Sai Wang

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University

Cyberbullying often occurs in the presence of bystanders, and these individuals play an influential role in easing negative outcomes of cyberbullying by engaging in intervening behavior. This study identifies and examines adult bystanders’ personal victimization experiences with cyberbullying as well as gender and empathic distress as key predictor...

The growing adoption of artificial intelligence in journalism has dramatically changed the way news is produced. Despite the recent proliferation of research on automated journalism, debate continues about how audiences perceive and evaluate news purportedly written by machines compared to the work of human authors. Based on a review of 30 experime...

Drawing upon the social identity model of deindividuation effects, this study investigated the effects of intergroup relations and discursive quality on individuals’ responses to comments that challenge their existing beliefs on news websites. A two-session online experiment with a 2 (group membership: in-group vs. out-group) × 2 (comment tone: civ...

In an online experiment, 1,500 adult residents from the United States, Hong Kong, and China were exposed to four variations of a dilemma that required a driver in an autonomous vehicle or the vehicle itself to make a passenger-protective (i.e., protecting the vehicle passenger by sacrificing a pedestrian) or a pedestrian-protective (i.e., protectin...

The rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has enabled AI agents to take on various roles as communicators, such as virtual assistants, robot journalists, and AI doctors. This study meta-analyzed 121 randomized experimental studies (N = 53,977) that compared the effects of AI and human agency on persuasion outcomes, including p...

Bandwagon cues are system-aggregated information about crowd behavior or peer endorsement displayed on a web interface (e.g., the number of likes on a Facebook post). Despite the recent proliferation of research on the effect of bandwagon cues on credibility perceptions, a comprehensive meta-analytic review of this effect has not yet been performed...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly integrated into content moderation to detect and remove hate speech on social media. An online experiment (N = 478) was conducted to examine how moderation agents (AI vs. human vs. human–AI collaboration) and removal explanations (with vs. without) affect users' perceptions and acceptance of remova...

The rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has enabled AI agents to take on various roles as communicators, such as virtual assistants, robot journalists, and AI doctors. This study meta-analyzed 121 randomized experimental studies (N = 53,977) that compared the effects of AI and human agency on persuasion outcomes, including p...

Drawing upon the hostile media effect, this study examined how perceived media bias in covering genetically modified (GM) food influences individuals’ risk–benefit assessments of it and their food consumption behaviors. The results of a nationally representative survey (N = 1364) showed that individuals seeing media coverage as more biased in favor...

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized user experience with objects. Things can perform social roles and convey persuasive messages to users, posing an important research question for communication and human-computer interaction researchers: What are the factors and underlying mechanisms that...

Designing corrective messages to debunk misinformation online is an important practice toward ending the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic as health-related misinformation has proliferated on social media misguiding disease prevention measures. Despite research on the use of statistical evidence and message modality in persuasion, the effects...

Purpose Guided by the frameworks of the technology acceptance model, uses and gratifications theory and the information systems success model, this study develops and validates an adoption model for the Internet of Things (IoT). Design/methodology/approach The measurement and research models are statistically validated via a confirmatory factor an...

An online experiment was conducted to examine the impact of evidence type (evidence type: statistical vs. non-statistical) and presentation mode (textual-only vs. pictorial-only vs. textual-plus-pictorial) on individuals’ responses to corrective information about COVID-19 on social media. The results indicated that corrective information backed by...

Cyberbullying often happens in the presence of bystanders whose behaviors play a key role in changing dynamics of the situation. To examine the factors influencing cyberbystander likelihood of intervening in cyberbullying on social media, a 2 (degree of cyberbullying severity: high vs low) × 2 (level of interpersonal similarity: high vs low) betwee...

Misinformation on social media pertaining to COVID-19 poses a great threat to public health. The active correction of misinformation by social media users and an understanding of the drivers of such behavior can help solve this ongoing issue. Drawing on the influence of presumed influence model and cognitive appraisal theory, an online experiment (...

Studies have shown that uncivil comments under an online news article may result in biased perceptions of the news content, and explicit comment moderation has the potential to mitigate this adverse effect. Using an online experiment, the present study extends this line of research with the examination of how interface cues signalling different age...

An online experiment was conducted to examine how the presumed effects of uncivil news comments on other users would influence perceivers’ intention to engage in restrictive or corrective counteractive measures. The results showed that exposure to uncivil comments reduced social desirability and heightened the presumed impact of the comments on oth...

The present study examines how anonymity and incivility influence interpersonal evaluations and message persuasion in the context of online user comments. The results of two experiments showed that the lack of identity cues undermined the perceived credibility of commenters and the persuasiveness of public discussion in comment forums. Additionally...

Purpose: In the context of celebrity endorsement, this study aims to demonstrate that the ways in which consumers adopt moral reasoning strategies (i.e. rationalization, decoupling and coupling) are largely dependent on the severity (i.e. high vs low) of celebrity transgressions and the degree to which they personally identify with the celebrity....

This study seeks to extend the emerging body and scope of research on consumers' attitudinal and behavioral responses to online consumer reviews by examining the role of message content characteristics. From this perceptive, this research broadens the understanding and importance of message characteristics to the persuasiveness of online consumer r...