Objective: To determine if framing communications about COVID-19 vaccines in economic terms can increase Republicans’ likelihood to get vaccinated. Methods: We examined Twitter posts between January 2020 and September 2021 by Democratic and Republican politicians to determine how they framed the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on these posts, we carried out a survey study between September and November 2021 to examine whether motivations for COVID-19 vaccine uptake matched message frames that were widely used by these politicians. Finally, we conducted a randomized controlled experiment to examine how these frames (economic vs. health) affected intentions to vaccinate by vaccine refusers in both parties. Results: Republican politicians were more likely to frame the pandemic in economic terms, whereas Democrats predominantly used health frames. Accordingly, vaccinated Republicans’ choices were more likely to be motivated by economic consideration and personal financial rationales. Among vaccine refusers, Republicans exposed to messages using economic rationales to encourage vaccination reported higher vaccination intentions compared to those exposed to messages using public health rationales. Conclusion: Messages highlighting economic and personal financial risks could increase intentions to vaccinate for vaccine-hesitant Republicans.
@article{zhong_vaccine_2023,title={Economic risk framing increases intention to vaccinate among Republican COVID-19 vaccine refusers},journal={Social Science \& Medicine},volume={317},pages={115594},year={2023},issn={0277-9536},doi={10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115594},url={https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622009005},author={Zhong, Wei and Broniatowski, David A.},}
APSR
Keep Your Heads Held High Boys!: Examining the Relationship between the Proud Boys’ Online Discourse and Offline Activities
Catie Bailard, Rebekah Tromble, Wei Zhong, and 3 more authors
How does online communication by right-wing extremist groups relate to their offline behavior? In this paper, we analyze the relationship between the online communication of one prominent right-wing extremist group—the Proud Boys—and their offline activities using the long-standing and well-developed collective action framing literature as the theoretical lens driving our approach. To investigate this correlation, we utilize cutting-edge computational techniques to analyze an extensive and novel data set of Telegram activity by the Proud Boys, which we merge with U.S. Crisis Monitor data of violent and non-violent events that members of this group participated in over a 31-month period. Our findings demonstrate that the platforms provided by social media to mobilize members of extremist groups aren’t as simple as forums for calls-to-action or discussions of logistics and planning. Rather, online discussions between members of this extremist group that feature intensifying expressions of grievances and/or motivational appeals to group pride, duty, or solidarity share a reciprocal relationship with participation in offline events.
@article{zhong_pb_apsr_2024,title={Keep Your Heads Held High Boys!: Examining the Relationship between the Proud Boys' Online Discourse and Offline Activities},journal={American Political Science Review},pages={1--18},year={2024},publisher={Cambridge University Press},author={Bailard, Catie and Tromble, Rebekah and Zhong, Wei and Bianchi, Federico and Hosseini, Pedram and Broniatowski, David},url={https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/keep-your-heads-held-high-boys-examining-the-relationship-between-the-proud-boys-online-discourse-and-offline-activities/D2EFAADAB8EE8633340A4F81460551FC},doi={10.1017/S0003055423001478}}
JQD:DM
Proud Boys on Telegram
Wei Zhong, Catie Bailard, David Broniatowski, and 1 more author
Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 2024
Utilizing an original data set of public Telegram channels affiliated with a right-wing extremist group, the Proud Boys, we conduct an exploratory analysis of the structure and nature of the group’s presence on the platform. Our study considers the group’s growth, organizational structure, connectedness with other far-right and/or fringe factions, and the range of topics discussed on this alternative social media platform. The findings show that the Proud Boys have a notable presence on Telegram, with a discernable spike in activity coinciding with Facebook’s and Instagram’s 2018 deplatforming of associated pages and profiles with this and other extremist groups. Another sharp increase in activity is then precipitated by the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. By February 2022, we identified 92 public Telegram channels explicitly affiliated with the Proud Boys, which constitute the core of a well-connected network with 131,953 subscribers.
@article{zhong_pb_network_2024,title={Proud Boys on Telegram},year={2024},author={Zhong, Wei and Bailard, Catie and Broniatowski, David and Tromble, Rebekah},journal={Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media},pages={1--47},volume={4},url={https://journalqd.org/article/view/4187},doi={10.51685/jqd.2024.003}}
PoP
Subdued but Unbroken: The Cohesion of Far-Right Extremist Followers after Deplatforming
While deplatforming has become an increasingly common strategy to combat online harm and far-right extremism, its effects on the followers of extremist groups—who are key supporters and play a crucial role in spreading and sustaining these ideologies—remain underexplored. On August 10, 2018, Twitter (now X) deplatformed one such far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys, along with their affiliated accounts. Leveraging this intervention, our research addresses a key knowledge gap by examining the impact of deplatforming on the cohesion of extremist group followers. By analyzing over 12 million tweets from approximately nine thousand Proud Boys supporters between August 1, 2017, and September 1, 2019, we find that deplatforming had a limited effect on reducing group cohesion. Instead, it may have prompted followers to seek broader networks and external interactions, leaving overall cohesion largely intact.
