Bio

Minjie Li is an assistant professor at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research stands at the intersection of multicultural advertising, prosocial strategic communication, activism, implicit bias, emerging technologies/platforms, media inclusivity, and media psychology in relation to social change. He has applied diverse quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine critical issues within the contexts of health disparities, brand activism, LGBTQ movements, racial inequality, influencer/digital marketing communication, among others. He has published his scholarship in journals like International Journal of Advertising, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Digital Journalism, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Journalism Practice, etc.

For his research, Minjie has received 6 top paper awards as well as several prestigious external grants and fellowships from organizations such as the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), American Academy of Advertising (AAA), the National Communication Association (NCA), and so forth. His commitment to this line of research has been recognized by being selected as an NCA Doctoral Honors fellow and a USC Annenberg Diversity in Media and Culture fellow. In recognition of his teaching, AEJMC’s Mass Communication and Society Division has named him the first-place winner of the Promising Professor Award.

Minjie has led as the Head of AEJMC LGBTQ Interest Group. Also, he serves on the International Communication’s (ICA) association-wide Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Access (IDEA) Standing Committee.

Prior to his graduate studies, Minjie worked for the Olympics Official Website and other digital outlets as an interactive designer and digital journalist. His digital design work has been published by the Peter Lang Publishing and won an award from the Best of Digital national competition at AEJMC. During his time at LSU, he served as the manager for the Media Effects Lab (MEL) and created MEL’s website and visual identity. At the same time, he was the technology director and a core team member of the LSU Cold Case Project, an effort to bring closure to unsolved Civil Rights-era, Klan-related homicides in Louisiana and southern Mississippi. He has actively engaged in and presented at various national and international conferences (e.g. AEJMC, ICA, AAA, NCA, TS, SPSA).