Junwen Hu

Ph.D. Student (ABD)

Department

Communication

hujunwen@msu.edu

Bio

Junwen Hu is a PhD candidate at the Department of Communication. His work links relational communication to health and well-being. Specifically, his research focuses on the roles of social support and communication technologies. He has published his findings in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Computers in Human Behavior, and Information, Communication & Society, among other journals. His recent project (dissertation) develops social support messages that address chronic stress related to type 2 diabetes. 

He has been funded by the Charles J. Strosacker Fellowship to contribute to the promotion of public health through communication research, and by the ICPSR to receive training in advanced quantitative methods.

Related Work

Green text graphic reads 2023 Charles J. Strosacker Research Fellowship Recipients

2022-2023 Strosacker Research Fellowship winners

Publications

Hu, J. M., & Thomas, M. F. (2025). Are anxiously attached dating app users less successful and feeling worse after use? The moderating effect of perceived anonymity affordance. Information, Communication & Society. Advance Online Publication.

Hu, J. M. & Oh, Y. (2025). Stronger algorithmic beliefs were associated with more benign interpretations in unideal online dating scenarios. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, & Social Networking. Advance Online Publication.

Hu, J. M., Holmstrom, A. J., Pennington, N., & Hall, J. A. (2025). What friendship characteristics are associated with well-being among unpartnered individuals in the United States? Personal Relationships. Advance online publication.

Hu, J. M. (2025). Understanding availability of comforting support messages from a networked attachment perspective. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Advance online publication.

Hu, J. M. (2025). A longitudinal analysis of how romantic and friendship involvement are associated with depressive symptoms. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Advance online publication.

Hu, J. M., Balow, S., Meng, J., Ellithorpe, M., & Meshi, D. (2024). Social network density mediates the association between problematic social media use and depressive symptoms International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. Advance Online Publication

Hu, J. M., Zhu, R., & Zhang, Y. (2024). Does online dating make relationships more successful? Replication and extension of a previous study. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. Advance Online Publication.

Hu, J. M. (2024). The affective and relational correlates of algorithmic beliefs among US online daters: Extension of two previous studies. Computers in Human Behavior, 108373.

Hu, J., & Zhan, E. S. (2024). Algorithm awareness in online dating: Associations with mate-searching difficulty and future expectancies among U.S. online daters. Behaviour & Information Technology. Advance online publication.

Hu, J., & Rui, J. (2023). The relationship between preference for online social interaction and affective well-being via compulsive dating app use: The moderating role of algorithmic beliefs. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace.

Hu, J., & Wang, R. (2023). Familiarity breeds trust? The relationship between dating app use and trust in dating algorithms via algorithm awareness and critical algorithm perceptions. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. Advance online publication.

Hu, J. (2023). Exploring the impact of a ‘confining’ imaginary of user-recommendation systems on platform usage and relationship development among dating app users. Behaviour & Information Technology. Advance online publication.

Hu, J. (2021). What does channel say? Understanding How social media social capital facilitates COVID‐19‐related information‐seeking and opinion‐expression on two types of platforms: User‐oriented versus content‐oriented. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 737-739.

Media Report

Psychology Today (May 31, 2025): Which protects best from depression, friendship or romance?

Phys.org (August 6, 2024): Does online dating make relationships more successful?

PsyPost.org (September 27, 2024): Online dating and relationship success: The potential role of social media sharing.

Contact Information

Office: 404 Wilson Road, Room 457

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