Keng-Chi Chang

Keng-Chi Chang

Hello. I am a M.S. & Ph.D. Candidate at UC San Diego.

My research interests lie in the realm of computational social science, unified by the desire to understand how new technologies and media environments are reshaping collective political behaviors via social networks and mis/information.

My research is driven by the following questions: How can we leverage computing and the data revolution to learn about fundamental political and societal problems; how are these new technologies changing political and economic behaviors such as news consumption, democratic elections, and protests; and how can we design better research methods to answer these questions?

My dissertation research has been funded by NSF/APSA and the Rapoport Family Foundation. My recent works have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Communication, PLOS One, and Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, as well as peer-reviewed Computer Science conferences.

Interests

  • Computational Social Science
  • Political Methodology
  • Digital Politics
  • Image as Data

Education

  • PhD Candidate in Political Science

    University of California, San Diego

  • MS Candidate in Computer Science

    University of California, San Diego

  • BA in Economics

    National Taiwan University

Research

Do Imagery Lend Credibility to News Articles?

Do Imagery Lend Credibility to News Articles?

  • Varies image treatment while holding fixed other aspects of news articles.
  • Overall presence of image does not always increase credibility perception.
  • Images with some identified latent treatments (such as photos from press conferences, comics, or visuals of male suits) can alter credibility perception.
Characterizing Image Sharing Behaviors in US Politically Engaged, Random, and Demographic Audience Segments

Characterizing Image Sharing Behaviors in US Politically Engaged, Random, and Demographic Audience Segments

  • Collect images shared by political & random Twitter users.
  • Study how sharing different types of images are predictive of demographic attributes.
Compensation and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Power: Evidence from China’s 2016 PLA Reform

Compensation and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Power: Evidence from China’s 2016 PLA Reform

  • Collect large-scale biographical panel data of PLA officers.
  • Estimate patterns for promotion within PLA before/after PLA reform.
  • Finds that Xi only started to promote followers after power consolidation.
Mapping Visual Themes among Authentic and Coordinated Memes

Mapping Visual Themes among Authentic and Coordinated Memes

  • Collect coordinated IRA memes from Twitter and authentic memes from Reddit.
  • Cluster memes to find visual themes using self-supervised transfer learning.
  • Coordinated and authentic memes share visual themes but with different emphasis.

Publications

COVID-19 Increased Censorship Circumvention And Access To Sensitive Topics In China

COVID-19 Increased Censorship Circumvention And Access To Sensitive Topics In China

  • Use geolocated Tweets from China during the COVID-19 crisis.
  • Show that crisis motivates citizens to seek out sensitive information.
  • Gateway to both current and historically sensitive content is not found in countries without extensive online censorship.
Using Facebook Data to Predict the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

Using Facebook Data to Predict the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

  • Use 19 billion likes to measure dynamic ideological positions of users and fan pages.
  • Guess user’s geolocation by likes and measure state level support rates for candidates.
  • Assume that users would support candidates with closer ideology.
  • FB support rates predict election outcome well, and share similar trends with polls.
  • Polls systematically overestimate Clinton’s support in right-leaning states.
The Effect of Streaming Chat on Perceptions of Debates

The Effect of Streaming Chat on Perceptions of Debates

  • Asks whether social chats on livestreams affect debate viewing.
  • Assign subjects to watch debates on ABC, Facebook Live, and 538.
  • Democratic subjects assigned to the Facebook chat condition reported lower affect towards Democrats and a worse viewing experience.
  • The tone of candidate-directed comments also matter.
Connective Effervescence and Streaming Chat During Political Debates

Connective Effervescence and Streaming Chat During Political Debates

  • Collect streaming chats of US Presidential debates on Facebook Live.
  • Describe their dynamics, degrees of toxicity, and insults.