Jingyan Elaine Yuan
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Communication
Contact
Building & Room:
1148B BSB
Address:
1007 W Harrison Street
Office Phone:
Email:
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About
Elaine J. Yuan’s research focuses on how new forms of communication and technology mediate various social institutions and cultural practices. She has published widely in areas regarding social media, digital platform, cultural production, and social change. She is the author of the book, The Web of Meaning: The Internet in a changing Chinese society (UP Toronto, 2021), on the role of the Internet as symbolic spaces for the changing cultural practices of privacy, nationalism, and the network market in China. The book won the 2022 Outstanding Book Award of the Asian/Pacific American Caucus of the National Communication Association. Her co-edited volume in 2024, Pandemic Crossings, explores how processes of boundary making and crossing, often mediated by digital technology despite inequity of access, had profound and often contradictory consequences on individual lives, national politics, and U.S.–China relations.
Dr. Yuan’s research has been funded by U.S. Social Science Research Council, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Kaifeng Foundation, UIC Institute for Public Civic Engagement, and UIC Institute for the Humanities. Her current project on the impact of disinformation on the political mobilization of Chinese Americans in the US is funded by UIC Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy. Dr. Yuan work has appeared in many leading journals in the field of communication, including Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Information, Communication, & Society, Journal of Electronic and Broadcasting Media, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Journalism Studies. Elaine teaches in the areas of culture and communication, new media technology, and communication history and theory.
Education
PhD, Northwestern University; Media, Technology, & Society