Hanjie Liu
Bio
Hanjie Liu is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Media and Information. As a theory-driven scholar, she explores the bidirectional relationships between technological platforms and users’ cognitive, attitudinal, perceptual, and well-being changes. Her research sits at the intersection of social media engagements, mental health messaging, algorithmic influence, and psychological processing. She is especially interested in two core challenges in cyberpsychology: 1) the bidirectional relationship between normative mental health messages and social media users’ dynamic shifts in cognition, attitude, and engagement, and 2) the implicit influence of algorithmic-driven social media platforms on the psychological processing and well-being of users experiencing mental struggles.
She approaches this work from an empirical social science perspective, primarily using quantitative surveys and experimental designs. To understand the dynamic nature of social media users' cognitive changes, She has been utilizing experience sampling methods (ESM) and implicit association tasks (IAT) to track users' behavioral and cognitive dynamic changes over time.
Her research has been competitively selected for support by awards such as HRCC Sandi Smith Research Fellowship and Charles J. Strosacker Foundation Research Fund for Health and Risk Communication. Her work has appeared in the annual conferences of International Communication of Association (ICA), National Communication Association (NCA), Association of Educators of Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), International Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA).
She is also passionate about teaching. She received the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2023 from Michigan State University and was recognized for her dedication to student learning in 2021 at the University of Minnesota.
Currently, she serves as the editorial assistant for the Journal of Communication, one of the flagship journals of the ICA. She enjoys supporting editors, reviewers, and authors throughout the publication process.
Before joining MSU, she earned M.A. in Mass Communication from the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota in July 2021.
