
PRSSA faculty co-advisor
Leping You
Leping You received her Master's and Doctorate degrees in Mass Communication specialized in Public Relations from the University of Florida.
You’s research interests center in: corporate political advocacy and civic engagement on social media; and value congruence in corporate-consumer relationship management.
You’s research focuses on answering three overarching questions in strategic communication:
1) What factors that make consumers believe the company is acting in the public interest rather than self-interest?
2) How the corporate political advocacy efforts motivate consumers to express their political ideology by engaging in collective actions on social media? and
3) What are the underlying mechanisms behind such examples of digital civic engagement?
You’s work has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including Public Relations Review, Telematics and Informatics, Public Relations Journal, International Journal of Business Communication, among others. As a co-principal investigator, You’s research has been funded by the Arthur W. Page Center Research Grant from Penn State University ($5,000), the Insight Development Grants (CAD $75,000) and the Partnership Engage Grants (CAD $25,000) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
At Miami, You teaches courses such as Strategic Communication Campaigns, Managing Crisis and Reputation, and Communication in Everyday Life.
Before pursuing her doctorate, You worked at TransPerfect's life sciences department at the global headquarters in New York and its APAC headquarters in Hong Kong as a project coordinator/manager. There, she managed clinical communication projects for pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Novartis, and Gilead Sciences.