About

Kaiping Chen is an Associate Professor of Computational Communication in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. Her academic affiliations include the Data Science Institute, the Department of Political Science, the Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the Center for East Asian Studies, the African Studies Program, the Wisconsin Energy Institute, the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Institute for Diversity Science. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on social media analytics and science communication research methods, including those within the Science Communication Ph.D. program. Her research focuses on deliberative democracy and computational social science, advancing theories in communication, political science, and computer and information sciences. Her work addresses societal challenges related to public engagement with science and technology, exploring sociopolitical mechanisms that drive inequities in science and technology communication and investigating how deliberation technologies can empower communities to participate more fully in civic life. Her research has been published in leading journals such as the American Political Science Review, Journal of Communication, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She has received several awards, including the Best Dissertation in Political Communication Award from the National Communication Association and the Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article of the Year Award from the International Communication Association. Chen has been selected to serve in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's New Voices Program (2026-2028) and her work has been supported by prominent organizations including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Beyond academia, she has collaborated with local governments and community organizations in the U.S. and China to pilot innovative public engagement strategies, and her work has been featured by various media outlets. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, a Master of Public Administration from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Law from Fudan University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Media studies
• Literature
• Medicine
• Law
• Psychology
• Art

Selected publications

• Refusal as silence: Gendered disparities in Vision-Language Model responses

  New Media & Society · 2026-05-04

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Refusal behavior by Large Language Models (LLMs) is increasingly visible in content moderation, yet little is known about how refusals vary by the identity of the user making the request. This study investigates refusal as a sociotechnical outcome through a counterfactual persona design. Focusing on a Vision-Language Model (GPT-4V), we examine how gendered persona in prompts influence refusal in binary gender classification tasks. We vary gender identity across male, female, non-binary, and transgender personas while keeping the classification task and visual input constant. We find that transgender and non-binary personas experience significantly higher refusal rates, even in non-harmful contexts. Our findings also provide methodological implications for equity audits using LLMs. We underscore the importance of modeling identity-driven disparities and caution against uncritical use of artificial intelligence systems for content coding. This study advances algorithmic fairness by reframing refusal as a communicative act that may unevenly regulate epistemic access and participation.

  PublisherDOI

• Seeing Like a Community: Public Perceptions of Data Use in Government

  2026-04-13 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Between creative identity performance and constrictive empowerment: case studies of women of color as STEM content creators on social media

  Feminist Media Studies · 2026-02-11

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• How collective narcissism became contagious in public conversations of “Stop the Steal” on Twitter

  New Media & Society · 2025-09-06 · 2 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Following the end of the Cold War, the rise of democracy and globalization fostered optimism about global cooperation and economic integration but also sparked debates on equity, leading to challenges such as economic disparities, cultural displacement, and populist movements. Collective narcissism, a concept introduced to understand self-identity and politics amid perceived threats to status, describes beliefs that the in-group is exceptional but lacks external recognition and is associated with adverse outcomes. Drawing from the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects, this study investigates collective narcissism expressions on social media, focusing on the “Stop the Steal” movement after the 2020 US Presidential Election. Analyzing 11,836 original posts and their conversation threads, we studied the nature of collective narcissistic expression and its contagion effects. Results highlight national identity as a central theme, showing that such expressions spread through increased user engagement and are contagious from original posts to replies.

  PublisherDOI

• Constructing Vec-tionaries to Extract Message Features from Texts: A Case Study of Moral Content

  Political Analysis · 2025-04-11 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract While researchers often study message features like moral content in text, such as party manifestos and social media posts, their quantification remains a challenge. Conventional human coding struggles with scalability and intercoder reliability. While dictionary-based methods are cost-effective and computationally efficient, they often lack contextual sensitivity and are limited by the vocabularies developed for the original applications. In this paper, we present an approach to construct “vec-tionaries” that boost validated dictionaries with word embeddings through nonlinear optimization. By harnessing semantic relationships encoded by embeddings, vec-tionaries improve the measurement of message features from text, especially those in short format, by expanding the applicability of original vocabularies to other contexts. Importantly, a vec-tionary can produce additional metrics to capture the valence and ambivalence of a message feature beyond its strength in texts. Using moral content in tweets as a case study, we illustrate the steps to construct the moral foundations vec-tionary, showcasing its ability to process texts missed by conventional dictionaries and to produce measurements better aligned with crowdsourced human assessments. Furthermore, additional metrics from the vec-tionary unveiled unique insights that facilitated predicting downstream outcomes such as message retransmission.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Voice and Value: How Elected Officials Evaluate Online and Offline Constituent Feedback

