"Normalization of Censorship: Evidence from China" by Tony Zirui Yang. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

For the longest time, similar conversations happened about my research (and even earlier my political opinions on social media) on Chinese politics. It is saddening that (1) it’s happening in America now and (2) our responses are converging quickly to actual authoritarian context.

Equally concerning as the headlines about censorship is the multiple conversations I had recently about self-censoring our research due to political climate. It’s a tricky question with no easy answer. But perhaps we are not real autocracies yet, and we play a part in preventing that from happening.

Power move! Influenced by multiple factors and in response to multiple forces, including the political. #highered news.emory.edu/features/202...

Honored to receive this year’s Thomas E. Patterson Best Dissertation Award in Political Communication @polcomm.bsky.social. Grateful to everyone who supported me along this incredible journey.

🚨 Call for Papers: 2026 WPSA Mini-Conference on Authoritarian Politics 🚨 Jun Sudduth, @paulschuler.bsky.social, and I are excited to see y’all in San Diego! We welcome formal and empirical papers on a broad range of topics. 📌 Apply here. Share with colleagues & students: forms.gle/Dv2SBEduFxSh...

💘Can authoritarian propaganda cultivate support and deter protest during “normal” times? ➡️ @tzyang.bsky.social & @zhuhs.bsky.social find that hard propaganda reinforces support for protest, while soft propaganda loses credibility www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

🚨📣 Our paper titled 🪢👅 analyzing the limits of China’s propaganda during the COVID chaos in late 2022 is finally out @psrm.bsky.social !!!

New preprint w/ @grahn.bsky.social & @joenoonan.se What happens when the world's most powerful democracy rolls back core liberal values? 🇺🇸 In this paper, we show how US liberal retrenchment, especially on women’s rights & LGBTQ+ equality, damages US global standing. 📄 doi.org/10.31219/osf...

UK voters are making my decision to move back to the US a lot less painful.

Since day 1 @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social, I’ve been plotting a workshop on the frontiers of authoritarian politics. The world, helpfully, has only gotten more authoritarian, making it more relevant by the day. Big thanks to @benansell.bsky.social and all participants who made it a huge success!

Cool to see my next book Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics co-authored w/ Alex Cooley as one of "The Most Anticipated Books of 2025" in @foreignpolicy.com

🚨 Super excited to have @tzyang.bsky.social presenting his research this Thursday! He and M. Tavits introduce Binary Gender ID strength (BGIS) as an explanation for anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice with cool experiments. 🏳️‍🌈 Don't miss it!

🏳️‍🌈 Be sure to join us this Thursday for our March webinar with @tzyang.bsky.social! 👉 Tony will present his amazing work showing how binary gender identity strength increases prejudice towards LGBTQ+ individuals. 📆 Don't miss it!

“Trump Saves the Liberals” I can’t wait to see this title 🥶.

A bright spot on the horizon amid all the bleak news this week. Thanks to all the great people at Nuffield College!

Recently accepted by #QJE, “The Impact of Being Denied a Wanted Abortion on Women and their Children,” by Londoño-Vélez (@jlondonovelez.bsky.social) and Saravia: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Tried Deepseek for the first time. Idk… feels like censorship to me… 🤷🤷‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️

lol… my dad starts complaining about all the TikTok refugees on RedNote flooding the Chinese content he follows. Novel form of anti-immigration sentiment in the social media era 😂😂😂

Xiaohongshu is also one of the best apps in China for Chinese-language convos about feminism.

XHS/RedNote is the gay heaven of Chinese social media 🥰🏳️‍🌈

My book “The Normalization of the Radical Right” has recently come out in the US. If you're interested, in this thread I’ll link different ways of learning about the book and its argument (I’ll keep adding if more come out). First, here is the link to the book: academic.oup.com/book/57946

A good news day :) "The Rainbow Vote" 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ is now under contract with @princetonupress.bsky.social Building on observational data & six original experiments, the book explores & explains the distinctiveness of queer voters in Europe and demonstrates how this has both social & political consequences

Participatory Censorship in Authoritarian Regimes journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... Paper in @cpsjournal.bsky.social by Nuffield Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow @tzyang.bsky.social

New article accepted at CPS. @denis-cohen.bsky.social @thmskrr.bsky.social and I analyze how rental market risk affects radical right support. Combining data on local rent increases with the SOEP, we find that individuals facing increasing local rents become more likely to support the AfD. 🧵

My book is out! I’m grateful for the many people in Jordan, Tunisia, Stanford, and elsewhere who helped it reach this point. If you’re interested in why some autocrats stay popular or why ruling monarchs are so durable in today’s world, this book is for you! www.cambridge.org/core/books/k...

Glad to see the growth of the literature on participatory censorship! For our paper proposing the term, please check here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Fresh off the press @cpsjournal.bsky.social!! My paper takes a systematic look at public participation in censorship in China. With a fun survey experiment simulating social media experiences, I find online reporting significantly increased public support for censorship. doi.org/10.1177/0010...

#FirstView: UCSDPoliSci's Michael Joseph and Michael Poznansky ask why some of the most radical innovations of the last century came from orgs shrouded in secrecy. The findings have important implications for debates about tech, innovation, and US-China rivalry. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Still amazed that the word “Oriental” is so widely used in the UK.

It’s been a while since the word “Democracy” doesn’t mean anything anymore among ordinary people in authoritarian regimes. (Just a term to describe what they like or don’t like.) It seems like it is becoming increasingly the case in democracies as well.

I’ve been emotionally detached from Chinese politics for a long time. I don’t feel sad or angry about anything really. Today, I feel sad, angry, fearful, and painful. Immense admiration for scores of people who dedicated yrs of precious lives to democracy in HK. Hope history will absolve all of you.

Forty-five democrats received jail terms of up to 10 years on Tuesday in Hong Kong's largest national security case. They were arrested in January 2021 and charged the following month. In full: https://buff.ly/40ULNuu

Use my “Hello World” post for Bluesky to reflect on today’s wonderful lunch and coffee with @valentimvicente.bsky.social and his great, new, timely book on the normalization of radical right. Thanks Vicente for generously citing my (unpublished) job market paper 😊.