1

Lindsay Gelman
12/5/20
STC
SURE Grant

Description of the overall project

In almost every election found in the United States, campaigning is an essential part of

our democracy and political process, which gives the electorate an opportunity to look into the

candidates’ policies, their political stances, and the proposed political agenda for their term

(Nwachukwu, 2020). Political campaigns may take different formats and involve various kinds of

activities. This project chooses to study one critical component commonly found in political

campaigns via media – campaign advertising. Campaign advertisements or otherwise known as

political advertising are defined as “information or materials, other than nonpaid social media

messages, that are mailed, e-mailed, posted, distributed, published, displayed, delivered,

broadcasted or placed in a communication medium and that are for the purpose of influencing

an election” (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020). They serve the functions of

visualizing and dramatizing political candidates, parties, or ideas, spreading the ideals of

candidates, and providing messages of supporting candidates and attacking the opponents

(Kaid, 2012). Over the time, the primary delivery methods of political campaign advertising have

evolved from print brochures and posters in early days, to soundbites and commercials through

radio and television broadcasting, and now to various kinds of online and interactive media,

such as websites and social media (Kaid, 2012).

The 2020 Presidential Election is by far the most expensive election in history

(Goldmacher, 2020). It also sets the new record for social media ad spending, with $107 million

from Donald J. Trump’s campaign and $94 million from Joe Biden’s campaign on their

respective Facebook ads since January 2019 (Leigh, 2020). Political advertising on Facebook
 2

has been part of presidential candidates’ campaign strategies during the past several election

cycles (Swant, 2020). In these campaigns, Facebook have been playing important roles in

facilitating political participation and encouraging connections between voters and candidates

(Bode et al., 2014). For example, since the primaries of 2008 presidential election, almost all

frontrunners have used Facebook pages showcasing their candidacy (Porsmita, 2016).

Facebook has also been used to Donald J. Trump’s advantage and deemed as one of the

critical factors contributing to his victory in the 2016 presidential election (Brym et al., 2019).

As one of the most popular social media, Facebook has been used by over 79% of U.S.

adults (Kreiss & McGregor, 2017) and serves as the news source for 45% of Americans

(Shearer & Gottfried, 2017). Given its wide reach, Facebook has increasingly become the focus

of political campaigns and been deemed crucial to winning an election (Levy et al., 2020). In the

2020 presidential election, Facebook has played an even bigger role than ever, with candidates

not being able to do as many in-person events due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Since

the announcement of their candidacies, Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden have paid for over

300,000 and 58,000 ads respectively on Facebook (Facebook Ad Library, 2020). Facebook has

thus served as a targeted platform for both candidates to reach voters. Despite the increased

use of social media for political campaign purposes, different communication strategies adopted

by presidential candidates in social media ads are yet to be further studied (Porsmita, 2016).

Therefore, this project decides to choose Facebook as the context to compare the

communication strategies used in the campaign ads of Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden in the

2020 U.S. election.

Election is a choice between competing candidates (Benoit, 2000) with voting as a

“comparative act” (Beniot, 2019, p.8). The primary purpose of political campaign ads is to

distinguish a candidate from the opponent(s). To achieve this aim, campaign ads may adopt

different discourse strategies to persuade voters, which could be examined through the lens of
 3

the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse (Benoit, 1999). Following this theory,

political campaigns may create preferability of a candidate through three primary functions:

acclaim (i.e., presenting positive statement about oneself), attack (i.e., criticizing the opponent),

and defense (i.e., refuting the attacks from the opponent) (Beniot, 2019). Depending on the

candidate and the goals of image building, campaign ads may vary in the specific type of

function to use and the degree of usage, meaning whether they choose to run more ads that

praise the candidate, defend the candidate, or attack the opponent. According to Functional

Theory, candidates who are losing in the polls are more likely to run ads attacking other

candidates rather than ads praising themselves (Benoit, 2019). Guided by this theory, the first

question to be answered by this study is as follows.

RQ1. How do Donald J. Trump’s Facebook campaign ads differ from those of Joe

Biden’s in terms of campaign discourse functions (i.e., acclaim, attack, and defense)?

In order to deliver the specific functional discourse, different persuasive strategies could

be used to further differentiate between candidates. This study will focus on two specific ways of

persuasion: creative expression and narrative. One salient aspect of creative expression is

visual rhetoric – the adopt of images and icons that convey symbolic meanings, which has been

often adopted in political campaigns to portray candidates differently (Schill, 2012). For

example, the image with a bald eagle could symbolize freedom, dominance, dignity, or bravery.

