22/01/2026 (Thursday) 13:00-14:00 E21-G002
Computational and Multimodal communication in AI-infused information ecosystems
Abstract:
This talk introduces the newly published book Chinese Platforms: A Critical Introduction (Polity, 2025). The book explains how Chinese digital platforms evolved within a unique political and economic system and are now reshaping the global platform landscape. We argue that Chinese platforms are “born global” yet remain deeply marked by China’s governance model, industrial policy, and culture. They are inherently hybrid: localising globally while reflecting China’s platform nationalism and techno-solutionism. Rather than a simple replication of the Silicon Valley model, Chinese platformisation combines state-led agendas, private innovation, and global capital, with significant impacts on labour, commerce, culture, and geopolitics. Our core claim is that the future of the internet will not be singular. It will be parallel, fragmented, and contested: built by multiple centres, including China, requiring new theories and policies that prioritise equity, accountability, and social well-being over purely extractive logics.
Bio:
LIN Jian is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He researches and writes about the platform economy, media industries, and digital cultures. His recent works include Chinese Platforms: A Critical Introduction (with Wilfred Wang and Ping Sun, Polity 2025) and Chinese Creator Economies: Labour, Subjectivity and the Bilateral Creatives (NYU Press 2023). Lin is the cultural commons and book review editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies.
