Muyang Li
Assistant Professor
Office: Vari Hall, 2116
Ext: 33913
Email: muyangli@yorku.ca
Media Requests Welcome
Muyang Li is interested in digital sociology, cultural sociology, authoritarianism, and gender issues. Her research is organized around a key question: how does digitalization interact with power and knowledge production? Through this lens, she examines how artificial intelligence and social automation reshape politics, platforms, publics, and the press.
Using mixed methods, she studies how states and publics negotiate the social meaning, regulation, and everyday experience of digital infrastructures, including how digital authoritarianism operates through participatory surveillance and censorship, how epistemic inequalities emerge in global AI knowledge production, and how conspiratorial narratives form around social automation. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and a Faculty Associate at the York Centre for Asian Research, contributing to interdisciplinary conversations on culture, power, and mediated political life.
Degrees
Ph.D. Sociology, University at AlbanyM.Sc. New Media, Chinese University of Hong Kong
B.A. Communication, Communication University of China
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Description:
This project examines how global political forces and technosocial dynamics shape artificial intelligence governance—the rules and frameworks that ensure AI is developed and used safely, ethically, and in line with human rights. The research will analyze AI policy publications and regulatory approaches across regions to identify risks, opportunities, and pathways for international cooperation. The goal is to support more responsible, inclusive, and equitable global AI regulation and inform policymaking and debates on digitalization and globalization.
Start Date:
- Month: Jul Year: 2025
End Date:
- Month: Jul Year: 2028
Collaborator: Dr. Wenhong Chen
Collaborator Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Collaborator Role: Collaborator
Funders:
SSHRC Insight Grant
-
Summary:
This project aims to compare how news outlets in Canada and the U.S. communicate COVID-19 vaccines and the risks of the Coronavirus to the public, and the extent to which cross-ideology news consumption shapes public trust in vaccines.
Description:Principal Investigator, SSHRC Insight Development Grant # 430-2021-01065, $56,967
Start Date:
- Month: Sep Year: 2021
End Date:
- Month: Sep Year: 2023
Funders:
SSHRC
-
Summary:
The conventional thinking about algorithmic harm to democracy emphasizes the detrimental effects of algorithms that have built-in bias or are in some other way inattentive to pre-existing social inequity. Based on this perspective, there is now a common belief that improving algorithms should suffice to solve the problem of algorithmic harm. This, however, is true only to an extent. How algorithms work and how people think algorithms work are two interrelated but distinctive aspects involved in accessing algorithmic harm.
This project introduces a cultural perspective to understand how algorithms could be used against democracy by exploring how algorithmic imaginaries—the way people imagine, perceive, and experience algorithms—are used to develop a particular type of conspiracy theories.
Ali, H. & Li, M. (2026). “Racism without racists” during the COVID-19 pandemic: The Bryan Adams controversy and anti-Asian racism on Twitter. In Anti-Asian Racism and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada. UBC Press, 138-158.
Luo, Z. & Li, M. (2022). Collecting and Analyzing Weibo Data: A Roadmap for Social Research. In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods, 2nd ed, SAGE Publications Ltd.
Luo, Z., Li, M., Fan, Y. (2025). Confiscating progressiveness: how the state shaped frames of domestic violence on Chinese social media throughout the 2010s. Information, Communication and Society. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2500492
Li, M., Fan, Y., Luo, Z., & Chang, C. (2025). Multi-dimensional news content diversity during social unrest: U.S. vs. Canada’s coverage of COVID-19 protests. Canadian Journal of Communication. 50(3), 558-586. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjc-2024-0066
Li, M. (2024). A cross-platform comparison of China’s confrontational diplomatic communication. Journal of International Communication. 30(2), 372-293.
Davis, J. L., Kidd, D., Li, M., Burgese, T. J., Aalders, R. (2022). Information technology & media sociology in a (still) pandemic world. Information, Communication and Society, 25(5), 587-590.
Luo, Z., & Li, M. (2022). Participatory censorship: How online fandom community facilitates authoritarian rule. New Media & Society. 26(7), 4236-4254. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221113923
Yang, Q., Luo, Z., Li, M., & Liu, J. (2021). Understanding the Landscape and Propagation of COVID-19 Misinformation and its Correction on Sina Weibo. Global Health Promotion, 29(1):44-52.
Li, M., & Luo, Z. (2020). The ‘Bad Women Drivers’ Myth: The Overrepresentation of Female Drivers and Gender Bias in China’s Media. Information, Communication and Society, 23(5), 776-793.
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2026 | GS/CMCT6922 3.0 | M | Selected Topics in Research Methods | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2025 | AP/SOCI1030 6.0 | A | Mediated Life in a Digital World | LECT |
| Fall/Winter 2025 | AP/SOCI4930 6.0 | A | Digital Sociology | ONLN |
Muyang Li is interested in digital sociology, cultural sociology, authoritarianism, and gender issues. Her research is organized around a key question: how does digitalization interact with power and knowledge production? Through this lens, she examines how artificial intelligence and social automation reshape politics, platforms, publics, and the press.
