YCAR External Research Associate
zhifan.luo[at]concordia.ca
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Concordia University
Research Keywords:
Media; technology; cultural and political system
Research Region(s):
Research Diaspora(s):
Zhifan Luo is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Concordia University, Montréal. As a media sociologist and political sociologist, Luo's research can be defined by her interest in media, technology and cultural and political system. Her current project explores the social life of censorship and the role played by individual actors in facilitating digital censorship and surveillance. Her work has been published in refereed journals including New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, China: An International Journal, Armed Forces & Society, and Journal of World-Systems Research.
As a computational social scientist, Luo also uses big-data techniques to complement and advance the traditional methods in the studies of the digital space. In a coauthored chapter in The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (2nd Edition), she lays out a roadmap to collect and analyze Weibo (a popular social media platform in China) data for social research.
Informed by her research activities, Luo actively engages in the public discussions of a wide range of issues including digital space, racial justice, and immigration. Her public commentary has appeared in The Conversation and The Paper (in Chinese).