Hi there!

I'm Yukun.

I'm


Yukun Yang (陽 玉堃)

he/him/his

I am a first-year Ph.D. student at the Network Science Institute, Northeastern University working with Prof. Brooke Foucault Welles. My research interests widely across the fields of Information Science and Computational Social Science. Specifically, I am interested in how social identities undergird social processes on social media. I am curious about how political ideologies, nationality, and race/ethnicity, was constructed and expressed on social media, how others perceive and react to others, and more broadly, how this identity-based complex social process influences the cultural phenomenon of balkanization, polarization, mobilization, and user migration in online spaces.

Previously, I was a Data Scientist at the Center for Antiracist Research, Boston University. I obtained my master's degree in Information Science offered by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and my bachelor's in Library Science from Northwest University, China. I am currently a Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) affiliate.

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My Recent Updates

I was chosen by the paper track chairs to receive a best reviewer award for ASIS&T 2023!

09/2023

Our paper about built environment, racial/ethnic topology, redlining, and helth outcome is accepted by JAMA Network Open! Public access coming soon!

11/2022

My blog Indra's Net was online. I will post some analytical pieces of social media and computational social science there. Feel free to subsribe!

11/2021

Hey there! I made a website for the albums that define my music taste. Click me to check it out!

07/2021

Worker Solidarity, Pay Transparency, and Labor Rights

Although oftentimes overlooked, the world of research, academics, and non-profit jobs is no stranger to labor abuse and exploitation. Under a staggering power imbalance, the system is rigged against knowledge workers at the bottom of the hierarchy and sustained by an enormous number of professional–managerial class (PMC) people who intentionally sideline the labor struggle. Nowadays, the situation went from bad to worse due to the culture of "achievement society" that enables "auto-exploitation" and the illusive bait of "meritocracy", which is often only hereditary.

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As a foreigner in this country, I have heard many horrifying stories from my peer international folks who are disproportionately exploited due to their legal status, nationality, and residency, along with other intersectional identities. It is my duty to protect people like us who are systematically gatekept from obtaining equal rights and at the same time targeted for power abuse for our vulnerability.

Building solidarity, e.g. unionization, is a time-tested way to counter exploitation. Transparency boosts trust and leads to solidarity. In this big wild world, this is the least I can do to fight with the leviathan of the system by promoting information transparency. I am glad to share my experiences or other bits of information I have learned along the way. Specifically, you are more than welcome to contact me to talk about pay, visa, and other related issues. If you have concerns about privacy, you can use any of the anonymous email services.

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