Research GRANTS
April 2021
International Communication Association (ICA) 2021 Regional Hub Grant ($2000)
September 2021 - June 2026
UCLA Graduate Fellowship and Assistantship ($297,940)
March 2021 - May 2021
USC Center for International Studies Research Assistantship ($2000)
July 2020 - August 2020
HKBU Department of Education Research Assistantship ($1000)
AWARDS & Honors
August 2021
2021 AEJMC Annual Conference Master's AWARD
September 2021 - June 2026
2021 AEJMC Annual Conference, Political Communication Division, Third Place Student Paper
2015 - 2018
USC Marshall Dean’s List
Research Experiences
August 2020 - Present
Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Media Lab, Boston University
Principal Investigator: Dr Lei Guo, BU
Project: Communicating Covid-19, methodology research on LDA topic modeling and news framing
Designed a stable scraping method that overcame data dehiciency and copywrite issues encountered in the existing news archives, as well as scraping tools for team to get articles from 40+ news websites
Modihied an LDA model for underrepresented Ugandan coverage, optimizing topic analysis in this context by adding religion, law and justice, and international aid to Africa as sub-topics to the worldwide topic list
Collaborated with a Ugandan coder to complete an intercoder reliability test for content analysis, coded 100 stratihied news samples and conducted content analysis of 1,000 news samples to prepare a training dataset for Ugandan news framing annotation
Conducted news framing research as part of developing a framing element detection tool in collaboration with the computer science and communication faculties
April 2020 - Present
Education Department, Hong Kong Baptist University
Principal Investigator: Dr Wai-Chi Chee, HKBU
Project: Understanding the sociopolitical participation of ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong
Funder: Public Policy Research (PPR) Funding Scheme under Hong Kong Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office (PICO), (ID: SR2020.A2.013)
Performed in-depth qualitative analysis based on 15-hour interviews and 140+ pages of transcripts to investigate the barriers and facilitators of ethnic minority (EM) youth, the roles they take up, and potential policy solutions to enhance their participation
Analyzed interviews using an anthropology framework of theme coding based on parent- and sub-level nodes, improving the efhiciency of analysis by employing matrix coding in NVivo
Led a comprehensive survey design by comparing six political engagement scales and selecting three relevant scales for measuring the political perceptions, behaviors and aspirations of EM youth
Handled the full quantitative analysis of the survey dataset by applying multiple regression models, composite analysis, ANOVA, and t-tests to complement our interview analysis
Project: Understanding the barrier and facilitators of first-generation university students of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong (research proposal and funding application)
Proposal submitted to PPR Funding Scheme under Hong Kong PICO
Drafted the 15-page research proposal and adopted a mixed method approach by utilizing policy analysis, interviews, and surveys, framing research to investigate the dual marginalization faced by these students due to their ethnic identities and low socioeconomic status in Hong Kong
Adopted a “success-factor” model by viewing the ethnic identities as cultural capital instead of as a barrier, advocating for more effective policy design and policy implementation at three levels of educational practices (government, institution and classroom) for EM students in Hong Kong
April 2020 - July 2020
Whitehead Communication
Data Scientist & Communication Researcher
Utilized Python intensively to scrape from multiple social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Google Play, and 40+ Ugandan newspaper websites to cover different data dimensions;
Implemented six natural language processing (NLP) models, including sentiment analysis, LDA topic modeling, word2vec text categorization, K-means clustering, to perform multiple NLP analysis on time series Facebook and Twitter data and enrich our data dimensions;
Produced network analysis and Python tutorials in both written and video versions and held webinars to teach our team using Gephi for advanced data analysis and visualization.
White paper: Topic Modeling of Covid-19 Media Coverage in Uganda
Developed an optimal LDA model by looping through a different set of parameters and topic numbers from 15 to 22, and used this model to conduct topic analysis for online news under the Ugandan context;
Published a white paper of Covid-19 news coverages in Uganda with the founder Anne Whitehead
July 2019 - January 2020
National Natural Science Foundation of China (ID:71573074)
Project: The Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) on Acquires’ Capital Structures: Empirical Research Based on Industries, Regions, and Company Natures
Combined and cleaned 69,374 financial transactions and 6,099 companies’ data using Python with positive outcomes and increased empirical results accuracy by 38%;
Adopted difference-in-difference (DID) based on literature review to test short-term M&A effects, independently designed dynamic DID models through STATA to test longitudinal and time-lag effects;
Developed original STATA script instruction code for preliminary results based on multiple econometric models, improved STATA execution efficiency by 60%;
Led a junior research assistant to export 234 analyzable results tables, categorizing into different industries, regions, and company natures to improve the robustness of results.