Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen

Scholar of social media, digital games, big data and social networks. Observer of all things tech. Prof at UC Davis. Mom of a cancer kid. Opinions are my own.

[Yingdan_Lu @YingdanL_kk]

New CMMC Lab research out, led by my student Xinyi Liu! We develop an LLM-based analytical framework to unpack complex visual concepts like surrealism. Also thanks to @CCR_OpenJournal @ica_cm SI editors @alvinyxz @wrahool and Ewa Maslowska, more articles: https://t.co/vr9rUCjQPG

[Xinyi Liu @xinyi_liu_]

How does surrealism manifest in photorealistic AI-generated images? In our new @CompCommRes paper with @YingdanL_kk, @kiyaoqp, @sijia_qian, @pengyilang & @cuihua, we develop an LLM-assisted framework to map surrealism across 28K+ AIGIs from Instagram: https://t.co/GRP8Of6Dlf🧵

[UC Davis Research @UCDavisResearch]

Communication Professor Cuihua (Cindy) Shen weighs in on the evolution of hate speech online. Learn more @UCDavisMagazine @cuihua
https://t.co/DU7VCODhaE

[Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen @cuihua]

@pengyilang So well deserved! Congratulations!

[Subhayan Mukerjee @wrahool]

Happy 2025! @cuihua and I are happy to announce new forum piece in @polcommjournal where we argue for a need to focus more on visual content when trying to understand the causes and manifestations of political polarization.

[Sijia Qian @sijia_qian]

🚨New paper out in @JhcOffice
Combining a large-scale survey with an extensive #COVID media archive in five countries, we show that fear in headlines boosts our sense of risk, but can actually reduce how often we follow preventive measures.
A quick read: https://t.co/DfwkfPjxXM

[Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro]

Just published in @Nature!

Research by @GoogleDeepMind including Nobel Laureate @demishassabis introduces a novel technique for reliably identifying LLM-generated content.

At its core, this approach subtly alters the next-token sampling process to introduce minor adjustments into the distribution of generated text.

These slight modifications embed a “signature” in the LLM-generated text that would be nearly invisible to a human reader but detectable using specific statistical tools.

A major advantage of this method is its efficiency: detection doesn’t require resource-intensive computations or direct access to the underlying LLM, which is often proprietary.

Full paper: https://t.co/IFgC4YLhPt

[Weiyu Zhang @WeiyuZ]

Job season! @CNMnus we are looking for outstanding young colleagues to join us as prestigious PYP (Assistant Prof). Areas: Media Studies, Visual Communication, Science Communication, Cultural Studies, Computational Communication. Deadline: Nov 30 2024.
https://t.co/XJAXqZ5j5K

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

Sadly, we still default to granting more respect to men than women.

8 studies: we're >2x as likely to call male politicians, athletes, teachers, and authors by their last names. It matters: surnames signal higher status.

It's long past time to use consistent standards.

[Misha Teplitskiy | Science of Science @MishaTeplitskiy]

Most pre-registrations are too vague, and have done little to limit p-hacking and publication bias in economics
https://t.co/bnl5yWROgS

[dietram a. scheufele @scheufele]

63 algorithmic interventions designed to make #Facebook temporarily provide less polarizing and more reliable content likely distorted the data sets that @Meta fed to academic researchers and helped get publish with Meta employees as co-authors. https://t.co/XTmEIGrvZk

[dr. yilang peng @pengyilang]

Happy to see that our CMMC lab's student-initiated project has turned into something concrete👏 We study how social media users produce #AI generated visuals. We examine the themes and styles of this emerging genre, and its potential for misuse in spreading #misinformation.

[Yingdan_Lu @YingdanL_kk]

Excited to share the latest preprint from our CMMC Lab! We compiled a large corpus of 30,824 AI-generated visuals collected from Instagram and Twitter, and combined quantitative and qualitative analysis to unpacks AI photorealism of AIGIs. Check out👉https://t.co/UBcXeeMyaq

[Qiyao Peng @kiyaoqp]

Excited to share our CMMC lab’s latest preprint “Crafting Synthetic Realities: Examining Visual Realism and Misinformation Potential of Photorealistic AI-Generated Images”! Thank u co-authors @YingdanL_kk @pengyilang @sijia_qian @2slimcat @cuihua. Check https://t.co/6XfvXWj6u7!

[Misha Teplitskiy | Science of Science @MishaTeplitskiy]

Some evidence for what everyone suspected:
(Some) authors don't want to share data because they don't want people to see how the sausage was made
https://t.co/pgnx70Zvff

[Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris]

Take it from the people who worked for him: Donald Trump is a danger to our troops, our security, and our democracy.

He should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.

Watch our new ad:

[Kun Xu @bigben219]

Job alert: My department @UFMPMT in the College of Journalism and Communications @UFJSchool is recruiting two tenure track positions. One focuses on emerging media: https://t.co/hv72GRAeFW; the other focuses on media management: https://t.co/hRUPvuExH0. DM if you have questions

[UW-Madison SJMC @uw_sjmc]

Together with @uwpolisci and @UWPsych and support from @knightfdn, we are seeking two assistant professors who focus on research in communication, social identity and civil society to start in August 2025. Learn more and join our team today. https://t.co/DphaD0IdJM

[Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen @cuihua]

@jiyoun_suk @nycgov Oh my. I am so sorry this happened to you. Sending strength and solidarity.

[Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen @cuihua]

If you are interested in learning about the state of mis/disinformation and how it is getting turbocharged by AI, listen to this conversation between
@MissEsi
@DrFollowMario
and myself, and don't forget to subscribe to
@CCS_pod

[CCS_pod @CCS_pod]

Before we take a (longer? ;-)) summer break, we discuss the concept of credibility and its special role in misinformation and disinformation with the wonderful @cuihua in the final episode of season 2. You can listen in here: https://t.co/OTJaQMcqSD