UC Davis Department of Communication Leads at ICA 2026 in Cape Town

This June, the UC Davis Department of Communication will take a leading role at the 76th Annual International Communication Association Conference, held June 4–8, 2026, in Cape Town, South Africa. With 40 accepted presentations and two Top Paper awards, UC Davis arrives at ICA26 as one of the most visible and influential programs in the field. This year’s conference was especially competitive, with an overall acceptance rate of just 31 percent (one of the lowest on record) making the departments strong showing even more significant.

ICA’s 2026 theme, Communication and Inequalities in Context, challenges scholars to examine how communication shapes power, access, and opportunity. UC Davis research directly confronts these issues: auditing algorithmic bias in social media systems, examining political polarization and misinformation, advancing digital media literacy, investigating AI-human relationships, and probing the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying media decision-making. Across experimental neuroscience, computational social science, large-scale audits, and community-centered research, the department demonstrates both methodological range and theoretical depth.

Two projects received Top Paper honors, one of the association’s highest distinctions. “Talking Differently to Human versus Artificial Intelligence Advice Givers?” (Wang Liao, Haojian Li, Lisa J. Hwang, Bo Feng, and Yoo Jung Oh) advances theory at the intersection of language, interaction, and artificial intelligence. “Moral Foundations and Social-Political Identity: Exploration of People of Color” (Tommi Mayers and Narine Yegiyan) pushes forward scholarship on identity, morality, and political engagement. These awards underscore UC Davis’s capacity to produce research that is both conceptually rigorous and socially consequential.

UC Davis scholars are also shaping the field’s intellectual agenda through editorial leadership at ICA's most influential journals. Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen serves as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and Dr. Richard Huskey serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Communication. Together, these roles position UC Davis at the center of evaluating and guiding the discipline’s highest-impact scholarship.

The department’s sustained influence is reflected in its four ICA Fellows: Drs. Cuihua Shen, Magdalena Wojcieszak, George Barnett, and the late Dr. Charles R. Berger.

Beyond the main program, UC Davis continues to lead the ICA Hackathon, a preconference event that advances open, collaborative, and computational communication science. This year’s planning team includes Dr. Soojong Kim and graduate student Rachael Kee, extending the department’s longstanding commitment to innovation and community-building in the field.

As ICA convenes in Cape Town, its first meeting on the African continent, UC Davis does not simply participate. It leads, shaping conversations about inequality, technology, and the future of communication research worldwide.

A full list of the Department's presentations at ICA26 is available below. For more information on ICA26, explore the full conference schedule or visit the ICA26 website.

Stereotype Threat and Lift on Career Perceptions: An ERP Investigation

Camren L. Allen

Can Instagram Ads Promote Election Trust: Evidence from three states during the 2024 US Presidential election

Dominik Batorski; Erin Wertz; Pawel Matuszewski; Magdalena Wojcieszak

To Err is Human: Reviewing and Explicating the Uncanny Valley of the Mind

David G. Beyea; Rabindra Ratan; Maxwell Foxman; Jorge Peña; Alex P. Leith; Oskar Milik; Jiahui Liu; Chaeyun Lim; Brian Klebig

GIFTS: In Search of Social Support: Engaging Students in an Online Scavenger Hunt to Identify and Analyze Support Messages

Steven R. Brunner; Rachel McKenzie; Heather J. Hether

Do Person-Centric Effects Need Person-Centric Measures? Investigating an Unaccounted-For Explanatory Factor in Contemporary Social Media Effects Research

Michael C. Carter; Joel Sandoval Valdez; Jane Shawcroft; Maya Hernandez; Samantha Vigil; Allyson L. Snyder; Linda Charmaraman; Michael Rich; Drew P. Cingel; David Bickham

The Mood-Emotion-Content Nexus: Disentangling How Affective Factors Influence Misinformation in Short Videos

Pablo M. Flores; Martin Hilbert

What They Share and How They Feel: Sentiment in Adolescents’ Instagram Posts and Stories and Its Relation to Well-Being

Qiru Huo; Ine Beyens; Amber van der Wal

Chatbots as Advice-Givers: Investigating the Communicative Mechanisms that Influence User Responses to Advice from Chatbots in Supportive Interactions

Lisa J. Hwang; Haojian Li; Bo Feng

Reason over Toxicity: More Users and Deeper, Better Conversations under Reasonable Comments in Political Reply Networks

Wonjeong Jo; Sailendra Akash Bonagiri; Magdalena Wojcieszak

YouTube Algorithm Amplifies Hostility toward Political Parties and Out-Party Hostility: Especially to Conservative Users

Wonjeong Jo; Magdalena Wojcieszak

Beyond the Laboratory: Introducing High-Throughput Communication Science

Rachael Kee; Richard Huskey

Visual Matters: Connecting Aesthetic Appeal and Production Quality of Photos, Infographics and Data Visualizations to Credibility of Social Media Posts

Salman Khawar; Yingdan Lu; Yilang Peng; Jiyoung Yeon; Cuihua Shen

Media Power: Associations between Partisan News Diet and Political Attitudes are not Moderated by County Context