In addition, different camera angles and character postures featured in video and picture ads

can also convey different messages that a candidate tries to put out for voters (Dahmen, 2020).

For example, shooting from a low angle with the person standing right in front of the camera

could build a powerful look, which is deemed more favorable from a voter perspective (Dahmen,

2020).

Narrative of a message is often communicated in the forms of storytelling (Vafeiadis et

al., 2018). Compared to rhetorical messages, the persuasion intention of narratives is less
 4

obvious (Green & Brock, 2005). Therefore, narratives are less likely to elicit reactance or

counter-arguing and are more effective in political communication (Vafeiadis et al., 2018).

Common narratives used in framing campaigns have been identified as autobiography (e.g.,

candidates’ personal account of their lives), voter stories (e.g., storylines about voters and voter

concerns), and testimonials (e.g., formal statements testifying to the character, qualification, or

evidence of success with the candidate) (Vafeiadis et al., 2018). These narratives could be used

to support different discourse functions in campaign ads. In order to further examine how

different types of creative expression and narratives are used in campaign ads to achieve

different discourse functions desired by the two presidential candidates, we propose the

following additional research questions.

RQ2. How do Facebook campaign ads with different discourse functions vary in the use

of a) creative expression and b) narrative?

RQ3. How do the strategies examined in RQ2 differ between the Facebook campaign

ads of Donald J. Trump and those of Joe Biden?

Method
To answer the proposed question, I will conduct a content analysis on the campaign ads

placed on Facebook by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and Biden for President, Inc. These

two advertisers have served as the official campaign organizations for the two candidates and

are fully regulated by the Federal Election Commission. Their uses of campaign funds are also

required to be public (Federal Election Commission). The sampling period for the Facebook ads

from these two organizations will be between June 5th, 2020 and November 2nd, 2020. June

5th, 2020 is chosen as the starting time because it was the date when Joe Biden had secured

the number of delegates needed to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination (NPR),

after which his campaign strategy shifted from showcasing the qualification to secure the
 5

Democratic nomination to showcasing him as the right candidate to be the president. November

2nd, 2020 was chosen as the ending date because it was the day before Election Day 2020,

marking the end of election campaign. That was also when Facebook stopped collecting and

archiving political campaign ads posted by both candidates. An initial exploration of the

Facebook Ad Library revealed that this was also the period when both candidates placed more

Facebook ads compared to the earlier phases of campaign, with each paid for hundreds of

Facebook ads. The sample of this study will thus include all the campaign ads paid by both

organizations during this period. Both the ads with short videos and the ads with still images will

be included in the sample for content coding.

Based on the literature review, I intend to focus on the following coding categories when

content analyzing the campaign ads: overall discourse function of the ad (e.g., acclaim, attack,

and defense), creative expression adopted by the ad (e.g., use of camera, symbols, and icons,

posture of candidate, and emotional appeal), type of narrative(s) used in the ad (e.g.,

autobiography, voter story, testimonial, endorsement, etc.), and type of media included (e.g.,

video or image, and illustration type). I will work with Dr. Xu to further develop these coding

categories and add additional measures if necessary, in the spring of 2021.

This project will help us better understand the important role of social media ads in

presidential election campaigns and shed light on the common persuasion strategies adopted

by advertisers in contemporary political communication. It will also inform communication

professionals to develop more effective campaign messages on social media in the future.
 6

References
Benoit, W. L. (1999). Seeing spots: A functional analysis of presidential television

advertisements, 1952-1996. Praeger.

Benoit, W. L., Blaney, J. R., & Pier, P. M. (2000). Acclaiming, attacking, and defending: A

functional analysis of U.S. nominating convention keynote speeches. Political

Communication, 17(1), 61–84.

Benoit, W. L. (2019). A functional analysis of visual and verbal symbols in presidential campaign

posters, 1828–2012. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 49, 4-22.

Brym, R., Slavina, A., Todosijevic, M., Cowan, D. (2018). Social movement horizontality in the

internet age? A critique of Castells in light of the Trump victory. Canadian Review of

Sociology, 55(4), 624-634.

Bode, L., Vraga, E. K., Borah, P., & Shah, D. V. (2014). A new space for political behavior:

Political social networking and its democratic consequences. Journal of Computer-

Media, 19(3), 414–429.

