPs) and test their downstream effects on affective polarization and cross-party dialogue with surveys and experiments. In addition, my research covers social identity groups and platform power. I employ diverse methodologies, blending computational, quantitative, and qualitative social science approaches. 

As an interdisciplinary scholar situated at the intersection of Political Communication, Human-Computer Interaction, and Computational Social Science, I have led peer-reviewed publications in top-tier communication journals such as New Media & Society, Information Communication & Society, Political Communication, and Human-Computer Interaction/Computational Research venues such as ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)  (more news about my work). 

I have served the communication and computational social science fields as an ad hoc reviewer, course instructor, and event organizer (more about my teaching & service). 

Before joining Annenberg, I obtained an M.A. in Journalism and Communication from Tsinghua University and a B.A. in Communication from Renmin University of China. I was also a former journalist, editor, and media specialist (more about my industry experience).