Welcome to my homepage! My name is Yixiao Sun, and I am a second-year PhD student in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. I am advised by Red Cedar Distinguished Professor David M. Markowitz.

My research focuses on strategic language use and persuasion. I use language as a lens to understand how communication reflects and shapes individual and collective psychological states and behaviors. My work has examined how protagonists’ character arcs in fiction are associated with Goodreads ratings, how expressions of sympathy and panic in social media posts relate to individual donations in response to crises, and how narrative structures in social media posts are linked to online users’ attention to digital assets.

As a strategic communication researcher, I aim to push the boundaries of computational methods by developing new frameworks for analyzing complex dimensions of human communication—such as identity, context, rhetoric, and connotation—and tracing how these dimensions reveal evolving patterns in human psychology and behavior. Methodologically, I specialize in studying human behavior through large-scale digital footprint data. I am proficient in Python and highly skilled in R, with particular expertise in natural language processing, statistical modeling, and causal inference.

My work has been published in communication and psychology journals, including the International Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Chinese Journal of Communication, and Social and Personality Psychology Compass. My research has been supported by four internal and external grants and recognized with two academic honors from the National Communication Association: the Top Paper Award from the Political Communication Division and the Top Student Paper Award from the Human Communication and Technology Division.

I received my master’s degree in Communication from Nanjing University and my bachelor’s degree in Internet and New Media from Sichuan International Studies University, graduating with highest distinction.