Invited Talks in Hong Kong

Last week I had the privilege of delivering two invited talks in Hong Kong - one at the Department of Media and Communication City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), and another at the CUHK School of Journalism and Communication. It was my first visit to the city, and I found both the city vibes (which includes the dim sum, of course) and the conversations with collaborators and new colleagues immensely rewarding. Singapore and Hong Kong are uniquely positioned to contribute to the evolving discourse on computational social science. Yet, in exchanges with faculty and graduate students, I could sense how often Asian perspectives continue to fly under the radar in the broader narrative of the field, despite their potential to significantly enrich and recalibrate its trajectory.

A lot of this underrepresentation stems from a prevailing sense among Asian students that communication and media studies - and social science more broadly - are not “STEM enough”. But it is also undeniably reinforced by disciplinary norms that remain rooted in Western ideals and paradigms, not least computational social science societies that rarely look beyond the US and Western Europe (against this backdrop, the fact that the Singapore chapter of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science will mark its fifth anniversary this July feels particularly meaningful!)

I recently contributed a chapter to an International Communication Association Handbook that explores these ideas in more detail, and I look forward to sharing it once published. For now, here are some photos.