Wei Wang received her PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. She received her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Peking University and obtained her master’s degree in sociology from Columbia University.
Her overarching research inquiry focuses on social transformations that define the contemporary era. She is interested in how, why, and for whom Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are designed, produced, and consumed. This is situated in the tensions between the neoliberalization of a globally networked economy and alternative socio-political practices. She is also interested in the social impact of ICTs, as ICTs are affecting different classes and social groups differently. She is informed by social justice issues around the production and consumption of ICTs. Her research has been in constant dialogue with literatures on the political economy of communication, ICTs for development, media effects, and China studies.
She has published on China’s economic restructuring, rural-urban links, digital activism, and new economic forms. Her dissertation, Agricultural Informatization and Agrarian Power Dynamics in Rural China, has attempted to expose the formation of different modes of applying ICTs and the changing power structures in a glocalized and commercialized agriculture sector. Through detailing two cases, she compares two types of different political economies and how they shape the two modes of agricultural informatization, which resulted in two types of local power structures.