Professor Mike Yao is an internationally renowned speaker and research in the area of Impact of technology on communication and Yao’s research focuses on the social and psychological impacts of interactive digital media. He conducts research and writes on a variety of topics such as online behavior, digital literacy, and computer-mediated communication.
He is also part of Media, Technology, and Social Behavior (MTSB) Research Lab at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign is dedicated to transdisciplinary explorations at the interactions of technology, society, and human communication. We study how people use and interact with new tech, how it shapes our social behaviors, and the ways we communicate in these digital spaces.
His current interest is in how users perceive and manage personal boundaries on social media. Specifically, he examines people’s attitudes, beliefs and self-protective behaviors related to online privacy from a psychosocial perspective by considering the influence of cognitive appraisal, social norm, and individual differences. A second area of Mike’s active research is the psychological impacts of digital media use. He examined the influence of various interactive media, such as video games and social media, on users’ online and offline social behavior. He is currently trying to extend this line of research to developing an integrated theory of digitally mediated human behavior.
