About

Leona Yi-Fan Su is an Associate Professor of Advertising at the College of Media. She holds a PhD in Mass Communications and an MPA in Public Affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a MS in Chemistry from National Taiwan University and a BS in Applied Chemistry from National Chiao-Tung University. Dr. Su is a faculty affiliate at the Institute of Communications Research, the Center for Digital Agriculture, and the Informatics Programs. She serves on the editorial board of Environmental Communication and has reviewed for the National Science Foundation and over 20 journals. Her research examines the interplay between media and society, with a particular focus on how social media and new technologies influence human communication and social behaviors in the context of scientific and health topics. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as New Media & Society, Communication & Society, Science Communication, and Health Communication. She is currently a co-principal investigator on an NSF-funded project exploring the use of humor in science communication on social media and leads a project analyzing tweets about emerging food technologies to understand branding strategies and public opinion. Dr. Su’s key research areas include social norms, humor, incivility, social media, engagement metrics, virtual assistants, big data, machine learning, brand communication, and science, health, and environmental communication. Her methodological approaches involve surveys, experiments, and computational text analytics. She is actively engaged in interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects and encourages student involvement in her research activities.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Social psychology
• Political Science
• Business
• Pedagogy
• Epistemology
• Economics
• Engineering
• Marketing
• Advertising

Selected publications

• Transforming social media sentiment analysis with generative large language models: A case study from the cultured meat debate

  Food Quality and Preference · 2026-05-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Wit meets wisdom: the relationship between satire and anthropomorphic humor on scientists' likability and legitimacy

  Journal of Science Communication · 2025-03-10 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We conducted an experiment examining public response to scientists' use of different types of humor (satire, anthropomorphism, and a combination of the two) to communicate about AI on Twitter/X. We found that humor led to increased perceptions of humor, measured as increased mirth. Specifically, we found that combining anthropomorphism and satire elicited the highest levels of mirth. Further, reported mirth was positively associated with the perceived likability of the scientist who posted the content. Our findings indicate that mirth mediated the effects of the humor types on publics' perceptions that the scientist on social media was communicating information in an appropriate and legitimate way. Overall, this suggests that scientists can elicit mirth by using combining satire and anthropomorphic humor, which can enhance publics' perceptions of scientists. Importantly, publics' responses to harsh satire were not examined. Caution should be exercised when using satire due to potential backfire effects.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conversational Agents and Charitable Behavioral Intentions:The Roles of Modality, Communication Style, and Perceived Anthropomorphism

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Conversational agents and charitable behavioral intentions: The roles of modality, communication style, and perceived anthropomorphism

  International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · 2025-09-03 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  • Voice-based (vs. text-based) CAs do not boost charitable behavioral intentions. • Voice-based CAs increase such intentions more if they speak formally. • Text-based CAs increase such intentions more if their messages are informal. • Mindless (vs. mindful) anthropomorphism is more likely to explain users' charitable responses to computers. Conversational agents (CAs) are increasingly utilized by organizations for fundraising and volunteer recruitment. Yet, little is understood about how voice-based CAs could serve these purposes optimally. This experimental study therefore compares voice-based CAs against text-based ones in terms of their ability to foster users’ intentions to make charitable contributions, and investigates the potential mediation of such effects by two dimensions of user-perceived anthropomorphism. Additionally, it examines how a CA’s communication style moderates these effects. It found that, when a voice-based CA employed a formal communication style, mindless anthropomorphism was a significant mediator of its positive association with charitable behavioral intentions. Conversely, when employing an informal communication style, a text-based CA elicited significantly higher levels of mindful anthropomorphism, and also was positively linked to charitable behavioral intentions. These findings expand our theoretical understanding of how CA modalities influence people’s moral responses toward computers; how this effect could be impaired, or strengthened, by different communication styles; and the underlying mechanisms of two dimensions of anthropomorphism. Practical implications are also discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding Knowledge Among White, Black, and Hispanic Audiences: Media Attention and Inequities in Factual and Perceived Knowledge

  Mass Communication & Society · 2025-01-03 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Support for regulation of enhanced geothermal systems research: examining the role of familiarity, credibility, and social endorsement

