2024

• The International Communication Association’s preconference “Reimagining Digital Activism: Navigating Complexities and Forging New Perspectives”
  Date: 20 June 2024; Venue: Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Center (GCCEC)
• Jun Liu, Keynote Speech at the international symposium “Everyday Forms of Digital Activism and Resistance”, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, April 18-19

2023

Special issue call on “Big Data in Human Behaviour Research: a Contextual Turn?”, Journal of Big Data

2022

• International Conference July 2022
  
  Keynote speech 1. Computational communication research: Challenges and opportunities By Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, University of California, Davis, USA; Chair, Computational Methods Division, the International Communication Association (ICA).
  
  Keynote speech 2. The Power of Babel: How the neglect of linguistic and cultural diversity undermines the advance of computational communication science By Christian Baden, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. 

• Keynote on social media analysis in the European Summer School in Chinese Digital Humanities.

  Jun Liu, the PI of the project, is invited to give a keynote on social media analysis and a tutorial introduction to semantic network analysis in the European Summer School in Chinese Digital Humanities at Aix-Marseille University on June 20-23, 2022. More information please visit the summer school’s website.
• Big Data in Communication Research: A contextual turn? – The 2022 International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) pre-conference 
• Special issue call on Social media and political contention: challenges and opportunities for comparative research, Journal of Information Technology & Politics.
• SAPERE AUDE Lecture 2021 by Jun Liu.
  Time: 4 April 2022, 19.00-21.00. 
  Place: Videnskabernes Selskab, H.C. Andersens Boulevard 35, 1553 København V.
  
  Jun Liu, the PI of the project, is invited to give a Sapere Aude lecture at the Royal Danish Academy. Visit the event’s website for more information about the lecture. 
  
  Watch the Sapere Aude lecture by Jun Liu. 

Donatella della Porta, Professor of Political Science, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy 

Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, USA 

Hazem K Kandil, the Cambridge University Professor of Historical and Political Sociology, University of Cambridge

Lance Bennett, Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor Communication and Professor of Political Science, University of Washington, USA 

Ralph Schroeder, Professor in Social Science of the Internet, University of Oxford 

7. Hoffmann, M., Liu, J., Neumayer, C., & Trenz, H-J. (Eds.) (2024). Social Media and Political Contention: Challenges and Opportunities for Comparative Research (Special Issue). Journal of Information Technology & Politics

Abstract

In this special issue, the authors theoretically, methodologically, and empirically address challenges and opportunities associated with comparative social media analysis in political contention. Actors from civil society, media, and institutional politics use social media to coordinate, mobilise, and communicate, turning public online communication into an arena of conflict that offers researchers valuable windows of observation. In this introduction to the special issue, we systematise comparative perspectives on social media and political contention. We outline the traditional comparative dimensions of space, time, platform, and case; and suggest an approach for comparison within dimensions that are less dependent on the rapidly changing social media environment and more attuned to the interconnection between social media and political contention.

6. Liu, J. (2024). Internet censorship in China : Looking through the lens of categorization. In: Journal of Current Chinese Affairs.

Abstract

Despite the fruitful insights articulated by existing scholarship on internet censorship in China, the lack of a systematic overview of the field not only hinders reciprocal dialogue across different studies, but also prevents a reflective consideration of directions that could shed further light on the topic. To fill the gap, this study introduces the concept of “categorisation” as the analytical lens to scrutinise and synthesise the extant studies on censorship. It proposed two possible ways of categorising the current development of the topic: one is the macro–meso–micro level of analysis, and the other is about data and metadata. Our discussion addresses three contributions to studying internet censorship in China: the emerging computational methods for exploring censorship deletion practices on the micro level, the relevance of hard-to-observe, organisation-specific factors to understand the operationalisation of censorship, and method triangulation to strengthen the validity and reliability of studies of censorship phenomena.

5. Liu, Jun. (2024). The same old same old? Three proposals for advancing the study of internet and contentious politics in China. Communication and the Public.

Abstract

Observers of the Chinese political landscape have noted significant changes with the widespread adoption of the internet. Existing studies on the internet and contentious politics in China often fall into same old tunes like “authoritarianism vs. liberal democracy” and “liberation vs. control.” This reflection reviews selected work on the internet and politics in China and beyond, proposing a more sophisticated and critical examination through (a) a temporal dimension to pinpoint changes introduced by the internet’s adoption, (b) a mundane dimension that recognizes (contentious) politics in broader life contexts, and (c) a cross-demographical dimension that acknowledges the internet’s role as diverse and complex. The three proposals serve as a crucial first step toward achieving more sophisticated explanations and a deeper understanding of the internet in China for Chinese internet scholars in the coming decade.