Salman Khawar; Magdalena Wojcieszak; Ericka Menchen-Trevino; Wen Guan

Bias in Multimodal Generative AI Evaluations of Vaping Risk Perceptions and Willingness: Comparison with Human Reference Data from a Vaping Warning Message Effect Experiment

Kwanho Kim; Soojong Kim; Jeff Niederdeppe; Sahara Byrne; Dongdong Zhu

A longitudinal study examining the impact of YouTube’s visual and audio effects on children’s attention and viewing control

Minjung Kim; Drew P. Cingel; Allyson L. Snyder

Cued by Politics, Unchecked by Literacy: Perceived Bias in Health and Economic News

Soojong Kim; Jieun Shin; Seth Lewis

Mental Health and Media Selection: A Drift Diffusion Modeling Study

Valerie Klein; Jason X. Gong; Allison Eden; Richard Huskey

The Effects of Communication Mediums and Relationship Types on Depolarization in Cross-Cutting Discussions: Evidence from an Experiment

Zhengyi Liang; Bo Feng; Jaeho Cho; Minghui Wang

Talking Differently to Human versus Artificial Intelligence Advice Givers? Linguistic Profiles of the Underlying Interaction Scripts

Wang Liao; Haojian Li; Lisa J. Hwang; Bo Feng; Yoo Jung Oh

TOP PAPER

From Verification to Amplification: Auditing Reverse Image Search as Algorithmic Gatekeeping in Visual Misinformation Fact-checking

Cong LIN; Yifei Chen; Jiangyue Chen; Cuihua Shen; Yilang Peng; Yingdan Lu

Empowering with information-verifying efficacy: An experimental study of the effect of health misinformation exposure on online information avoidance

Ke Liu; Meng Chen; Laramie Taylor; XINZHU WU

Seeing the Surreal: Mapping Surrealism in Photorealistic AI-Generated Images Using Large Language Models

Xinyi Liu; Yingdan Lu; Qiyao Peng; Sijia Qian; Yilang Peng; Cuihua Shen

Audio as Data: Computational Audio Analysis in Communication Research

Yingdan Lu; Haohang Xin; Annie Chu; Yilang Peng; Cuihua Shen

Moral Foundations and Social-Political Identity: Exploration of People of Color

Tommi Mayers; Narine Yegiyan

TOP STUDENT-LED PAPER

Effects of AI Relational Communication on Enhancing Relationship Perceptions and Persuasive Outcomes in a Health Promotion Context

Yoo Jung Oh; Diane Dagyong Kim; Jingwen Zhang

Building Resilience to Misinformation: A Cross-National Development of the Digital Media and Information Literacy Scale (DMILS)

Sijia Qian; Cuihua Shen; Huiyi WANG; Hichang Cho

Individual Patterns in the Association Between Social Media Use and Adolescent Well-being

Jane Shawcroft; Samantha Vigil; Drew P. Cingel; Sarah Coyne

Negative news posts are less prevalent and generate lower user engagement than non-negative news posts across six countries

Szymon Talaga; Dominik Batorski; Erin Wertz; Magdalena Wojcieszak

A Machine Classifier to Assess News Article Quality

Szymon Talaga; Erin Wertz; Dominik Batorski; Magdalena Wojcieszak

Is My Life Linked to the Fate of My Racial Group? Modeling Communication Effects on Citizen Participation through Perceptions of Linked Fate.

Joel Sandoval Valdez; Zhengyi Liang; Muhammad Rasul; Seungsu Lee; Jaeho Cho

Mimicking the Star: How Celebrity Activism Reverberates to Fans through Parasocial and Affective Political Discourse Dynamics.

Joel Sandoval Valdez; Jeanette B. Ruiz

Rewriting the Academic Script: Media Representation and Anticipated College Belonging Among Latino Adolescents

Joel Sandoval Valdez; Jeanette B. Ruiz

Correlates to News Non-Use: a Systematic Review

Erin Wertz; Magdalena Wojcieszak

Narrative as a Time Machine: Cultivating Future Self-Continuity for Effective Climate Change Response

XINZHU WU; Meng Chen; Jilong Wang; Ke Liu

The Attentional Mechanism of Short Videos’ Persuasive Effects

Haoning Xue; Jingwen Zhang; Berit Oxley

YouTube Recommendation Algorithms Have Systematic Right-Leaning Bias: A Longitudinal Audit

Miner Ye; Muhammad Haroon; Magdalena Wojcieszak

Revealing Hatred Under Humor: Multimodel Analysis of Hateful Political Memes on Reddit

Miner Ye; Wonjeong Jo; Magdalena Wojcieszak

Evaluative Space and Cyber-Bystander Effect: How Motivational Activation Influences Attitude Stability and Intervention Likelihood

Narine Yegiyan; Haojian Li; Bo Feng; Yiyun Zhang

From “Just Jokes” To “Biased Truth”: How Politician-featured Memes Shape Perceptions Of Political (Mis)information

Jiyoung Yeon; Yilang Peng; Yingdan Lu; Salman Khawar; Cuihua Shen

A Mirror of Reality? Visual Representations of Female Politicians in the EU Across Search Engines and Generative AI

Dongdong Zhu