Dr Fengmin Yan holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin. She completed her public relations education at Sun Yat‐sen University. Her research interests include media effects on society, cognitive psychology of communication, and research methods in communications studies, and her doctoral research focused on the media construction of social reality and image formation. She is currently investigating topics regarding social media and civic engagement in China and cognitive mechanisms of misinformation processing.