Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2026

Time: 1:15–2:30 PM

Venue: Visitor Center, Duke Kunshan University

Speaker: Dr. Yu Sun, Lecturer in Media and Sociology, University of Glasgow

Hosts: Drs. Charles Chang, Fan Liang, and Ken Rogerson

Abstract

This talk develops a techno-moral governance approach to examine the expansion of moral governance infrastructure in rural China, where data media technologies are being deployed to experiment with a new form of social governance. Since 2020, the state has promoted data scoring systems as a means of enhancing rural governance. Drawing on fieldwork in Jiande, Zhejiang province, the study takes the smartphone app Xiangcun Ding as a case study of digital rural governance at the national level. Analysing the algorithmic construction and nudging of villagers’ social morality, it argues that the data scoring system has become a new moral governing infrastructure — one that both enables and is embedded in the government’s expanding capacity to manage everyday life in rural China.

How are data media technologies changing social governance in rural China? Drawing on fieldwork in Jiande, Zhejiang, this talk takes the smartphone app Xiangcun Ding as a case study of digital rural governance at the national level. It explores how data scoring systems are used to construct and nudge villagers’ social morality, arguing that they have become a new moral governing infrastructure embedded in the government’s expanding capacity to manage everyday life in rural China.

Bio

Yu Sun is a Lecturer in Media and Sociology in the Division of Sociological and Cultural Studies and a member of the Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) at the University of Glasgow. Her research spans deliberative democracy, digital activism, feminist media studies, environmental and climate change communication, critical data studies, and digital infrastructure and social governance.