Dahmen, N. S. (2020). Behavior notwithstanding: Person perception and news photographs of

the two leading candidates in the 2016 presidential election. Newspaper Research

Journal, 41(2), 146–159.

Facebook Ad Library. (2020). Advertising data by date range: Spending by advertiser May 7,

2018-December 2, 2020. Facebook Ad Library Report.

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/?country=US&source=archive-

landingpage&campaign_tracker_active_toggle=bar_graph
 7

Goldmacher, S. (2020, October 28). The 2020 Campaign is the most expensive ever (by a lot.

The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/us/politics/2020-

racemoney.html

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public

narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721.

Kaid, L. (2012). Political advertising as political marketing: A retro-forward perspective. Journal

of Political Marketing, 11(1-2), 29-53.

Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S. C. (2017). Technology firms shape political communication: The

work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google with campaigns during the 2016 U.S.

presidential cycle. Political Communication, 35, 155–177.

Leigh, D. (2020, October 29). Presidential campaigns set new records for social media ad

spending. ABC7 Los Angeles. https://abc7.com/presidential-race-campaign-

spendingtrump-political-ads-biden/7452228/

Levy, A., Rodriguez, S., Graham, M. (2020, October 8). Why political campaigns are flooding

Facebook with ad dollars. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/08/trump-biden-

pacsspend-big-on-facebook-as-election-nears.html

National Conference of State Legislatures. (2020, August 31). Digital political ads.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/digital-political-ads.aspx

Nwachukwu, E. (2020). Political public relations agenda-building: A content analysis of the US

2016 presidential campaign speeches, tweets and news stories (Doctoral dissertation).

https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1749/

Porsmita, B. (2016). Political Facebook use: Campaign strategies used in 2008 and 2012

presidential elections. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 13(4), 326-338.

 8

Schill, D. (2012). The visual image and the political image: A review of visual communication

research in the field of political communication. Review of Communication, 12(2),

118142.

Shearer, E., & Gottfried, J. (2017, September 7). News use across social media platforms in

2017. Pew Research Center - Journalism & Media.

https://www.journalism.org/2017/09/07/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2017/

Swant, M. (2020, November 2). What Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s Facebook ads reveal

about their campaign strategies. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2020/11/02/what-joe-bidens-and-

donaldtrumps-facebook-ads-reveal-about-their-campaign-strategies/

Vafeiadis, M., Li, R., & Shen, F. (2018). Narratives in political advertising: An analysis of the

political advertisements in the 2014 midterm elections. Journal of Broadcasting &

Electronic Media, 62(2), 354-370.

C. Explanation of project advancement since last university funding or project approval.

C Project Advancement

This project uses the popular social media app Facebook as the context to compare the

communication strategies used in the campaign ads of Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden in the

2020  U.S. election. Our project seeks to focus on two specific ways of persuasion: creative

expression and narrative. One salient aspect of creative expression is visual rhetoric – the

adoption of images and icons that convey symbolic meanings, which has been often adopted in

political campaigns to portray candidates differently. I intend to focus on the following coding

categories when content analyzing the campaign ads: overall discourse function of the ad  (e.g.,

acclaim, attack, and defense), creative expression adopted by the ad (e.g., use of camera,

symbols, and icons, posture of candidate, and emotional appeal), type of narrative(s) used in the
 9

ad (e.g., autobiography, voter story, testimonial, endorsement, etc.), and type of media included

(e.g., video or image, and illustration type).

Since we started our project, we have chosen the median we will collect the data from which is

Facebook Ad. Facebook Ad is a public library that store all ads that Facebook runs along with the

analytics collected on the ad. Right now we have concluded that there is 613,973 ads run by

Donald J. Trump and 108,025 ads run by Joe Biden in the Facebook Ad Library.

We recently received funding for pur project for the SURE undergraduate research experience.

We plan to use the funds on different program to scrape the data and gather specific analytics on

where the ad was targeted to.

Since our project was funded, I have signed up for Facebook API and am in the process of

getting approved to begin analyzing the data. We have also started collecting literature that will

give us more of a framework when anaylzing the data.

If receiving the grant, we would use the money for more programs to scrape the data. We are

pirmarly using Facebook API, but would use the money to find outside help (I am not sure what

to put for this).

