We are looking for advanced PhD student interns! Spend 12 weeks scratching a research itch in our Cambridge Massachusetts lab. Closes January 17. apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/...

*Ahmed Al Ahmed

Encountering a misinformation campaign in real time. The bystander who tackled the gunman at Bondi was identified as Ahmed el Ahmed (link below). But in almost every tweet I saw, there are people claiming the real person is "Edward Crabtree," referencing a website called "The Daily."

What a sad story

I still get physically ill whenever open a reviewer report with a rejection in it

FYI: law and science, political science, and sociology all still have DDRIG programs run outside of the NSF but funded by NSF. The rest of these programs unfortunately do not. I run the political science DDRIG.

Oh, this is really bad. Without my DDRIG, I simply cannot conduct my fieldwork. This would be especially devastating for international students doing qualitative research, since there really aren’t many grants available to support us.

Northeastern University is hiring an Assistant Professor in AI Policy and Media. The tenure home would be either Communication Studies or Journalism, with a joint appointment with the policy school. Please apply and be my colleague :) northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

Always love Critics at Large but this episode is particularly superb. LOVE the ending discussion on imagination of the future. In "Pluribus," Utopia Is...!l It's Cracked Up to Be open.spotify.com/episode/4Pkp...

Is Pluribus an AI ethics show…?

Bad bad very bad. A ‘Steep Decline’ in Students’ Academic Preparation at UC-San Diego Struck a Nerve www.chronicle.com/article/peop...

I will workshop my book project - an ethnography of a social credit system in China - at Harvard History, Culture, and Society Workshop 12:00 - 1:30 pm next Friday (11/21) at William James Hall 1550. Join me if you are around. Lunch will be provided!

Congratulations to the winner of 2025 @saw-anthroofwork.bsky.social Book Prize Hector Beltran's @teflonbeltran.bsky.social Code Work: Hacking Across US-Mexico Techno Borderlands! @princetonupress.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

🚨 New in Big Data & Society 🚨 "China as an analytical lens for AI and society" by Chuncheng Liu & Zhifan Luo doi.org/10.1177/2053... Offers a four-part framework using “China” to rethink AI, political economy, and global entanglements in critical AI studies.

Happy to share our commentary is published on Big Data & Society today! Instead of seeing China as AI’s dystopian specter, what if we use it as a generative lens to rethink global AI? journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Teaching technology and society this semester. I found it’s interesting that their default mode is “tech is bad.” Other than helping them to see how the system works beyond the statement, I need to do a lot more to help them to see the early excitement and promises of the Internet!

am i going to introduce students what neoliberalism is in one slide? challenge accepted.

I want to apologize to all the professors i secretly cursed for not responding to my emails and to apologize to everyone whose emails i'm not responding to but jesus why are there so many emails and people and things and we're in the middle of so many layers of crisis

I will talk about my book project on a Chinese social credit system tomorrow noon in New Haven. Join me if you are around (I think they provide free lunch...)!

The printed version is out today! Here we discussed how social credit system, an Orwellian Chinese Other, becomes a stand-in for Western anxieties about authoritarianism, technology goes wrong, quantification of everyday life, and shifting global power. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I'm not an anthropologist but can we stop calling a two-week field visit ethnography

Wow undergrads really love Winner’s paper and hate SCOT…

I spent a year in several Chinese government bureaucracies studying bureaucratic politics, but I never felt as though I were living in a Kafkaesque world as much as I have during just three months at my university.

It's here! @cliu.bsky.social and I found Techno-orientalism in the public media debate. Turns out the imaginary Chinese Social Credit System is useful for U.S. audiences to come to terms with domestic fears of tech development, state surveillance, and China's rise papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Reading this unfortunately timely paper right now. Every sentence makes me want to cry. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

How should we think about China in today’s debates on AI and society, and how might China serve as a productive analytical lens? In this commentary, @zhifan-luo.bsky.social and I offer a typology to see China as mirror, prototype, counterpoint, and global actor. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Next week, @fuzheng.bsky.social and I will workshop our paper on public perception of AI evaluation in China based on a national survey. If you are at NYC - come and say hi!

I’m thrilled to share that I’ve signed a book contract with University of California Press for my ethnography of a social credit system in China. Stay tuned!

Weird way to bond with new colleagues: getting complaints about Microsoft products. (But I really really don’t know who to contact to fix Teams or Bookings—sorry!)

Texas A&M’s President just removed a dean and department head from their positions after they supported a professor whose lesson on gender was challenged by a student. www.kbtx.com/2025/09/09/a...

Finished the first season of The Real Housewives Salt Lake City! Feeling very assimilated to the US culture now 😌

Useful documentary to teach with Winner’s bridge article. I think this is h the first time I hear Latour’s voice… youtu.be/0u6zYcci_5w?...

First time getting a minor revision at the first round!

OK I'm going to try to write a CHI paper!

Our insurance rep said the system can’t handle my partner’s Hispanic name because it’s “too long.” A friend with the last name “Li” dealt with similar struggles sometimes as it is "too short." Sometimes it's just hard to believe it's already 2025 and so many systems are still not built for us.

🔊 Organizing two regular sessions at #ASA2025 this year on Knowledge. Come by! Knowledge #1: Data, Risk, and Knowledge in Health Policy Sun, Aug 10, 12-1:30pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold, Atlanta Link 🔗: tinyurl.com/242ch2h9

Is it common to be mistakenly onboarded into the wrong department? I’ve just discovered I’ve been listed as a professor of journalism now and our HR needs another two weeks to correct that 🤷

I’m heading to Chicago for the ASA conference tomorrow. Hope to see you at our panel, “The Culture and Politics of Emerging Technology,” on August 10 at 10:00 a.m!

**I'll be at ASA if you'd like to chat about the position. Reach out by email.** The Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston is hiring a TT assistant professor with strengths in the soc of gender/sexualities: careercenter.asanet.org/job/1310899/...

Our department at the University of Toronto is hiring an assistant professor of sociology of race / ethnicity this fall. I'm not on the hiring committee but am very happy to talk to you about the position if you are interested. You can email, DM, or find me at ASA. jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

Delighted that Stanford SCCEI’s China Briefs reports on our study of a municipal social credit system in China. sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs...

Really fantastic opportunity!

I am looking for an assistant! D&S is hiring a research assistant to the director of research (ME). This is primarily a administrative position, but includes light research & editing. Fully remote. Perfect for a pre-doc. Please forward! job-boards.greenhouse.io/datasocietyr...

Villanova University, where I am currently working, has a position in digital sociology and/or STS studies. I am not on the search committee and happy to answer any questions you may have. www.higheredjobs.com/state/detail...

It’s only July, and my friends and I are already spiraling over crises in how we study tech, numbers, classifications, infrastructures, and China. Somehow that segues into calls to bring Foucault, Latour, and Garfinkel back in. Alas, we’re so good at talking about anything else just to avoid writing

Oh man—this year’s AAA theme is ‘Ghosts’? I really should have pursued a path in anthropology

I have finished my postdoc at Microsoft Research and am now an assistant professor at Northeastern University. I had one of the most idealistic academic experiences of my career at MSR. I will miss it dearly, and will carry its interdisciplinary, open, and “weird” spirit wherever I go.

Hmmm, is bureaucracy back in political sociology?

I love going through reviewer's report with my co-author and getting angry together

Opened a paper document that I started writing in 2022...