My research comprises three broad areas in digital environments: self-presentation, meaningfulness, and (meta)cognition.
I study online self-presentation from the perspectives of message senders and audiences.
I am interested in how message senders influence their own cognitions and emotions when they share things about themselves (e.g., past experiences, opinions on various issues) on social media. What are the mechanisms that reinforce or undermine these self-effects? Additionally, how do message senders perform authenticity when online?
Where audiences are concerned, I am interested in how people construe the extent to which another person’s online self-presentation (or even an organization’s assertions about itself) is authentic. Relatedly, how do audiences understand and interpret the need for message senders to perform authenticity in order to be perceived as genuinely authentic?
My older work in this domain deals with (perceived) interactivity in dyadic online chats and static social media posts.
Showing that one is confident, successful, having a good time, or good looking has become the norm on social media. People appear to lead perfect lives. But can these near-perfect online self-presentations ironically lead to negative outcomes: perhaps feelings of inauthenticity for a message creator, or envy in an audience member?
This line of research has several aims. First, it seeks to examine what it means to self-present meaningfully in digital environments. Second, it strives to learn more about how media content that is thematically non-hedonic (such as those related to transience, melancholy, nature, art, gratitude, or bouncing back from failures) can be perceived as meaningful.
When people attempt to learn something (e.g., a scientific topic, more about another person), their own thoughts and feelings about the learning process may influence their subjective judgments concerning the learning outcome. For instance, a cognitively fluent learning process may engender greater (undue) confidence in one’s knowledge than a disfluent learning process. Even though these subjective judgments may occasionally be inaccurate, people nevertheless use them to determine how much time and effort they should put into learning.
My research in this domain explores how the way people think/feel about their web-based learning process (e.g., how they use generative AI or search engines) can influence their perceptions of their own knowledge or of their own intellectual abilities.
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Wong, S. S., Wan, A. L., & Lew, Z. (2025). Is “Good vibes only” really good? Investigating perceptions of toxic positivity on social media. New Media & Society. Advance online publication. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Looi, J. (2026). Disclosing Vulnerability on Social Media: Effects on Perceived Authenticity and Interpersonal Attraction. Computers in Human Behavior, 181, 108986.
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Lew, Z., & Looi, J. (2025). Protective self-presentation for audiences with interdependent self-construals on ephemeral platforms: The case of humblebragging. Media Psychology, 28(6), 789-816. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Flanagin, A. J. (2025). Toxic positivity on social media: The drawbacks and benefits of sharing positive (but potentially platitudinous) messages online. New Media & Society, 27(5), 2972-2995. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Yee, A. Z. (2024). The awareness, acceptance, and appreciation of transience in the domain of eudaimonic media experiences. New Media & Society, 28(1), 76-98. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Flanagin, A. J. (2024). The influence of feeling-of-knowing on metacognitive processes in the digital media environment. Journal of Media Psychology, 37(3), 158-169. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Stohl, C. (2024). News/discussion values and interactivity in corporate social responsibility communication via social media. Management Communication Quarterly, 38(4), 775-800. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Flanagin, A. J. (2024). Self-effects and public commitment on social media: Testing the cognitive and social influences of sending messages on message senders. Computers in Human Behavior, 156, 108200. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Stohl, C. (2023). What makes people willing to comment on social media posts? The roles of interactivity and perceived contingency in online corporate social responsibility communication. Communication Monographs, 90(1), 1-24. [view]
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Flanagin, A. J., & Lew, Z. (2023). Individual inferences in web-based information environments: How cognitive processing fluency, information access, active search behaviors, and task competency affect metacognitive and task judgments. Media Psychology, 26(1), 17-35. [view]
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Lew, Z., & Walther, J. B. (2023). Social scripts and expectancy violations: Evaluating communication with human or AI chatbot interactants. Media Psychology, 26(1), 1-16. [view]
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Walther, J. B., Lew, Z., Edwards, A. L., & Quick, J. (2022). The effect of social approval on perceptions following social media message sharing applied to fake news. Journal of Communication, 72(6), 661-674. [view]
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Walther, J. B., & Lew, Z. (2022). Self-transformation online through alternative presentations of self: a review, critique, and call for research. Annals of the International Communication Association, 46(3), 135-158. [view]
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Lew, Z., Walther, J. B., Pang, A., & Shin, W. (2018). Interactivity in online chat: Conversational contingency and response latency in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(4), 201-221. [view]
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Pang, A., Shin, W., Lew, Z., & Walther, J. B. (2018). Building relationships through dialogic communication: Organizations, stakeholders, and computer-mediated communication. Journal of Marketing Communications, 24(1), 68-82. [view]