Using mixed methods, she studies how states and publics negotiate the social meaning, regulation, and everyday experience of digital infrastructures, including how digital authoritarianism operates through participatory surveillance and censorship, how epistemic inequalities emerge in global AI knowledge production, and how conspiratorial narratives form around social automation. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and a Faculty Associate at the York Centre for Asian Research, contributing to interdisciplinary conversations on culture, power, and mediated political life.
Degrees
Ph.D. Sociology, University at AlbanyM.Sc. New Media, Chinese University of Hong Kong
B.A. Communication, Communication University of China
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Description:
This project examines how global political forces and technosocial dynamics shape artificial intelligence governance—the rules and frameworks that ensure AI is developed and used safely, ethically, and in line with human rights. The research will analyze AI policy publications and regulatory approaches across regions to identify risks, opportunities, and pathways for international cooperation. The goal is to support more responsible, inclusive, and equitable global AI regulation and inform policymaking and debates on digitalization and globalization.
Project Type: FundedRole: PI
Start Date:
- Month: Jul Year: 2025
End Date:
- Month: Jul Year: 2028
Collaborator: Dr. Wenhong Chen
Collaborator Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Collaborator Role: Collaborator
Funders:
SSHRC Insight Grant
-
Summary:
This project aims to compare how news outlets in Canada and the U.S. communicate COVID-19 vaccines and the risks of the Coronavirus to the public, and the extent to which cross-ideology news consumption shapes public trust in vaccines.
Description:Principal Investigator, SSHRC Insight Development Grant # 430-2021-01065, $56,967
Project Type: FundedRole: Principal Investigator
Start Date:
- Month: Sep Year: 2021
End Date:
- Month: Sep Year: 2023
Funders:
SSHRC
-
Summary:
The conventional thinking about algorithmic harm to democracy emphasizes the detrimental effects of algorithms that have built-in bias or are in some other way inattentive to pre-existing social inequity. Based on this perspective, there is now a common belief that improving algorithms should suffice to solve the problem of algorithmic harm. This, however, is true only to an extent. How algorithms work and how people think algorithms work are two interrelated but distinctive aspects involved in accessing algorithmic harm.
This project introduces a cultural perspective to understand how algorithms could be used against democracy by exploring how algorithmic imaginaries—the way people imagine, perceive, and experience algorithms—are used to develop a particular type of conspiracy theories.
All Publications
Ali, H. & Li, M. (2026). “Racism without racists” during the COVID-19 pandemic: The Bryan Adams controversy and anti-Asian racism on Twitter. In Anti-Asian Racism and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada. UBC Press, 138-158.
Luo, Z. & Li, M. (2022). Collecting and Analyzing Weibo Data: A Roadmap for Social Research. In The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods, 2nd ed, SAGE Publications Ltd.
Luo, Z., Li, M., Fan, Y. (2025). Confiscating progressiveness: how the state shaped frames of domestic violence on Chinese social media throughout the 2010s. Information, Communication and Society. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2500492
Li, M., Fan, Y., Luo, Z., & Chang, C. (2025). Multi-dimensional news content diversity during social unrest: U.S. vs. Canada’s coverage of COVID-19 protests. Canadian Journal of Communication. 50(3), 558-586. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjc-2024-0066
Li, M. (2024). A cross-platform comparison of China’s confrontational diplomatic communication. Journal of International Communication. 30(2), 372-293.
Davis, J. L., Kidd, D., Li, M., Burgese, T. J., Aalders, R. (2022). Information technology & media sociology in a (still) pandemic world. Information, Communication and Society, 25(5), 587-590.
Luo, Z., & Li, M. (2022). Participatory censorship: How online fandom community facilitates authoritarian rule. New Media & Society. 26(7), 4236-4254. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221113923
Yang, Q., Luo, Z., Li, M., & Liu, J. (2021). Understanding the Landscape and Propagation of COVID-19 Misinformation and its Correction on Sina Weibo. Global Health Promotion, 29(1):44-52.
Li, M., & Luo, Z. (2020). The ‘Bad Women Drivers’ Myth: The Overrepresentation of Female Drivers and Gender Bias in China’s Media. Information, Communication and Society, 23(5), 776-793.
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2026 | GS/CMCT6922 3.0 | M | Selected Topics in Research Methods | SEMR |
| Fall/Winter 2025 | AP/SOCI1030 6.0 | A | Mediated Life in a Digital World | LECT |
| Fall/Winter 2025 | AP/SOCI4930 6.0 | A | Digital Sociology | ONLN |
