28/11/2025 (Friday) 13:00-14:00 E21-G002
From Scrolls to Clicks: Understanding Attention and Persuasion in the Short Video Era
Abstract:
Short-video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels have become major sources of news and information, yet we know little about how their audiovisual features shape how people pay attention to, process, and engage with the video content. In this talk, I explore how the sensation value of short videos influences attention, engagement, and persuasion, drawing on evidence from large-scale video data analyses, survey experiments, and eye-tracking studies. Across these projects, I find that while highly sensational videos capture attention, they do not always persuade viewers, as too much or too little stimulation can actually reduce message processing and attitude change. These findings highlight the trade-off between capturing attention and facilitating cognitive engagement, offering implications for researchers, creators, and platforms to design more effective and responsible short-video communication.
Bio:
Haoning Xue is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. Her computational and experimental research focuses on how people seek, process, and evaluate information in the emerging technology-mediated environments. Her work has been published in leading communication journals and has received the ICA/NCA Health Communication Division Dissertation Award and multiple best paper awards. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Google Cloud, and multiple internal funding programs.
