Dechun Zhang
PhD candidate / self funded
- Name
- D. Zhang
- Telephone
- 071 5272727
- d.zhang@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Dechun Zhang is PhD candidate at the Institute for Area Studies
My name is Dechun Zhang, a PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) in the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University, Netherlands. My research interests are political communication, media and politics, digital politics, AI & Politics, and nationalism. My PhD project, “Rethinking China’s Digital Nationalism in the Wake of the COVID-19 Crisis”, focuses on how COVID-19 reshaped and influenced China’s digital nationalism, which is supervised by Prof.dr. Florian Schneider and Dr. Yih-Jye Hwang. I conduct research through both qualitative, quantitative and computational methodological approaches.
I am now the Managing Editor at the Journal of Comtempory Eastern Asia and the Social Media Editor at the Journal of Visual Political Communication. I serve as a reviewer for various journals and conferences and act as an External Expert, evaluating proposals for the COST Action, which is part of The European Cooperation in Science and Technology. My studies also appear in serval journals, book chapters and conferences, including Journalism Practice, etc. You can check my updated CV here.
I was a visiting researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies in the Department of Political and Social Science at Freie Universität Berlin in Germany (host by Prof. Dr. Barbara Pfetsch). I received my joint master degree from the Erasmus Mundus program in Journalism Media and Globalisation at Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Amsterdam in Netherlands, with a research track in media and politics. I am now completing my second (online) master in Data and Network Analytics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia, and my research track is Computational Social Science. Also, I received my bachelor (Honors) degree from Hong Kong Baptist University in International Journalism.
I also have journalism experience in Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. I worked at EurAsia Info (Swiss) as a journalist. I interviewed the Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and the Mayor of Zurich during Chinese President Xi’s state visit to Switzerland in 2017. I also worked as a Communication Assistant at The Charhar Institute (China) in 2016.
PhD candidate / self funded
- Faculty of Humanities
- Leiden Institute for Area Studies
- SAS China
- Zhang D. & Shi J. (2024), Unravelling diverse Chinese discourses on the Russo-Ukrainian War: a comparative analysis of official and individual accounts on Weibo. In: Bergman T. & Hearns-Branaman J.O. (Eds.), Media, dissidence and the war in Ukraine: Routledge.
- Zhao J. & Zhang D. (2024), Visual propaganda in Chinese central and local news agencies: a Douyin case study, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11: 588.
- Zhang D. (2024), Review of: Iliadis A. (2022), Semantic media: mapping meaning on the internet. Los Angeles: USC. International Journal of Communication 18: 3915-3917.
- Zhang D. & Xu Y. (2023), When nationalism encounters the COVID-19 pandemic: understanding Chinese nationalism from media use and media trust, Global Society 37(2): 176-196.
- Zhang C., Zhang D. & Shao H. (2023), The softening of Chinese digital propaganda: evidence from the People’s Daily Weibo account during the pandemic , Frontiers in Psychology 14: 1-12.
- Zhang D., Globalism or nationalism? Chinese public discourse on COVID-19 vaccines. The AsiaPortal: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. [blog entry].
- Zhang D. & Jamali A.B. (2022), China’s “weaponized” vaccine: intertwining between international and domestic politics, East Asia 39(1): 279-296.
- Zhang D. & Qiu X. (2022), Cyber-Nationalism in China: Popular Discourse on China's Belt Road. In: Edimo R.M.M. & Rajaoson J. (Eds.), New nationalisms and China's belt and road initiative: exploring the transnational public domain. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 143–156.
- Zhang C., Zhang D. & Blanchard P. (2022), International broadcasting during times of conflict: a comparison of China’s and Russia's communication strategies, Journalism Practice : 1-28.
- Zhang D. & Gomez J. (16 February 2021), COVID-19 and China’s Deep Digital Authoritarianism. [web article].
- Zhang D. & Gomez J., China’s ‘Mandatory’ Vaccine: Domestic Political Stabilizer: Eurasia Review. [web article].
- Zhang D. (2021), The media and think tanks in China: the construction and propagation of a think tank, Media Asia 48(2): 123-138.
- Zhang D., Chinese Nationalism And Xinjiang Cotton: A Victory Or A Loss For Both: Eurasia Review. [web article].
- Zhang D. (2021), EU-China relations: through the narrative of China's media, Journal of Government and Politics 12(2): 153-165.
- Zhang D. & Zhang Y. (2021), Migrant Children’s Acculturation in China: The Roles of Parent-Child Communication and Parent-Child Relationship, International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social and Community Studies 16(2): 49-74.
- Zhang D. (2021), Media and pollution in China: mouthpiece or watchdog?, International Journal of Sustainability Policy and Practice 17(2): 1-7.
- Zhang D. (2020), Digital nationalism on Weibo on the 70th Chinese National Day, The Journal of Communication and Media Studies 6(1): 1-19.
- Zhang D. (2020), China’s digital nationalism: Search engines and online encyclopedias, The Journal of Communication and Media Studies 5(2): 1-19.
- Zhang D. (2020), China’s BRI: A Game Changer?. In: Jaiswal Pramod, Shrestha Mohan Krishna & Paudel Mitra Bandhu (Eds.), Nepal’s Foreign Policy & Emerging Global Trends. New Delhi: Smt Neelam Batra, GB Books.