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Erika Ningxin WANG WEBSITE
Erika Ningxin Wang joined CUHKSZ in 2024. She is a media anthropologist and ethnographer who has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Erika obtained her Ph.D. in Culture, Media and Creative Industries from King’s College London. Prior to her doctoral research, she also obtained M.Sc. in Social Anthropology from The University of Oxford, M.Phil. in Global Creative Industries from The University of Hong Kong, as well as double B.A. degrees in Philosophy and Chinese Literature from Nankai University. She has excelled as a visiting scholar at Taiwan Academia Sinica (Institute of Ethnology) and a guest lecturer at prestigious institutions including King’s College London, Birkbeck, Hong Kong University, and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
Her research interests lie at the intersection of youth culture, digital media, and state governance. She has examined the dynamic interactions between Chinese idol fandom, media platform algorithms and interfaces, cultural markets and censorship systems. She is currently examining (1) the patriotic discourses on social media and young people's daily lives; (2) the transnational consumption of Asian creative industries, particularly the cultural market and fan economy of Chinese film, TV, animation, and games in Southeast Asia and South America; and (3) the digital transformation and e-commerce live streaming of traditional physical markets in the Greater Bay Area.
Erika is elected as the Early Career Representative to the International Communication Association (ICA) in the division of Popular Media and Culture. She also serves as a reviewer for SSCI journals in the fields of media, communication, and cultural studies.
Beyond academia, Erika’s reports and commentaries on Chinese pop culture and fans have been published by prominent media outlets such as Xinhua News Agency, Beijing Youth Daily, Phoenix TV, Jiemian Culture, China Central Radio-The Voice of Economy, and T magazine. She also served as a guest consultant for several consulting firms and film&TV companies about fandom economy. Erika is also an actress in The Chinese Drama Society at Oxford University.
Research Interests:
Fan studies
Media anthropology
Digital ethnography
Consumers, creative industries and cultural consumption
Social media and internet culture
Algorithm, censorship, and platform governance
Fandom nationalism, patriotism, and internet activism
ACG (Anime, Comics, Games) and TV studies
Cultural policies and markets
I am a media anthropologist who focuses on how media connects people’s practices in the digital and physical worlds, especially the daily cultural consumption and community power structures of contemporary young people. I am currently examining
(1) the patriotic discourses on social media and young people's daily lives (e.g. the idolisation and fandom of giant panda, ping pong, hanfu, and Huawei, etc.);
(2) the transnational consumption of Asian creative industries, particularly the cultural market and fan economy of Chinese film, TV, animation, and games in Southeast Asia and South America;
(3) the digital transformation and e-commerce live streaming of traditional physical markets in the Greater Bay Area (e.g. the markets of clothing in Nanyou, gold jewery in Shuibei, jade in Pingzhou & Sihui)
I sincerely hope to engage in East-West dialogue with colleagues from diverse backgrounds, particularly the collaboration in algorithmic surveillance, digital nationalism, celebrity studies, fashion and luxury, copyright, and multispecies ethnography.
If you have relevant experiences to share with me, I am always willing to listen to your stories and get close to your feeling.
"I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what you know in the way you know it.
I want to understand the meaning of your experience, to walk in your shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain things as you explain them.
Will you become my teacher and help me understand?" (Spradley, 1979, p.34)
Monographs
Wang, E. N.* & Huang, Q. (2025). Fandom Nationalism: Participatory Censorship and Performative Patriotism. US: Bloomsbury Academic. (In press/ forthcoming)
Peer Reviewed Articles (Note: *Corresponding author)
Wang, E. N.* (2024). Participatory Censorship with Illusory Empowerment: Algorithmic Folklore and Interpretive Labour beyond Fandom. Social Media + Society, 10(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241295800 (JCR Q1, 中科院1区Top)
Hu, T., & Wang, E. N.* (2024). Chinese celebrity dossier: the politics of censorship governance. Celebrity Studies, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2024.2428141
Hu, T., & Wang, E. N.* (2024). Cyber-nationalism and celebrity: The Zhang Zhehan controversy. Celebrity Studies, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2024.2428142
Hu, T.*, Zou, C., & Wang, E. N. (2023). A male idol becoming a girl? Nisu fans’ sexual fantasy about male stars. Transformative Works and Cultures, 41. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2023.2369
Wang, E. N., & Ge, L.* (2023). Fan conflicts and state power in China: Internalised heteronormativity, censorship sensibilities, and fandom police. Asian studies review, 47(2), 355-373. (Journal Most Cited Article in last 3 years)
Wang, E. N.* (2022). Squid Game Outside the Wall: Fandom Nationalism in China and Negotiation with State Power. Communication, Culture and Critique. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcac038
Wang, E. N.* (2022). Dangerous Subaltern: The Power Logic of Fan Subcultures in the Context of Fan Conflicts 危险的附庸：从饭圈冲突看粉丝亚文化的权力逻辑. 文化研究辑刊, (Vol 46 (2021)).
Noppe, N.*, Price, L., Chiu, K., Miller, J. N., Wang, E. N., Vaswani, S. M., Merry, S. K., Pollock, D. E., Black, S. R., Hartwell, R., Naomi, J., Anthony, P., & Emmanouloudis, A. (2022). What if academic publishing worked like fan publishing? Imagining the Fantasy Research Archive of Our Own. Transformative Works and Cultures, (Vol 37 (2022)). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2022.2253
Wang, E. N., Kelley, B.*, Price, L., & Schuster, K. M. (2020). Beyond the multidisciplinary in fan studies: Learning how to talk among disciplines. Transformative Works and Cultures, (Vol 33 (2020)). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1819
Edited Issues
Cultural Reports Issue: The Politics of Censorship against Celebrities, In Celebrity Studies, 12(2), 2024.
Editors: Hu, T. & Wang, E. N.*, co-authored the Introduction.
Book Chapters
Wang, E. N.* (2024). Vernacular Turns in Transcultural Contexts: The Role of Taiwanese Manga Fans in Political Narratives . In Hu, T., & Wu, F. (Eds.), Transcultural Media Fandom in the Asia Pacific. (In Series of Asian Celebrity and Fandom Studies). Bloomsbury. (Accepted/ forthcoming).
Benecchi, E.*, & Wang, E. N. (2021). Fandom: Historicized Fandom and the Conversation between East and West Perspectives. In G. Balbi, N. Ribeiro, V. Schafer, & C. Schwarzenegger (Eds.), Digital Roots: Historicizing Media and Communication Concepts of the Digital Age (pp. 281-298). (Studies in digital history and hermeneutics). DeGruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110740202
Commentary
Ge, L., & Wang, E. N.* (2022). Scapegoating Fandom: Digital Colonialism, Capitalism, and State. CriticalAsianStudies.org. https://doi.org/10.52698/XMVR6735
Ge, L., & Wang, E. N.* (2022). Intra-Fandom Conflicts and Censorship Sensibilities in Chinese Popular Mediascape. Asian Studies Association of Australia. https://asaa.asn.au/intra-fandom-conflicts-and-censorship-sensibilities/