  Geothermal Energy · 2025-04-29

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are a new technology with the potential to expand renewable energy generation. Understanding how information about EGS affects people’s opinions and support for its development is critical for its implementation. The present study examines how social endorsement cues (SEC; e.g., number of likes and shares) and perceived familiarity with EGS might influence audience considerations. We found that SEC significantly influenced perceived credibility of a blog post. Perceived familiarity with EGS moderated the relationship between perceived credibility and support for regulation of academic and commercial EGS research. However, there were differences in the mediating effect of perceived credibility for support for regulation of commercial, compared to academic, research. If producers of commercial EGS want greater public support, engaging SEC on public platforms could be a promising path forward.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Examining the Use of Aggressive Satirical Humor on Perceptions of Trustworthiness in Communication About Renewable Energy

  Science Communication · 2025-07-07

  article

  We examined the effects of gentle and harsh satire on perceived trustworthiness of a scientist in an audio clip. Using a three-condition between-subjects survey experiment ( N = 723), we found that respondents in the experimental (vs. control) conditions reported greater perceived aggression, which was negatively associated with perceived trustworthiness of the scientist. The negative effects of the audio clips with satire on perceived trustworthiness were mediated by experienced mirth. Our results offer evidence that scientists who use satire may be seen as less trustworthy than those who do not, likely because of the aggression perceived in the jokes.

  PublisherDOI

• Cultivating engagement: a social media analysis of vertical farming brands’ communication strategies

  Journal of Marketing Analytics · 2025-07-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Novel foods offer a promising solution to future sustainability challenges. However, they have been slow to attract attention due to the usual liabilities of newness and smallness faced by new food companies, and also slow to achieve acceptance, due to potential consumers’ skepticism about their naturalness. Using vertical farming (VF) as a case study, this paper identifies the diverse topics contained in VF brands’ tweets and classifies them using a content typology based on previous categorization frameworks. It then examines how each type of VF brand content contributes to volumes of “likes” and retweets. Our findings show that, as compared to a reference condition (educational content), relational content and corporate social responsibility content on Twitter were associated with significantly higher numbers of both these engagement metrics. As well as providing actionable insights for novel-food startups seeking to improve their public attention and acceptance, these findings extend theoretical understandings of user engagement with varied social media content.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Communicating About Renewable Energy With Satire: The Influence of Gentle and Harsh Humor Tones on Perceived Message Credibility and Information Reliance

  Science Communication · 2024-11-13 · 2 citations

  article

  Satire is often used in science communication, but it is unclear how it influences perceptions of message credibility and reliance on the information. We examine how two satire types (gentle, harsh) influence perceived message credibility and information reliance, which we define as using the information in discussions or for attitudinal and behavioral changes. Using a partial mediation model, we found no effects of gentle satire, but harsh satire negatively influenced message credibility, which was positively linked to information reliance. Contrary to previous research, we found that the satire type matters. Practical implications include being cautious when using harsh satire.

  PublisherDOI

• A longitudinal analysis of usage patterns, topics, and information dissemination related to five names for cultured meat on social media

  Current Research in Food Science · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Cultured-meat products, which have been hailed for their potential to address multiple drawbacks of traditional meat production, have received regulatory approval in countries including Singapore and the United States and are experiencing rapid market growth. The name of any product could influence public perceptions of it, and thereby affect consumption; and how cultured-meat products should be labeled remains the subject of debate. However, conducting large-scale consumer tests aimed at understanding the association between public perceptions of such products and the various proposed labels/names for them would be time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, this longitudinal research project on how five common cultured-meat labels have been used, and the associations between particular labels and public perceptions, instead relied on 424,382 relevant messages posted or retweeted on Twitter/X between July 2010 and December 2022. This novel approach enabled us to identify a dynamic interplay between label choice and public perceptions, and that each label was associated with a unique set of topics. Also, using social-network analysis, we were able to delineate the structures of cultured meat-related retweet networks and identify the key influencers within them. Our analysis revealed the importance of labeling within the challenging process of arriving at a consensus about what cultured meat should be called.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dominique Brossard

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  26 shared

• Dietram A. Scheufele

  24 shared

• Michael A. Xenos

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  18 shared

• Michael A. Cacciatore

  University of Georgia

  15 shared

• Sara K. Yeo

  University of Utah

  14 shared

• Meaghan McKasy

  Utah Valley University

  7 shared

• Jennifer Shiyue Zhang

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  7 shared

• Kristin Runge

  5 shared

Labs

• Charles H. Sandage Department of AdvertisingPI

Education

• Ph.D., Mass Communications

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Other, Public Affairs

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

• M.S., Chemistry

  National Taiwan University

• B.S., Applied Chemistry

  National Chiao-Tung University

Awards & honors

• Sandage Scholar in Advertising Research