Wrapped up grading & my Media Politics under Authoritarianism module! Although we focused on autocracies, we discussed threats in democracies, like news avoidance & platform capture. Part of the solution lies in questioning our biases & resisting essentialism - traits I felt many students embodied 🙏

New paper out! Using a text scaling approach on 17,000+ Chinese state media articles (2014–2023), I examine how authoritarian regimes portray international media as external threats - and when this hostility intensifies. doi.org/10.1080/1356... Free (first 50): www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2MNPV...

this is authoritarianism. "Beijing's insistence that sovereignty cannot be challenged has reshaped even the vocabulary of disaster. A call for answers can be reframed as agitation. Grief can be interpreted as defiance. Volunteerism can be treated as "gathering"." www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

Watching this play out in HK is a shock to the system, but to anyone who’s seen it happen time and again in the mainland, it’s also all too familiar and predictable. After any disaster, “stability maintenance” (維穩) and “stabilising public sentiment” (穩定社會情緒) are always foremost official priorities.

Shanghai friends: very special Concert Alert! Perhaps you already know that all our concerts with Japanese musicians in China were cancelled. But nobody has cancelled this Shanghai performance with the legendary Japanese Jazz drummer Toshio Osumi. So we are taking a chance.

As part of a special issue of @iojournal.bsky.social w/ an amazing cast of scholars, Rebecca Cordell & I wrote a piece on the future of human rights given the rise of authoritarian powers and alliances. Check out "Authoritarianism, Global Politics, and the Future of Human Rights" open access here:

Applications are now open for the UCD Iseult Honohan Doctoral Scholarship 2026. Closing Date: 30 January 2026 ✔️Covers full fees (EU and Non-EU) ✔️Provides a living stipend of €25,000 per year for up to four years ✔️Is open to EU and non-EU applicants 👇 www.ucd.ie/spire/study/...

Applications are open for two UCD Ad Astra Doctoral Scholarships💫 It covers: ☑️ Tuition fees (up to the non-EU rate) ☑️ A yearly stipend of €25,000 ☑️ An annual research budget of €4,000 Deadline: 6 February 2026 @elisaadamico.bsky.social www.ucd.ie/spire/study/...

In my Media Politics under Authoritarianism class this week, we explored how to adapt a gay romance for Chinese TV whilst maintaining plausible deniability. We also discussed queer representation, feminism, & creative freedom. Showed students a clip of The Untamed. Their engagement made my week!

My first solo-authored publication is out in The International Journal of Press/Politics! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Based on 50+ interviews with foreign correspondents in China, it explores how authoritarian media control operates and the responses it provokes. (1/3)

“I tried to use purchase of a panda as a means of getting to China in 1963-4 while in Hong Kong. My wife’s uncle was chairman of the St. Louis Zoo and authorized me to spend US$25K if I could bring one back. As the NYTimes reported, the effort failed.”

Had a great first APSA conference! Vancouver was a superb host city with amazing natural beauty & food. I learnt lots from all the panels I went to, made new connections, & caught up with old ones. Am particularly inspired by novel approaches to researching hard-to-study contexts

In #Vancouver for #APSA today? David & I will present our paper which uses Taiwan as a case & examines the efficacy of misinformation frames there without exposing human subjects to harmful content. Ours is the Political Information & Communication in Taiwan panel, 4pm at West Level 2, West 217

For my American comrades: Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics Is on sale at Amazon for 22 bucks for hardcover. That’s a pretty good deal! European release in a couple weeks.

Teaching my own module this term: Media Politics under Authoritarianism. In our first class, we examined media’s role in society. Applying Hanitzsch's journalistic roles, students assessed that there aren't watchdogs and change agents in Irish media! Perhaps this is symptomatic of democracies?

I reckon this from @emoontw.bsky.social on leaving Taiwan (and its media scene) is worth a read theeastandback.substack.com/p/my-great-t...

Great piece today in @indexoncensorship.org by @jemimahsteinfeld.bsky.social on the "so-called" trial of Jimmy Lai with a shout-out to recent research by me & @linettelim.bsky.social in @jeas-journal.bsky.social

I’ve lost count of how often Chinese/Hong Kong authorities or CCP State media have called me a “so-called human rights lawyer” leading a “so-called legal team.” I often play ‘propaganda bingo’ to myself when I read aggressive HKSAR statements which slam me/my clients/NGOs/other States/newspapers. 1/

Thanks so much @caoilfhionn.bsky.social for reading our @jeas-journal.bsky.social research @linettelim.bsky.social and i were struck by the phrase “so-called” in China’s propaganda and are happy (academically) and discouraged (normatively) that our findings cohere with your experience.

Happy birthday. At 60, you defy how a high HDI nation looks like, by being tropical, multi-ethnic, non-liberal, post-colonial, & lacking in resources. To paraphrase Rajaratnam, we've willed ourselves into being. & that's long before manifesting became a thing. Majulah, Singapura!

My first publication is now online at @jeas-journal.bsky.social ! @alexdukalskis.bsky.social and I apply quantitative text analysis to Xinhua articles containing the terms "so-called" & "所谓" to explore the ideas the Chinese govt wishes to discredit for different audiences doi.org/10.1017/jea....

