COLLEGE PARK — Dr. Shuning Lu will join the faculty at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism in Fall 2025 as an assistant professor in media, democracy and technology, Dean Rafael Lorente announced Thursday.
Lu comes to Merrill College from North Dakota State University, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication. She received her doctoral degree from The University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication.
Lu’s research revolves around the intersection between journalism and social media. She uses experiments, surveys and computational social science methods to examine the emerging audience behavior and shifting journalistic practices in the digital environment in both the U.S. and China.
“Dr. Lu’s research into online discourse, especially incivility and credibility on social media, will build on Merrill College’s audience engagement, information resilience and algorithmic accountability work,” Lorente said. “We are excited to add her research and teaching to the ranks of our stellar faculty.”
At Merrill College, she will teach courses in social media content creation, audience engagement and analytics.
Lu has published more than two dozen peer-reviewed articles in the field of journalism and communication. She has secured grants from Qualtrics, Social Science Research Council, The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, among others. She has received multiple Top Paper Awards from the International Communication Association, National Communication Association and AEJMC.
Before coming to the U.S., Lu worked as a videographer and photographer for several major events, including the Special Olympics, Shanghai Book Fair and World Expo. Her passion for journalism began in middle school when she started hosting a radio show. Lu was born and raised in Shanghai, China.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land
joshland@umd.edu
301-405-1321