Yuchen Chen
陈雨尘

I am an ethnographer of technology and contemporary (global) China. Situated at the intersections of science and technology studies, digital studies, and China studies, my work looks into two main themes: China’s data-driven governance and China's global outreach via digital platforms. My work has appeared in communication and media studies venues such as New Media & Society and Information, Communication & Society, as well as social computing venues such as ACM CHI and CSCW.
I am currently an assistant professor at Baruch, CUNY and a faculty affiliate at China at CUNY Initiative. I hold a Ph.D. in Communication and Media at the University of Michigan, where I received the Barbour Scholarship.

Say hi: yuchen.chen@baruch.cuny.edu

For more details: curriculum vitae

Writings

Sun, Y., Ankenbauer, A., Guo, Z., Chen, Y., Ma, X., and He. L. (2025). “Rethinking Technological Solutions for Community-Based Older Adult Care: Insights from ‘Older Partners’ in China.” In CSCW’24: ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. URL

Chen, Y., Sun, Y., and Lindtner, S. (2023). “Maintainers of Stability: The Labor of China’s Data-Driven Governance and Dynamic Zero-COVID.” In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI’23. URL

Chen, Y., Lu, A., and Wu, A,X. (2023). “‘China’ as a ‘Black Box’? Rethinking Methods through a Sociotechnical Perspective.” Information, Communication, and Society. URL

Liang, F. and Chen, Y. (2022). “The making of ‘good’ citizens: China’s Social Credit Systems and infrastructures of social quantification.” Policy and Internet. URL

Lin, C. and Chen, Y. (2022). “The Myth of Data-Driven Authoritarianism.” In Reframing AI Governance: Perspectives from Asia. URL

Kuo, R., Chen, Y., Lin, C., and Avle, S. (2022). “Triangulating Race, Capital, and Technology.” In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’22 Extended Abstracts). URL

Kim, Y., Chen, Y., and Liang, F. (2021). “Engineering Care in Pandemic Techno-governance: The Politics of Care in China and South Korea’s COVID-19 Tracking Apps.” New Media and Society. URL

Liang, F., Chen, Y., and Zhao, F. (2021). “The platformization of propaganda: How Xuexi Qiangguo expands persuasion and assesses citizens in China.” International Journal of Communication. URL


Invited Talks & Panelists 

Invited speaker. “China as a ‘Blackbox’?”  China at CUNY Initiative. April, 2025

Invited panelist. “Affective Economies of Investment for Immigration.”  CIMS/WOLF Conference, University of Pennsylvania. March, 2025

Invited speaker. “Figure it Out: the Art of Living through System Failures” Radio Conference on Stegi.radio. VEKTOR Athens. December, 2023.

Invited guest speaker. “Communication Processes: Gender, Race, and Cultural Identity.” Graduate Seminar. Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU. December, 2023.

Invited guest speaker. “Ethnography of Global China” Graduate Seminar. Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. November, 2023.

Invited panelist. “Circulating and Placing Chinese Alienness.” Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting (4S). October, 2022.

Invited guest speaker. “Big Data and Social Science” Undergraduate Seminar. Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Michigan. April, 2022.

Invited guest speaker. “System Thinking: Emergency.” Graduate Seminar. Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU. November, 2021.

Invited speaker. “Pandemic Techno-governance in China and South Korea.” COVIDCalls. Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). October, 2021.

Teaching 

Instructor, Spring 2025
COM 3120: Platforms, Power, and Publics
Communication Studies, Baruch College
Instructor, Fall 2024
COM 1010: Speech Communication 
Communication Studies, Baruch College
Instructor of Record, Summer 2022
COMM 101: Mass Media 
Communication and Media, University of Michigan
Graduate Student Instructor, Fall 2020
COMM 271: Revolutions in Communication 
Communication and Media, University of MichiganPrimary instructor: Professor Derek Vaillant

Course Co-designer and Teaching Assistant, Spring 2020
SIADS 503: Data Science Ethics
School of Information, University of MichiganPrimary instructor: Professor Christian Sandvig