Mingyue Zha ’27 arrived at Dartmouth ready for research.
Within days of meeting professor Herbert Chang '18 at the Quantitative Social Science open house, Zha was already discussing research ideas with him—and by the end of her second year, they had co-authored an award-winning academic paper.
Their research applies game theory and network analysis to examine how gender disparities emerge and persist in online gaming communities—both in the ways creators collaborate and in how audiences engage with their content.
“This dual lens allowed us to critically examine both creator-side dynamics and audience-side amplification, shedding light on the complexity of gender inequalities in attention economies,” Zha explains.
They found that gender inequalities shape how creators collaborate, with variations depending on the game’s genre, while disparities in audience interactions persist across all genres.
The paper was honored this spring with the Top Paper Award in the Game Studies Division at the 2025 International Communication Association conference—one of the field’s most competitive and prestigious gatherings. The honor is especially noteworthy since the award is open to both faculty and students.
“Within the span of six months, Ming taught herself to code in Python, scraped more than 45,000 videos and six million comments from YouTube, and we had the beginning of a paper,” says Chang.
Zha presented the paper in June at the ICA conference in Denver and the International Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference on Web and Social Media in Copenhagen.
For Zha, sharing her work on international stages was both surreal and deeply affirming.
“I was honored to be recognized alongside incredibly innovative scholars,” she says. “At a time when inclusive, interdisciplinary research is increasingly under scrutiny and pressure, presenting equity-focused work felt like an act of resistance—and a reminder that it belongs in global academic conversations.”
Zha, a quantitative social science major and chemistry minor on the premed track, was recently named a Stamps Scholar. The program includes funding for a two-year independent research project in which she will work with Chang to explore how digital social networks and AI chatbots respond to issues related to social anxiety.
“I’m especially interested in how digital platforms can support people who might struggle with traditional forms of social interaction,” says Zha, whose career goal is to become a psychiatrist. “The next chapter of my research will explore how we construct meaning, care, and support across digital and human systems.”
This next phase of research not only deepens her academic focus, it also extends the mentorship with Chang that began in 2023—when Zha started at Dartmouth as a first-year student and Chang began his first year on the faculty.
“Ming is one of the best students I've ever worked with—intellectually and creatively—in addition to bringing incredible energy and being a leader in my research group,” says Chang.
“I think Professor Chang really took a chance on me,” says Zha. “He picked up on my curiosity and enthusiasm towards research. I had little prior experience with computational methods or data analysis, but he offered guidance, resources, and mentorship while giving me the freedom to shape the direction of the project.”
Chang recalls the impact of his own Dartmouth mentors—including mathematics professor Feng Fu and English and creative writing professor Alexander Chee—as formative to his academic path. “I really benefited from amazing mentorship during my time here,” Chang says. “I always had the sense they trusted me and helped me develop my interests, so I try my best to pass that along.”
Zha is eager to keep forging connections across disciplines, with empathy as her guide.
This is “just the beginning of my research journey,” she says.