Mike Yao is a Professor of Digital Media and the Head of the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising in the College of Media. He teaches a digital media & marketing course at the Gies College of Business as an affiliated professor of business administration. Mike’s scholarly work focuses on digitally mediated social behavior and human-technology interaction. He is an Associate Editor of a flagship journal in communication research since 2018 and an editorial board member of two media journals for the past eight years, Professor Yao received his Ph.D. in communications in 2006 from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Mike 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. 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.
