Yuan (Eric) Hsiao
Sociology | Statistics & Data Science, Yale University

I am an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Statistics & Data Science (secondary appointment) at Yale University. I received my PhD in Sociology and MS in Statistics from the University of Washington. Trained in both sociology and statistics, I am a networks scholar who works across data sources and methods. I combine large-scale digital trace data, qualitative data, administrative records, survey experiments, and historical archives to study how network relationships form and how they shape collective outcomes. My research is deliberately mixed-methods, pairing computational and statistical analysis of large-scale patterns with survey experiments and qualitative inquiry that reveal the mechanisms behind them. A current methodological interest is AI-moderated interviews: using conversational AI to conduct in-depth interviews at scale, bringing the depth of qualitative inquiry to the scale of computational research.

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Substantively, my work spans digital media, social networks, collective behavior, and health. I bring a network perspective to a wide range of online and offline social processes, including how social media networks contribute to political mobilization, how gang members navigate online and offline conflict, how personal relationships shape the spread of religion, and how community networks affect health behavior. A central theme is how large-scale social change, such as the rise of social media, reshapes how people form network ties, and how those ties in turn shape collective phenomena such as political mobilization.

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My work has appeared in American Sociological Review, Political Communication, Sociological Methods & Research, Social Networks, Social Forces, New Media & Society, Communication Research, and Journal of Computational Social Science, among other outlets.