Biography
Lichen’s current research interests center on employee voice within digital spaces. She examines why workers voice opinions, remain silent, or dissent in technologically-mediated workplaces and professional communities. Her scholarship aims to bridge the gap between studies of employee communication within the traditional boundaries of organizations and employees’ growing reliance on digital platforms to communicate to both internal and external stakeholders. She is particularly interested in how professionals use digital platforms to network, discuss work-related issues, and share feedback about their organizations. The objectives of her research program can be summarized as: 1) to unravel the connection between platform affordances and online employee discourses; 2) to advance current understandings of employee communication models and identify factors that relate to employee voice behaviors in digital spaces; and 3) to determine the extent to which these employees’ communications influence individuals’ decisions to remain in an organization, as well as their decisions to initiate or restrain organizational change.
Publications
Zhen, L., & Twyman, M. (2024). Do inclusive incentive systems encourage prosocial or competitive behavior in online communities?. New Media & Society. [Online First Publication]. doi: 14614448241243099
Lu, S., & Zhen, L. (2023). From transparency to transactive memory system: How do newsrooms’ GitHub pages shape news outlet credibility?. Digital Journalism. [Online First Publication]. doi: 10.1080/21670811.2023.2216726
Zhen, L., & Chen, W. (2023). Switching power or surviving on the margin? Wanda Group as a case study for understanding network power in China. Chinese Journal of Communication, 3(16). 229–249. doi:10.1080/17544750.2023.2197244
Zhen, L., Curran, N. M., & Galperin, H. (2023). Factors driving teacher selection on online language tutoring platforms: An experiment-based approach. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. [Online First Publication]. doi:10.1080/01434632.2023.2178443
Zhen, L., Yan, B., Tang, J. L., Nan, Y., & Yang, A. (2023). Social network dynamics, bots, and community-based online misinformation spread: Lessons from anti-refugee and COVID-19 misinformation cases. The Information Society, 39(1). 17–34. doi: 10.1080/01972243.2022.2139031
Tang, J. L., Yan, B., Chang, H. H. C., Nan, Y., Zhen, L., & Yang, A. (2023). Policy communication in times of public health crisis: Longitudinal network modeling of US politician-health agency interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Computers in Human Behavior. [Online First Publication]. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2023.107922
Zhen, L. (2021). Social coding platform as digital enclave: A case study of protesting “996” on GitHub. International Journal of Communication, 15. 886–904. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/15366
Education
Ph.D., Communication, University of Southern California
M.A., Media Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
B.A., Broadcast Journalism, Wuhan University