Yaoyao Dai is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. She is a computational social scientist working on information manipulation, populism, authoritarian politics, machine learning, and measurement methods. Her work is interdisciplinary and lies in the intersection of political science, communication, and natural language processing. She has published in top multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Political Communication. She has also published one book, Wolf Warrior Diplomacy and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: From Policy to Podium.
Courses Taught
- Data Science and Text Analysis (ICPSR summer program, University of Michigan)
- Data Science for Politics (UNC Charlotte)
- Political Science Methods (UNC Charlotte)
- Comparative Politics/Global Social Sciences (UNC Charlotte)
- Authoritarian Politics (UNC Charlotte)
Education & Training
- PhD, Pennsylvania State University, 2019
Representative Publications
Yaoyao Dai and Alexander Kustov. 2022. “When Do Politicians Use Populist Rhetoric? Populism as a Campaign Gamble.” Political Communication, 1-22.
Benjamin J. Radford, Yaoyao Dai, Niklas Stoehr, Aaron Schein, Mya Fernandez, Hanif Sajid. 2023. "Estimating Conflict Losses and Reporting Biases." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(34).
Yaoyao Dai and Alexander Kustov. 2024. “The (In)effectiveness of Populist Rhetoric: A Conjoint Experiment of Campaign Messaging..” Political Science Research Methods 12(4), 849 - 856.
Yaoyao Dai and Luwei Luqiu. 2024. "Wolf Warrior Diplomacy and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs: From Policy to Podium." Lexington Books.
Research Interests
- Information manipulation
- Populism
- Authoritarian politics
- Machine learning
- Text as Data
- Measurement methods
