Welcome to the homepage of Yongren Shi!
I’m an assistant professor in the School of Sociology at the University of Arizona. My principal line of research focuses on the interplay of culture, social groups, and social networks.
My research is guided by two central questions:
- at the group level, how do social groups develop distinct cultures?
- at the individual level, how do people develop and internalize culture and use it to guide their actions?
In my research, I use large-scale digital trace data and a range of quantitative and computational methods, including large language models, network analysis, computational textual analysis, agent-based modeling, machine learning, online experiments, and survey analysis. My work has been supported by multiple research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF 2048670, 1409593, 1922906, and 2420405), and covered by dozens of popular media outlets including Wired, The Guardian, BBC News, Huffington Post, and LA Times. I received the Outstanding Article Publication Award and Dissertation-in-Progress Award from the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
I received my PhD in sociology from Cornell University. Before joining the school, I worked as a postdoc researcher at Yale Institute for Network Science and an assistant professor at the University of Iowa.
If you’re considering doctoral studies at the University of Arizona or a research collaboration, you’re encouraged to get in touch!
Selected Publications
Shi, Yongren, Regan Smock and Steve Hitlin. 2025. “Moral Disagreement in Everyday Life: An Inductive, Structural Model of Moral Order” Social Science Research Volume 127, 103139 link
Shi, Yongren, Kevin Kiley, and Freda B. Lynn. 2025. “Beyond Statistical Variables: Examining the Duality of Persons and Groups in Structuring Opinion Space.” Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts Volume 108, 101967 link
Shi, Yongren, Kevin Kiley, and Stephanie M. DiPietro. 2024. “To the Extreme: A Descriptive Exploration of the Rise of a Radical Culture in a Misogynist Digital Community.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World Volume 10: 1-18 link
Lynn, Freda B., Yongren Shi, and Kevin Kiley. 2024. “Intersectional Group Agreement on the Occupational Order.” Social Psychology Quarterly Vol. 88(1) 135-148. link
Shi, Yongren, Fedor Dokshin, Michael Genkin and Matthew E. Brashears. 2017. “A Member Saved is a Member Earned? The RecruitmentRetention Trade-Off and Organizational Strategies for Membership Growth.” American Sociological Review 82(2): 407 - 434. link
Feng Shi, Yongren Shi, Fedor Dokshin, Michael W. Macy and James Evans. 2017. “Millions of Online Book Co-purchases Reveal Partisan Differences in the Consumption of Science.” Nature Human Behaviour link (Cover Article) (first two authors have equal contribution).
DellaPosta, Daniel, Yongren Shi and Michael W. Macy. 2015. “Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes?” American Journal of Sociology 120(5):1473-1511. link
Manuscripts
Shi, Yongren, Edo Airoldi, and Nicholas Christakis. “Multiplex Networks Provide Structural Pathways for Social Contagion in Rural Social Networks” link
Shi, Yongren and Kevin Kiley. “Culture from Conversation: How Conversation Transition Structures Shape Online Communities” link