  Public Opinion Quarterly · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  article

  Abstract Social media has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via low-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local US policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our findings indicate that online communication presents a double-edged sword: while it lowers the effort needed for constituents to communicate, officials discount information conveyed through social media. We examine this trade-off using an embedded conjoint experiment. Our results suggest that a social media message would have to be sent by more than 47 constituents for it to exceed the value of a single face-to-face meeting. These findings illustrate that, all else equal, in-person meetings likely remain the most persuasive form of grassroots communication. However, using social media can be an effective choice to the extent that it facilitates a large increase in overall levels of constituent engagement.

  PublisherDOI

• Constructing Vec-tionaries to Extract Message Features from Texts: A Case Study of Moral Content - ERRATUM

  Political Analysis · 2025-05-02

  erratumOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Communicating Scientific Norms in the Hybrid Media Environment: A Mixed-Method Analysis of Social Media Engagement With Watchdog Science Journalism

  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly · 2025-04-26 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Hybrid media systems have reconfigured online journalism and mass communication such that people can engage more easily in multi-directional discourse about the norms of science. We investigate this reconfiguration with a mixed-methods study of the X page of “Retraction Watch,” which produces hybrid “watchdog science journalism” on violations of scientific norms. Results show that Retraction Watch’s X is not necessarily an inclusive forum for open debate about scientific norms. We also find that Retraction Watch prioritizes aspects that may not resonate with its audience. This has implications for how science communicators and journalists approach (hybrid) debate about scientific norms.

  PublisherDOI

• Ubiquitous News Coverage and Its Varied Effects in Communicating Protective Behaviors to American Adults in Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Time-Series and Longitudinal Panel Study

  Journal of Medical Internet Research · 2024-12-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Effective communication is essential for promoting preventive behaviors during infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19. While consistent news can better inform the public about these health behaviors, the public may not adopt them. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explore the role of different media platforms in shaping public discourse on preventive measures to infectious diseases such as quarantine and vaccination, and how media exposure influences individuals' intentions to adopt these behaviors in the United States. METHODS: This study uses data from 3 selected top national newspapers in the United States, Twitter discussions, and a US nationwide longitudinal panel survey from February 2020 to April 2021. We used the Intermedia Agenda-Setting Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to develop the theoretical framework. RESULTS: =44.46; P<.001 for Twitter). Exposure to media coverage increased individuals' perceived benefits of certain behaviors like vaccination but did not necessarily translate into behavioral adoption. For example, while individuals' media exposure increased perceived benefits of mask-wearing (β=.057; P<.001 for household benefits; β=.049; P<.001 for community benefits), it was not consistently linked to higher intentions to wear masks (β=-.026; P=.04). CONCLUSIONS: This study integrates media flow across platforms with US national panel survey data, offering a comprehensive view of communication dynamics during the early stage of an infectious disease outbreak. The findings caution against a one-size-fits-all approach in communicating different preventive behaviors, especially where individual and community benefits may not always align.

  PublisherDOI

• Between Innovation and Standardization: Best Practices and Inclusive Guidelines in Computational Communication Science

  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly · 2024-12-08 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Computational communication science is transitioning from an emerging to an established field within communication research, creating a need for proper guidelines and methodological standards. This forum gathers experienced computational communication science scholars to debate the merits and drawbacks of standardization and discuss the tension between innovation, rigor, and inclusion. The assembled perspectives review current standards for data collection, sharing, and documentation, offering best practices for future research. They argue that high standards and inclusive practices can coexist, enhancing creativity and accessibility. By adopting inclusive guidelines, the computational communication science community can welcome diverse scholars, foster innovation, and advance the field collectively.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Anqi Shao

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  8 shared

• Anfan Chen

  Hong Kong Baptist University

  7 shared

• Jingbo Meng

  The Ohio State University

  6 shared

• Sang Jung Kim

  University of Iowa

  5 shared

• Cuihua Shen

  University of California, Davis

  5 shared

• Zening Duan

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  4 shared

• Sunny Xinchun Niu

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  4 shared

• Liu He-qing

  Fudan University

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Best Dissertation in Political Communication Award from the…
• Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article of the Yea…
• Early Career Woman Scholar Award from the Association for Ed…
• Selected among 20 mid-career scientists in the U.S. to serve…