Yan Gu

Yan Gu’s research focuses on how China’s extensive information control shapes public opinion and boosts China’s authoritarian resilience. Using web scraping, network analysis, online experiment and other computational social science methods, her dissertation collects large-scale, real-world behavior data to trace the subtle causal effects of the state’s control over the Internet, academia and the press.

Before joining the JSIS Ph.D. program, Yan received her M.A. in sociology from Peking University and worked for Changjiang Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. Yan’s experience in the CCP’s propaganda apparatus inspired her to start a new career in studying Chinese politics.

Publications

• Book Review: Alvarez, R. Michael. Computational Social Science: Discovery and Prediction. The Midsouth Political Science Review, Volume 18, 2017, pp. 81-84 (link:  http://uca.edu/politicalscience/files/2017/12/MPSR-Vol-18-2017-Gu.pdf )
• Book Review: Guobin Yang, ed., China’s Contested Internet. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 22(4), 2017, pp. 703-704. (link: https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/guobin-yang-ed-china-s-contested-internet/15139574)
• “Why Do Chinese Netizens Love Donald Trump?” The Diplomat. March 25, 2017. (link: https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/why-do-chinese-netizens-love-donald-trump/)

Grants & Fellowships

• Chinese Government Scholarship, Chinese Government, 2015 – 2018.
• Top Scholar Fellowship, University of Washington, 2014 – 2015.
• Dissertation Fellowship, The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, 2018-2019.