Delighted that my paper was selected for the 2025 Best PhD Paper Award @psaautocracy.bsky.social ! Thanks to the panel @emisimison.bsky.social & @scottrw630.bsky.social, to my supervisor @alexdukalskis.bsky.social for nominating me, and to @ucdpolitics.bsky.social for being a great intellectual home

“…The layoffs were announced while Rubio was traveling home from that trip. "After he used us, he fired us," one fired foreign affairs officer who focused on the South China Sea said. "It's mind-boggling." www.npr.org/2025/07/24/n...

Happy polling day. Posted mine early this week. Majulah.

🧵Happy to see continued attention on the ways that China harasses and surveils abroad-- hard to find the bandwidth today, but it remains a real issue that impacts people's lives. A few thoughts that I've raised elsewhere on how best to think about it and address it: www.icij.org/investigatio...

This is such a good read, and perhaps of educational value to Americans newly wondering what life under full-blown authoritarianism is like. From one of China's sharpest writers:

US government bans government personnel in China from romantic or sexual relations with Chinese citizens – AP: ‘the policy, which was put into effect by departing U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China.’

SCMP: Authorities slapped übernationalist Sima Nan,whose real name is Yu Li, with a fine of 9 million yuan (US$1.2 million) for tax evasion last week, proving that “cyber nationalism” has been a very lucrative hustle in #China for years buff.ly/FcSBftW

Leaked data exposes a Chinese AI censorship machine – TechCrunch: ‘133,000 examples fed into a sophisticated large language model that’s designed to automatically flag any piece of content considered sensitive by the Chinese government.’

Confessions of a Chinese internet censor: "My impression is that they need us to know about these things to do our job properly, but…they’re afraid of us knowing too much. They’d prefer we forget everything after executing their instructions." www.chinafile.com/re...

This puts the CCP's 'seven don't mentions' in the shade. 七不講？小巫見大巫

Update: The Atlantic Council has now received notification from the State Dept formally terminating several China-focused research and capacity-building projects. “We are currently assessing the impact of this loss of funding on our ability to continue this work,” Atlantic Council says.

can't make this up. when Jimmy Lai said he's not Chinese but Hong Konger, the judge asked 'are you yellow skinned'? extraordinary how biological racial nationalism that assumes phenotypic difference = race = nationality (and by extension =political loyalty) is explicitly invoked in legal proceedings

The article reveals both that China uses tools to summarize social media posts, launch misinformation campaigns, and that OpenAI is monitoring how its users employ AI. So, no surprises!

The Pentagon is evicting the New York Times, NPR and NBC news from their long-held office space and replacing them with organizations such as One America News and Breitbart. www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...

On "Xiaohongshu Balance-Sheet Comparisons": “Can You Still Ignore the Fact That You Live on the Wrong Side of a One-Way Mirror?” "[T]hey can come and go as they wish, [...but] that one-way mirror was made just for you." chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/01/on-x...

Biggest thief of intellectual property (I.e. all of our works) then complains about IP theft

Honoured to start 2025 with an invited talk at Kobe University, after presenting at the Japanese Society for Quantitative Political Science winter meeting. Got great feedback, got to personally thank 2 researchers for the R packages they created, & had many nice chats & meals with fellow travellers

Randomly found out that there's a Dublin Road in Singapore, and there's a German Biergarten right on it! This photo symbolically captures the homes I inhabit and move in between. To more travel, learning and growing, and homecomings in 2025. Happy new year!

Recruitment ads for CCP youth branch secretaries at Singapore’s Ngee Ann Polytechnic removed from LinkedIn after queries – The Online Citizen: ‘However, the authenticity of the [Communist Youth League of China’s] LinkedIn page has raised further eyebrows.’

Home for a bit. I have missed the tropical heat and rain, my mom's cooking, and the public infrastructure and social services of this non-liberal nation (e.g. a network of public gyms costing 1.8 USD/EUR per entry)

sharing this podcast to celebrate the late Taiwanese novelist Chiung Yao, who - through the tv adaptation of 还珠格格 - transformed an entire generation brought up to not talk about feelings, to not question authority, and to operate driven by duty rather than passion open.spotify.com/episode/45rz...

#FromtheChinaFiles In 2013, Document 9 or Document No. 9 set the ideological tone for Xi Jinping's government, and we're still living in the world it shaped. Here is our translation of it:

I was raised by Teochew grandaunts who endured incredibly hard lives, from being transplanted from China to Singapore as babies, to having marriage prospects & education disrupted by WW2, & losing family wealth & starting from scratch. Today, they are finally all reunited (in Pure Land hopefully)

Investigators suspect a Chinese bulk carrier deliberately severed two critical data cables last week as its anchor was dragged along the Baltic seabed for over 100 miles. Their probe now centers on whether the captain of the ship was induced by Russian intelligence. www.wsj.com/world/europe...

Volkswagen Exits Xinjiang After Criticism About Complicity in Human Rights Abuses

I've updated the "Sociologists Studying China Starter Pack" to include not only more sociologists but also historians, political theorists, political scientists, historical IR scholars, cultural anthropologists, critical geographers, & media scholars who examine Chinese society from various angles.

A couple thoughts on this story by Elsie Chen and me: -Upper-middle class urban China has become cool and fashionable! Little of that has reached foreign audiences except maybe through TikTok, because of the firewall and all those expelled journalists… apnews.com/article/chin...

I have finally made the jump here. Looking forward to sharing my research here, as well as building up for myself a new resource for ideas and information