Ongoing…

• Exploring AI Fortune-Telling: User Interactions, Interpretations, and Meanings
  • with Austin Toombs, Xinran Peng
• Lee, Hansen & Zhang, Xinyun & Liu, Liming. (2026). "It Gives Me Something to Hold on to": Understanding How People Perceive the Role of AI through Spiritual Journeys. 10.2139/ssrn.6970960.

Paper

• Renee Ziqi Zhu, Nan Hu, Lihao Zheng, and Xinyun Zhang. 2026. MERRY: A Community-Based Robot for Enhancing Social Connection of Older Adults. In Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI Companion '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1189–1192. https://doi.org/10.1145/3776734.3794591
• Toombs, A., Park, S., Manion, T., and Zhang, X. (2026) Patterns of everyday care: Translating cultural practices for online communities, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1086

Bachelor’s Thesis

• The Development of Human–Social Chatbot Relationships: A Case Study of Doubao Users
  • Advisor: Prof. Chenyu Dong

Presentations

1. Zhang, X. (2024). Biopolitical Governance and Gender Dynamics in China: An Analysis of the One-Child Policy and the Emergence of “Leftover Women”. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of National Communication Association (NCA), Feminist and Gender Studies Division, New Orleans, LA.
2. Zhang, X. (2024). Empowering and Constraining: The Dual Role of RED in Shaping Queer Women Communities in Digital China. **Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Communication Technology Division, Philadelphia, PA.
3. Zhang, X. (2024, April). Entwined Discourse of Misogyny, Confucian Legacy, and Nationalism: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the 'Leftover Women' in Chinese Online Platform. Paper presented at the annual conference of the British Sociological Association (BSA), virtual conference.
4. Zhang, X. (2024, April). Streaming Selves: Navigating Gender, Labor, and Power in China's Live Streaming Platform. Paper presented at the annual conference of the British Sociological Association (BSA), virtual conference.
5. Zhang, X. (2024). Social Media Use among LGBTQ+ Communities in Everyday Life. Invited talk at the School of Social Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
6. Zhang, X. (2023). Networked Queer Communities: An Affordance Analysis of RED's Role among Queer Women. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Hong Kong Sociological Association (HKSA), Hong Kong, China.