Hi, I’m currently a Senior Data Science Manager at Duolingo. I was previously a data science manager at the Vera Institute of Justice, Research Advisor at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, a Staff Research Data Scientist at Spotify, an Open Technology Fund Information Controls Senior Fellow, and a Google Policy Fellow. I'm the author of Blocked on Weibo, a book on Chinese social media. I'm also a research consultant at China Digital Times where I develop censorship monitoring tools and do freelance web scraping for various other folks. I previously taught digital activism courses at Yale and Columbia SIPA (see syllabus).
My research, writing, and translations have been featured in publications like Reuters, The New York Times, Le Monde, Wall Street Journal's China Real Time, World Policy Journal, Technology Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and VICE (more in media/writing). I was previously a 2013 Google Policy Fellow, did graduate study at the University of Pittsburgh in East Asian Studies, and worked as a book editor at The New Press and Metropolitan Books after studying English at Brown University.
I blog about Chinese Internet censorship at Blocked on Weibo. Some nice things people have said about it: "a treasure of a website"—Thomson Reuters; "Censorship nerds: You must check out Blocked on Weibo, an amazingly useful and informative blog about what’s being blocked in China, and why"—Andrew McLaughlin, former White House deputy chief technology officer; "interesting for those with any knowledge of China and its Internet space, right from beginners to old hands"—Jon Russell, The Next Web. Danwei listed the site in its 2012 and 2013 Model Worker round-up.
On the fun side, I also made the websites Firefly Chinese and Finding Doraemon. In the past, I researched how the names of CCP politicians were treated on Chinese social media during the 18th Communist Party Congress; how official government data on urbanization compares with remote sensing data from the Barometer on China’s Development; what kinds of rhetoric are employed in contentious Weibo posts; and the differences in various Chinese online encyclopedias. These days I'm spending a lot of time looking into WeChat.
For more personal/frivolous things, you can find me online at the following:
You can email me by adding @gmail.com to jason.q.ng (pgp). Thanks.