D. Description of the specific responsibilities of the student

Lindsay’s main roles in this project will include reviewing additional relevant literature,

finalizing research questions, curating Facebook campaign ads placed by the two presidential

candidates, developing coding scheme and the codebook for content analysis, analyzing the
 10

coded data, and writing a research paper about it. We plan to start the project in Spring 2021

when Lindsay will register for 2-4 credits of COM499v

E. Description of the educational benefits for the

student
The educational benefits of studying the election campaign ads from a communication

standpoint are endless to me. Social media have been integrated into political campaigns for

the past few presidential election cycles. They have played an even bigger role during this

past election. Many people drew their conclusions of presidential candidates and made voting

decisions based on what they read on Facebook or Twitter. As a person who grew up in the

age of the internet with more focused media attention on politics, I have always been curious

to know more about social media marketing and its role in elections and democratic process.

I remember that I was shocked about the outcome of the 2016 election. Whether I supported

him or not, Donald Trump was not the projected winner at any moment during the election

cycle. I remember asking my dad, someone who works as a lobbyist in D.C., for answers.

Even as someone who had spent years working at the Hill, he was also shocked at the results

of that election. I later learned that one of the biggest factors that led to Donald J. Trump’s

victory was his utilization of social media. He used persuasive strategies through his infamous

Twitter account, Facebook ads, and various other social media ads that microtargeted to

specific swing states. The 2016 Election led me to realize the power of social media in political

campaigns. It made me really curious about how candidates use social media platforms, like

Facebook, to attract voters. This project will help me understand how they implement various

persuasive strategies on social media for their campaigns and how to oversee a social media

political campaign successfully.

 11

As a Political Science and Strategic Communications double major, I have been always

interested in the communication aspect of political campaign. This semester, I have learned how

to create multimedia content like graphics and websites in the Creating Multimedia Content

class, while being exposed to the different theories of government and elections in my

Comparative Government class. This SURE project will provide me a dedicated period of time

to delve deeply into the intersection of my two areas of interests without having to worry about

other things simultaneously. After graduating from Elon University, I plan to pursue a career in

the political campaign world and dream of someday running the first woman president’s

campaign. This undergraduate research experience is not a resume filler for me. I am genuinely

interested in the concepts to be examined in this project and believe this project has profound

implications for my future professional career. The research process and the findings that I will

learn through this project could also inform my future practices in political communication.

F. Description of the planned mentoring relationship

(e.g., planned contacts etc.)
Lindsay and I plan to meet 2-3 times per week during Week 1 and 2 of this project.

During this period, we will work together on operationalizing concepts and developing

measurable variables. In addition, I will mentor Lindsay on the basics of quantitative content

analysis by developing initial coding schemes and pretesting these coding schemes.

During Week 3, we plan to meet twice to refine the coding scheme based on pretesting and

finalize the codebook for actual ad coding. In the process of establishing acceptable

intercoder reliability, we will code the same ads independently and then continue to train

each other about the coding scheme until the coefficient reaches a satisfactory level.
 12

During Week 4 and 5, I will be at Lindsay’s disposal, helping whenever needed to

complete the desired objectives in data cleaning and ad coding. We will have 1-2 shorter

meetings per week to check the progress.

When coding is done, we would meet 2-3 times during Week 6 and 7. Each of these

meetings is going to be relatively longer so that we would have enough time to fully explore the

data. I will provide statistic knowledge support and train Lindsay to analyze data, as well as

guiding her to interpret analysis results.

During the last week (Week 8), I will work with Lindsay to interpret results and prepare

for SURE presentation. Enough time will be set aside for Lindsay to write draft summary of

findings and create the draft of poster. The two meetings for this week will focus on discussing

the drafts and making revisions.

G. Description of any special circumstances with

details
NA

H. Description of how the student will engage with the intellectual on- or off-campus

life/research community during SURE (written by the student and mentor).

Lindsay plans to actively participate in all SURE luncheons and poster sessions and

looks forward to sharing her research with the other SURE participants. She intends to attend

the Resume Information Session and Workshop offered by SPDC and the Writing Center’s

Workshops on Personal Statement, Poster, and Elevator Speech. If there will be any other

activities for or organized by this SURE cohort, she is more than happy to be part of them as

well. Although she has no plan to pursue graduate school immediately after graduation, she

might attend GRE session to just get to know what it is about.

I.
 13

J. Biographical sketch of the mentor, including information specifically oriented to

the proposed research.

The 4-page research CV of the mentor is included on the next page.

