1. W&L Business Administration Professor Awarded Mednick Memorial Fellowship

By Brian Laubscher
September 5, 2024

Lingshu Hu, assistant professor of business administration at Washington and Lee University, was awarded the 2024 Mednick Memorial Fellowship from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges.

The fellowship, which is designed to encourage the professional development of college and university teachers and improve their academic competence through research and advanced study, carries a $2,000 stipend to assist in research and scholarship.

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to (Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics) Dean Rob Straughan for nominating me for this fellowship and to Leslie Dixon (assistant director of grants and sponsored research) for her invaluable assistance with the application process," said Hu. "I also appreciate the fellowship committee's time and effort in reviewing and approving my application. This fellowship means a great deal to me, as it will enable me to travel to Seattle this year to present my research at the INFORMS annual meeting."

Hu's research examines the curvilinear impact of politicians' negative expressions and intergroup communications on their popularity and likability on X (formerly Twitter). The study will also delve into how political partisanship and intergroup communication - encompassing dialogues with members of one's own political faction and those of opposing parties - moderate the effects of sentiment.

"The capacity to capture attention on social media holds paramount importance for public figures, with these platforms serving as pivotal arenas for exerting societal influence and accruing social and economic advantages," said Hu. "While the utilization of different sentiments to attract public attention has been extensively explored across social media, previous studies have predominantly treated sentiment effects as linear phenomena, focusing on individual message units and overlooking the cumulative and nonlinear dynamics of information dissemination."

Hu joined the W&L faculty in 2021 and, in addition to teaching business administration, he serves as a core faculty member in the data science program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in broadcast journalism from the Communication University of Zhejiang (China), a Master of Science in gender, media and culture from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a Master of Science in computer science from the University of Missouri and a Ph.D. in computational journalism, also from the University of Missouri.

Established in 1952, the VFIC aims to advance the distinctive values and strengths of the 17 colleges across Virginia that make up its consortium. This is accomplished by securing financial support, increasing visibility, facilitating innovative and collaborative programs and supporting initiatives that ensure personalized educational experiences remain an affordable choice for tomorrow's citizen leaders.

The Maurice L. Mednick Memorial was created in 1967 in honor of a young Norfolk industrialist who died from accidental causes and whose family and business associates wished to perpetuate his name by establishing a memorial that would emphasize his and the donors' strong interest in higher education.

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