Yunkang Yang
  • Assistant Professor

Biography

Yunkang Yang (Ph.D. communication, University of Washington) is Assistant Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University where he is affiliated with the Data Justice Lab.  An expert on American media and politics, he is the author of the forthcoming book Weapons of Mass Deception: How Right-wing Media Wage Information Warfare and Undermine American Democracy (Oxford University Press). Professor Yang’s research uses quantitative and computational methods with large-scale datasets to answer questions about the disruptive role of media in American politics, including how manipulation works on social media, how partisan news organizations function as political organizations, and how foreign propaganda influences the American media system. His work has appeared in Journal of Communication, Political Communication, and International Journal of Press/Politics. Professor Yang currently serves as a member of the editorial board of Political Communication. In the summer of 2023, he was a fellow of the Weizenbaum Institute.

 

Courses Taught

  • COMM 303: Communication Data Applications
  • COMM 304: Digital Communication Analytics & Metrics
  • COMM 616: Computational Methods
  • COMM 628: Political Communication

Research Interests

  • Communication, Politics, and Policy

Selected Publications

    • Yang, Y. (2024), Rethinking right-wing media in the awake of an attempted coup. In Khadijah White, Daniel Kreiss, Shannon McGregor & Rebekah Tromble (ed.) Media and January 6th (pp. 163-172). Oxford University Press. Link.
    • Yang, Y., McCabe, S. & Hindman, M. (2024), Does Russian propaganda lead or follow? Topic coverage, user engagement, and RT and Sputnik’s agenda influence on US media, International Journal of Press/Politics. Link.
    • Yang, Y., Davis, T. & Hindman, M. (2023), Visual misinformation on Facebook, Journal of Communication. Link.
    • Yang, Y. & Bennett, L. (2021). Interactive propaganda: How Fox News and Donald Trump co-produced false narratives about the Covid-19 crisis. In P. Van Aelst & J. Blumler (Eds.). Political communication in the time of coronavirus. Routledge. Link.