Jennifer Pan studied clickbait in Chinese propaganda. You won’t believe what she discovered!

This week on Sinica, we present the first installment in a three-part series produced in collaboration with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), highlighting the groundbreaking work of young social scientists who are focused on China. In this episode, Kaiser chats with Jennifer Pan, an assistant professor of communication at Stanford, about three of her research papers that illuminate different aspects of social control in the P.R.C.: the use of the dibao social welfare system, hiring decisions, and the use of clickbait headlines by government officials on social media.

Recommendations:

Jennifer: A series of escapist fiction by Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries.

Kaiser: Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History, by Kurt Andersen.