@article{zhong_deplatforming_2025,title={Subdued but Unbroken: The Cohesion of Far-Right Extremist Followers after Deplatforming},author={Zhong, Wei and Zhang, Maggie Mengqing},journal={Perspectives on Politics},pages={1--26},year={2025},publisher={Cambridge University Press},}
SM+S
Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 US Midterm Elections
Josephine Lukito, Maggie Macdonald, Bin Chen, and 8 more authors
@article{lukito_candidates_2025,title={Candidates Be Posting: Multi-Platform Strategies and Partisan Preferences in the 2022 US Midterm Elections},author={Lukito, Josephine and Macdonald, Maggie and Chen, Bin and Brown, Megan A. and Prochaska, Stephen and Yang, Yunkang and Greenfield, Jason and Suk, Jiyoun and Zhong, Wei and Dahlke, Ross and Borah, Porismita},journal={Social Media + Society},volume={11},number={2},year={2025},}
DJ
Picturing Protest: A Deep Dive into the Visual Representation of Protests in Authoritarian Countries’ Media on Twitter
This study explores how media in authoritarian regimes frame protests, focusing on the visual representation of social protests on Twitter/X. Drawing on the "protest paradigm" theory, which traditionally examines how democratic media portray protests, we extend this analysis to authoritarian contexts where state control complicates media coverage. Leveraging over 331 million tweets from 9,331 news outlet accounts across 144 countries, we identify 123,375 protest images from 38 authoritarian countries. Through computer vision analysis, we classify these images into four protest paradigms: riot, confrontation, spectacle, and debate. Our findings reveal that spectacle and debate are the most frequently depicted paradigms in authoritarian context.
@article{zhong_protest_2025,title={Picturing Protest: A Deep Dive into the Visual Representation of Protests in Authoritarian Countries' Media on Twitter},year={2025},author={Zhong, Wei and Chen, Bin and Liang, Fan and Zhang, Maggie},journal={Digital Journalism},pages={1--22},publisher={Taylor \& Francis},}
Sci Rep
Explaining Twitter’s inability to effectively moderate content during the COVID-19 pandemic
David Broniatowski, Wei Zhong, Joseph Simons, and 3 more authors
Did Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation removal interventions during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic successfully reduce misinformative content and users? We collected over 400M English-language tweets related to COVID-19 using over 100 relevant keywords between February 6, 2020 and December 15, 2022. We used a comparative interrupted time series design. We found that Twitter’s policies removing COVID and vaccine misinformation were not associated with a statistically significant relative reduction in misinformative posts and accounts’ content. These results call into question the ability of large social media companies to control the spread of misinformation on their platforms via content and account deletion during the COVID-19 pandemic.
@article{broniatowski_twitter_moderation_2025,title={Explaining Twitter's inability to effectively moderate content during the COVID-19 pandemic},author={Broniatowski, David and Zhong, Wei and Simons, Joseph and Jamison, Amelia and Dredze, Mark and Abroms, Lorien},journal={Scientific Reports},volume={15},number={1},pages={36096},year={2025},publisher={Nature Publishing Group UK London},}
Pol Comm
Political Communication Special Issue Introduction: Multi-Platform Research
Josephine Lukito, Meredith L. Pruden, Jiyoun Suk, and 2 more authors
@article{lukito_multiplatform_2026,title={Political Communication Special Issue Introduction: Multi-Platform Research},author={Lukito, Josephine and Pruden, Meredith L. and Suk, Jiyoun and Yang, Yunkang and Zhong, Wei},doi={10.1080/10584609.2026.2649632},journal={Political Communication},volume={43},number={2},pages={175--191},year={2026},}
NMS
Cross-platformization: How US right-leaning media curate their posts on Twitter and Truth Social
Josephine Lukito, Yini Zhang, Bin Chen, Stephen Prochaska, Meredith L. Pruden, Yunkang Yang, Wei Zhong, Megan Brown, Ross Dahlke, Jason Greenfield, Jiyoun Suk, and Porismita Borah
@article{lukito_crossplatformization_2026,title={Cross-platformization: How US right-leaning media curate their posts on Twitter and Truth Social},author={Lukito, Josephine and Zhang, Yini and Chen, Bin and Prochaska, Stephen and Pruden, Meredith L. and Yang, Yunkang and Zhong, Wei and Brown, Megan and Dahlke, Ross and Greenfield, Jason and Suk, Jiyoun and Borah, Porismita},journal={New Media \& Society},year={2026},pages={14614448261470889},show_all_authors={true},}
JITP
Rethinking Digital Trace Inference in Political Communication: Evidence from a Simulated Platform Experiment
Jiyoun Suk*, Wei Zhong*, Yini Zhang, and 4 more authors
Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Sep 2026
@article{suk_digital_trace_2026,title={Rethinking Digital Trace Inference in Political Communication: Evidence from a Simulated Platform Experiment},author={Suk*, Jiyoun and Zhong*, Wei and Zhang, Yini and Pruden, Meredith and Yang, Yunkang and Mao, Chenchen and DiFranzo, Dominic},journal={Journal of Information Technology \& Politics},year={2026},month=sep,pages={1--18},}
Under Review
Under Review
From Policy to Personality: How Americans Evaluate Presidential Candidates, 1984–2020
@article{zhong_ur_ailabels,title={It Works When It Works: Measuring the Direct and Indirect Effects of AI Labels on Political Images},author={Sanderson*, Zeve and Zhong*, Wei and Tucker, Joshua A.},year={},}
Under Review
Self-reinforcing media antagonism sustains U.S.-China rivalry
Wei Zhong, Haoyi Tan, Bingyan Wang, and 1 more author
@article{zhong_ur_uschina,title={Self-reinforcing media antagonism sustains U.S.-China rivalry},author={Zhong, Wei and Tan, Haoyi and Wang, Bingyan and Zhang, Kaiping},year={},}
Under Review
Territorial Contraction: Far-Right Mobilization and Everyday Public Life in American Neighborhoods
@article{zhong_ur_farright_mobility,title={Territorial Contraction: Far-Right Mobilization and Everyday Public Life in American Neighborhoods},author={Zhong, Wei and Zhang, Yongjun and Xu, Yeqian},year={},}
Under Review
Making Local Action Visible: White Lives Matter on Telegram