Welcome!

I’m a third-year master’s student at School of Media and Communication of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SMC, SJTU), advised by Prof. Yi Mou. I’m also a Center for Future Media & Human-Machine Communication member. Tanya is my English name from my favorite Singaporean singer.

I mainly focus on human-machine communication and I am interested in socio-political and technological factors in health, scientific and risk issues. I would love to chat and collaborate if you are interested in any aspect of me. Please email me at - jy.chen@sjtu.edu.cn.

Hi，我是上海交通大学媒体与传播学院的研三学生，导师是牟怡教授。我同时是未来媒体与人机传播实验室的一员。我主要关注人机传播，并对健康、科学、风险议题中的社会政治与技术因素有着浓厚兴趣。欢迎联系我！

Education

• M.A. in Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, 2023-2026
• B.A. in Journalism, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, 2019-2023

• Exchange Student, Institute of Communication Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Aug 2025 – Jan 2026
• Certificate of human-machine communication, Social Media Lab, Stanford University, Feb–Jul 2022 (online due to the pandemic)

Research Interest

My research interests are broad, focusing primarily on human-machine communication and socio-political factors in SHER issues. These two seemingly distant fields of study are inextricably linked to my learning and growing experience.

Topics

Specifically, the research topics I am interested in include:

• AIGC and media effects
• The intersection of science, technology and sociopolitics
• Media psychology in human-machine interaction
• Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories

More about me

I grew up with endless tests under the Chinese college entrance exam system, was admitted to Nanjing University (NJU), and enrolled in the School of Journalism and Communication. For a while, I thought that my life would be spent as a conformist: reading the magnum opus of thinkers like Marx or Heidegger during schooling, actively engaging in various informal relationships, and finally graduating to a little reporter writing news about irrelevance and all the social hoopla all day long. But I kind of just felt meh. I yearned to something between macro-theory and news interviews and yearned to explore the empirical impact of digital media on human society.

And that’s when it happened; the spark I was missing ignited the instant I first conducted a preliminary survey about the role of digital platforms in the exacerbation of intergroup conflicts. Since then, I can’t get enough. I realized that my interests were more in technology frontiers and sought more research opportunities. Fortunately, I successfully applied for an exchange at Stanford’s Social Media Lab. It’s online due to the lockdown policy during COVID-19. Furthermore, I joined the Computational Communication Collaboratory, led by Prof. ChengJun-Wang, in the School of Journalism and Communication at Nanjing University. I completed my graduation thesis on social acceleration and time use there.

More About My Research Interest

• The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown policy coincided with a period of significant personal growth and development for me. This period also saw me becoming increasingly exposed to a vast amount of health, science, and policy-related information shared on social media. I observed that in a one-party society like China, public opinion is also highly polarized. While academic attention has shifted away from the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated policies, I remain interested in public understanding of science. I also focus on the sociopolitical and technological factors in health, science, and risk.
• As a little geek, I am deeply impressed by the impact of AI technology on established societal norms. As an “AI immigrant”, I am witnessing its gradual integration into society. will result in a significant global social revolution. I aim to explore the socio-psychological impacts of human-AI communication, including intimacy, trust, and credibility at the individual level, and digital inequality and social polarization at the societal level.