Chou, Y. (CM) – Exploring Future AI-Mediated Health Creator–Audience Interactions on Social Media: Transparency, Care, and Accountability

Health and wellness content creators play an important role in shaping how people receive and engage with health information on social media. Beyond delivering information, they also convey care, build trust, and sustain relationships with audiences. As generative AI (GenAI) becomes increasingly integrated into creator work, existing research has examined AI disclosure, AI-mediated communication, and health communication more broadly, but less is known about how AI should be integrated into health creator–audience interactions, where informational support, emotional care, accountability, and relational meaning are often intertwined. My dissertation examines AI-mediated health creator–audience interaction through four connected studies. Study 1 used mock-up interfaces and semi-structured interviews with 16 Instagram users who interact with health and wellness creators to examine audience perceptions of GenAI use disclosure. Study 2 conducts co-design sessions with social media health creators to explore how creators might communicate human labor and personal contribution in a future social media environment where AI-generated content is widespread. Study 3 extends the focus to audience-invoked AI in public comment sections by scraping and analyzing comment data from platfrom X, examining how audiences invoke AI agents through @-mentions in response to health creator posts, and how these public AI invocations may shape information credibility, accountability, community discussion, and social dynamics. Finally, Study 4 will synthesize insights from the first three studies and translate them into interactive prototypes. By examining how audiences and health creators interact with these prototypes, this study will explore future forms of AI-mediated health creator–audience interaction and broader community engagement on social media.

Event Host: Yuling Ruby Chou, Ph.D. Student, Computational Media

Advisor: Christina Chung

Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94127645445?pwd=dmlMkwbknDZE9pbklAC9jhwDTZPbVL.1

Passcode: 190739