4. Liu, J. and Wang, J. (eds. 2022). Social Data Governance: From Reflective Practices to Comparative Synthesis (Special Theme), Big Data & Society.

Abstract

This special theme brings together reflections and deliberations regarding the design, implementation, and development of data governance. By addressing “social data governance” as the keyword of the special theme, we aim to further the discussion on a contextual understanding of both the governing foundations and effects of data, dataism, and datafication in different societies. Such a discussion reminds us to pay particular attention to—and thus account for—the social dynamics that underpin and contextualize the design, operation, and promotion of quantified governing mechanisms in which information on social behaviors is collected, datafied, manipulated, and represented. Essentially, the social dynamics of data governance have existed for a long time and in many forms, ranging from credit bureaus’ scrutiny, evaluation, and labeling of their customers to internet-enabled massive data collection and scoring systems used by governments, and to automated contact tracing techniques as a centerpiece of dataveillance and infection control amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, scholarly work from a wide range of disciplines like law, mathematics, and business and with diverse geographical foci has not yet been comparatively and reflectively articulated. Being rich and diverse, the special theme advances such a requisite understanding of the status and relevance of social dynamics of data governance mechanisms based on a wide range of empirical cases around the globe. To scrutinize the social dynamics helps illuminate and contrast divergent manifestations of data governance and their underlying mechanisms.

3. Liu, J. (2022). Social Data Governance: Towards a Definition and Model, Big Data & Society. 

Abstract

With the surge in the number of data and datafied governance initiatives, arrangements, and practices across the globe, understanding various types of such initiatives, arrangements, and their structural causes has become a daunting task for scholars, policy makers, and the public. This complexity additionally generates substantial difficulties in considering different data(fied) governances commensurable with each other. To advance the discussion, this study argues that existing scholarship is inclined to embrace an organization-centric perspective that primarily concerns factors and dynamics regarding data and datafication at the organizational level at the expense of macro-level social, political, and cultural factors of both data and governance. To explicate the macro, societal dimension of data governance, this study then suggests the term “social data governance” to bring forth the consideration that data governance not only reflects the society from which it emerges but also (re)produces the policies and practices of the society in question. Drawing on theories of political science and public management, a model of social data governance is proposed to elucidate the ideological and conceptual groundings of various modes of governance from a comparative perspective. This preliminary model, consisting of a two-dimensional continuum, state intervention and societal autonomy for the one, and national cultures for the other, accounts for variations in social data governance across societies as a complementary way of conceptualizing and categorizing data governance beyond the European standpoint. Finally, we conduct an extreme case study of governing digital contact-tracing techniques during the pandemic to exemplify the explanatory power of the proposed model of social data governance.

2. Peng, Altman Yuzhu, Kuang, Xianwen, and Hou, Jenny Zhengye (2022). Love NBA, Hate BLM: Racism in China’s Sports Fandom, International Journal of Communication, 16, 3133–3153. 

Abstract

This article aims to explore how racism plays out in China’s sports fandom in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement sweeping across the globe. To this end, we conducted a case study of basketball fans’ postings on the most popular Chinese-language sports fandom platform, Hupu. The research discovered that the often-negative assessments of the BLM movement posted on Hupu were largely informed by racism deeply held in traditional Chinese thinking, which provided the grounding for Chinese sports fans to appropriate racial discourses to assess progressive equal-rights politics in Euro-American societies. The trajectory of such a discursive practice was twofold, enabling these sports fans to rationalize their political views pertaining to both international and domestic arenas. The research findings urge scholarly attention to the dynamic interplay between regional popular cultures and global equal-rights politics in the digital age in China and beyond.

1. Liu, N. & Liu, J. (2022). Leading with Hearts and Minds: Broadcasters, emotion initiators, and emotion brokers in emotion contagion in China’s online activism, Social Movement Studies.

Abstract

Who are the prominent actors leading the diffusion of emotional messages in China’s online activism? What roles do they play in this process in an emotion-discouraging context? In this exploratory study, we examine networked patterns of anger diffusion within the Red-Yellow-Blue kindergarten child abuse scandal on the Chinese social media Weibo. Using supervised machine learning for emotion labeling and a social network analysis approach, we identified three types of actors and profiled their distinctive roles in the process of anger contagion. Broadcasters (e.g., verified organization accounts) act as both an information source and a legitimate source to elicit other users’ emotion through emotion-free information. Furthermore, emotion initiators like celebrities instigate and lead other users’ emotions, while emotion brokers like micro-celebrities build bridges between different subgroups to form a massive-scale network of emotion contagion. These actors are indispensable and complement each other for emotion contagion in China. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings on the understanding of emotion diffusion in online activism.