 1

Qian Xu
Associate Professor of Strategic
Communications School of Communications
ELON UNIVERSITY

Appointments
8/2017 – present: Associate Director of Undergraduate Research Program, Elon University
8/2016 – present: Associate Professor (tenured), School of Communications, Elon University
8/2010 – 7/2016: Assistant Professor, School of Communications, Elon University

Education
2010 Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D. in Mass Communications
2005 Nanjing University (China), M.A. in Journalism
2004 Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese & American Studies,
Graduate Certificate in International Studies
2002 Nanjing University (China), B.A. in Journalism

Main Research Areas

• Social and psychological impact of media technology
• Persuasion through social media and interactive media
• Online information processing

Recent Experience with Mentoring Undergraduate

Research (UR)

Primary Mentor
Student Project Topic Type of Outcome
Name UR
Brianna Representation of women in hip- Honors NCUR submission (under review);
Edwards hop lyrics before and during the Thesis AEJMC Midwinter conference
(’20) Me Too movement submission (under review)
Bryan Effects of live tweeting on user SURE NCUR presentation; BEA Research
 2

Anderson engagement: A content analysis Symposium (regular session)

(’18) of premium sporting events presentation; 1 article publication in Elon
Journal of Undergraduate Research in
Communications; 1 chapter published in
the book The golden age of data: Media
analytics in study and practices; Provost
Scholar
Rachyl Self-management and peer COM499 2nd place in Student Paper Competition at
Jackson support in Type 1 and Type 2 the BEA Research Symposium; 1 article
(’18) diabetes online communities publication in Elon Journal of
Undergraduate Research in
Communications; 1 chapter published in
the book The golden age of data: Media
analytics in study and practices
Kimberly User experience of All That JAS COM499 20-page report for the client
Temlak website: An eye-tracking (This is a client-based applied research
(’16) usability test project.)

Secondary Mentor
Ashleigh A semantic network analysis of COM499 NCUR submission (under review)
Afromsky media analytics job postings
(’22)

Course-Based UR
COM495 Great Ideas: Issues and Research (Fall 2016). Two out of 14 students’ research
papers (Jordan Fusco ’17 & Elizabeth Bohjalian ’17) were selected to publish in the Elon
Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications.

Honors Thesis Committee Member

McKenzie Miller (’20), Erasure and representation of bisexuality in Fall 2019 scripted
comedies on
ABC
Anna Cosentino (’19), Using geolocated Twitter sentiment to advise municipal decision
making
Anna Zwingelberg’s (’18), Perceiving the black box: Understanding trust in algorithms
Gabrielle Corner (’17), How complexity-induced construal affects the perception of
advertising messages
 3

Cameron Jackson (’17), The natural hair journey: Social media communities on YouTube
and the promotion of natural hair acceptance among black, female college students

Recent Publications (since 2016)

Journal Articles
Chen, S., Zhou, L., Song, Y., Xu, Q., Wang, P., Wang, K., Ge, Y., & Janies, D. (in press).
Comparison of viral COVID-19 Sina Weibo and Twitter Contents: A novel feature extraction
and analytical workflow. Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Safarnejad, L., Xu, Q., Ge, Y., & Chen, S. (in press). A multiple feature category data mining
and machine learning approach to characterize and detect health misinformation on social
media. IEEE Internet Computing.

Xu, Q., Song, Y., Yu, N., & Chen, S. (in press). Are you passing along something true or
false? Dissemination of social media messages about genetically modified organisms. Public
Understanding of Science.

Safarnejad, L., Xu, Q., Ge, Y., Krishnan, S., Bagarvathi, A., & Chen, S. (in press).
Contrasting health misinformation and relevant information on social media during a health
emergency: A dynamic information dissemination perspective. American Journal of Public
Health.

Xu, Q., Chen, S., & Safarnejad, L. (in press). Effects of information veracity and message
frames on information dissemination: A case study of 2016 Zika epidemic discussion on
Twitter. Health Communication.

Cui, X., & Xu, Q. (in press). Television vs. social media: Examining the effects of media
platforms on audience’s emotion and sense of social solidarity during a media event.
Western Journal of Communication.

Overman, A., Xu, Q., & Little, D. (in press). What do students actually pay attention to and
remember from a syllabus?: An eye tracking study of visually-rich and text-based syllabi.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.

Safarnejad, L., Xu, Q., Ge, Y., Bagavathi, A., Krishnan, S., & Chen, S. (2020). Identifying
influential factors on discussion dynamics of emerging health issues on social media: A
computational study. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 6(3), e17175.
 4

Cui, X., & Xu, Q. (2020). The roles of identity and emotion in media events’ social integration
mechanism: A case study of the 2017 U.S. Presidential Inauguration. Atlantic Journal of
Communication, 28(2), 138-152.

