Chris Chao Su

Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Studies, College of Communication, Boston University — with a secondary appointment in the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences.

I study how audiences take shape in a fragmented digital media environment — who writes the rules of social media, why misinformation travels, and how people use media differently across the world. I work with computational methods and large-scale behavioral data, and I build open tools so other researchers can do the same.

Research Highlights

• Award-winning research on platforms, misinformation, and media effects — including the 2021 Michael Pfau Outstanding Article Award and recent top faculty paper awards at ICA and AEJMC.
• A funded research program on platform governance and AI — as principal investigator on projects on platform governance and AI privacy, generative AI literacy, and media repertoires and conspiracy theories.
• Work that travels beyond academia — cited in policy documents and national misinformation-resilience reports, and covered by the Boston Globe.

Contact

Prospective PhD students interested in platform governance, misinformation, or computational approaches to media audiences are welcome to get in touch.

suchao@bu.edu · Google Scholar

Platform governance; Misinformation; Networked movements; Political communication; Media effects; Computational methods.