Yu, F., Ruel, L., Tyler, R., Xu, Q., Cui, H., Karanasios, S., Keilbach, A., Nguyen, B. X., &
Mostafa, J. (2020). Innovative UX methods for information access based on interdisciplinary
approaches: Practical lessons from academia and industry data and information
management. Data and Information Management, 4(1), 74-80.

Rui, J. R., Yu, N., Xu, Q., & Cui, X. (2019). Getting connected while aging: The effects of
WeChat network characteristics on the well-being of mature Chinese adults. Chinese Journal
of Communication, 12(1), 25-43.

Xu, Q., Yu, N., & Song, Y. (2018). User engagement in public discourse on genetically
modified organisms: The role of opinion leaders on social media. Science Communication,
40(6), 691-717.

Chen, S., Xu, Q., Buchenberger, J., Bagavathi, A., Fair., G., Shaikh, S., & Krishnan, S.
(2018). Dynamics of health agency response and public engagement during public health
emergency: A case study of CDC tweeting pattern during 2016 Zika epidemic. JMIR Public
Health and Surveillance, 4(4): e10827.

Xu, Q., & Sundar, S. S. (2016). Interactivity and memory: Information processing of
interactive versus non-interactive content. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 620-629.

Miller, B., Xu, Q., & Barnett, B. (2016). Commenter anonymity affects reader perceptions.
Newspaper Research Journal, 37(2), 138-152.

Book Chapters
Anderson, B., & Xu, Q. (2020). Winning over fans: How sports teams use live-tweeting to
maximize engagement. In D. A. Grady, A. Hollifield, & A. Sturgill (Eds.). The golden age of
data: Media analytics in study and practices (pp. 182-193). New York, NY: Routledge.

Yu, N., & Xu, Q. (2016). Public discourse on genetically modified foods in mobile sphere:
Framing risks, opportunities, and responsibilities on mobile social media in China. In R. Wei
(Ed.), Mobile media, political participation, and civic activism in Asia: Private chat to public
sphere (pp.81-102). Singapore: Springer.
 5

Encyclopedia Entry
Xu, Q. (2017). Dual process models of persuasion (ELM/Heuristic-Systematic Model). In P.
Roessler (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of media effects. New Jersey: Wiley-
Blackwell.

Refereed Conference Proceedings

Jiang, Ke., & Xu, Q. (2021). Building images of “President Trump”: Comparing co-evolutions
of the Trade War discourse between influencers and regular users on Twitter. Proceedings
of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).

Recently Funded Research Projects (since 2016)

External Grant
Comparing the Transmission Dynamics of Real News vs. Fake News: A Network Analysis of
Zika Epidemic on Twitter, 2018-2019. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Page and Johnson
Legacy Scholar Grant ($3100, Grant #2018FN003). The Arthur W. Page Center.

Internal Grants
Protection of Users’ Privacy in Immunization Apps: A Content Analysis of Their Privacy
Policies, Summer 2020. [Role: Principal Investigator]. FR&D Summer Fellowship ($8,750).
Elon University.

Tweeting Health Crisis: Investigating the Role of CDC and Public Engagement during the
2016 Zika Epidemic, Spring 2019. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Half-Year Full-Pay
Sabbatical. Elon University.

Effects of Infographic Syllabus on Cognitive Processing and Course Perceptions: An Eye

Tracking Experiment, Fall 2017. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Faculty Research and
Development ReassignedTime Fellowship & Financial Assistance ($284.38). Elon University.

Debating the Myth of Genetically Modified Foods in Chinese Social Media: The Effect of
Influential Sources on Their Followers, Fall 2016. [Role: Principal Investigator]. Faculty
Research and Development Reassigned-Time Fellowship. Elon University.
 6

Recent Invited Talks

Panelist, “Innovative UI/UX Methods for Information Access Based on Interdisciplinary
Approaches”, Workshop at the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T)
82nd Annual Conference (October, 2019), Melbourne, Australia.

Guest Speaking, “User Engagement in Public Discourse about GMOs on Chinese Social
Media”, Colloquium of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center (GES) at North Carolina
State University (January, 2019).

Editorial Work
Editor Board Member, Asian Journal of Communication (2020-present)
Editor-in-Chief, Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring, Elon University
(2017-present)

Accolade & Award

Featured as one of the eight highlighted faculty in President’s Report of Elon University 2016
Excellence in Scholarship Award, School of Communications, Elon University 2016