Fan Yang

Bang you’re a great person in the mainstream journalism! I’ve always appreciated how you got me into media when I was a baby PhD student and will always be grateful for you paving a path for us!

Updated my personal website, where you can learn delightful facts like what they call Theory of Vibe in France ('Théorie de la « vibe »')

feat. @coolrobbie.bsky.social & Luke Heemsbergen

We're fighting disinformation in all the wrong ways Regulating disinformation merely as ‘content’ to be prevented or corrected is unproductive and limiting. The real task is to interrogate the system that feeds it.

RECapture team on 'We're fighting disinformation in all the wrong ways.'

Regulating disinformation merely as ‘content’ to be prevented or corrected is unproductive and limiting. The real task is to interrogate the system that feeds it.

www.crikey.com.au/2025/10/27/f...

RECapture team submitted to the Inquiry into the 2025 federal election. We provided our high-level and operational recommendations for improving trust and security in digital campaigns for Australian elections. @coolrobbie.bsky.social et al.

Link to our submission doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We're fighting disinformation in all the wrong ways

A study of falsehoods spread during the Voice referendum and 2025 federal election on Chinese and American platforms reveals why Australia must change its approach to tackling disinformation.

"By appearing as opinion, disinformation passes itself off as a personal viewpoint rather than AS A COVER FOR DECEPTIVE INFLUENCE” (my emphasis) — great article in @crikey.com.au by @fanyang.bsky.social Robbie Fordyce & Luke Heemsbergen #auspol

I’ll be there! Perhaps we could catch up after this?

Now live: “Contextualising disinformation during the 2023 Voice referendum on WeChat: Manipulating knowledge gaps and whitewashing Indigenous rights” Fan Yang, Luke Heemsbergen, Robbie Fordyce misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/cont...

Contextualizing critical disinformation during the 2023 Voice referendum on WeChat: Manipulating knowledge gaps and whitewashing Indigenous rights | HKS Misinformation Review Outside China, WeChat is a conduit for translating and circulating English-language information among the Chinese diaspora. Australian domestic political campaigns exploit the gaps between platform go...

Our paper on the Voice referendum on WeChat shows policymakers & factchecker might be fighting the wrong battle against disinfo. Our case & numbers show how disinfo works on the ground. Check out the paper (w. Luke Heemsbergen & @coolrobbie.bsky.social)

url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/fLyrCxnMJ5...

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT! @mahliann.bsky.social, @marcuscarter.com, and myself have combined our collective brains and written a wide-reaching introduction to the complex and interdisciplinary field of Game Studies in this forthcoming book for Polity. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Mindless Machines, Mindless Myths | Los Angeles Review of Books Erik J. Larson thinks about “Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” which traces Robert Skidelsky’s philosophical reckoning with AI, automation, and the illusion of prog...

We’ve “watched the web mutate from democratic commons into a gamified engine of manipulation and misinformation. The dream of a cooperative knowledge society has faded into an architecture of monetized attention and algorithmic control.”
lareviewofbooks.org/article/mind...

Next @wearehades.bsky.social seminar looks amaze, featuring MDAP's resident ‪historian, data-nerd, map maker, & cat lover @emily-fitzgerald.bsky.social
Monday 8 September, 2pm, online, all welcome!
Register rduevents.unimelb.edu.au/event/same-d...

That’s zimomo!

Only a couple weeks to go until my mate @katemannell.bsky.social and I have a yarn with our fellow panelists about the infrastructures of noise @aussts.bsky.social 2025 conference.

Thanks to @blueskychris.bsky.social, there’ll be a streaming link on the day:

www.eventbrite.com.au/e/aussts-202...

Great seminar from Andy! If you missed it, you can watch it here:

Argentine cooperatives launched AI4coops, showcasing the way they are engaging with AI in their projects. ai4coops.ar/en

How election misinformation spreads on Chinese social media Hundreds of thousands of people in Australia use these platforms.

"Our research reveals while Australian news media often focus on foreign interference, in this election cycle, disinformation is being driven by commercial and domestic political interests," write @fanyang.bsky.social, Luke Heemsbergen, and @coolrobbie.bsky.social.

Read more:

The mental tyranny of AI writing An arduously long blog post

I wrote a very long blog post about AI writing. I hope you'll read it.

meresophistry.substack.com/p/the-mental...

A deepfake Dutton speaks Mandarin on Chinese social media platform A series of attacks on Australian political parties on emerging Chinese social media platform RedNote raise concerns about misinformation, disinformation and the risk of foreign interference ahead of ...

In this investigative report, ADM+S researchers Fan Yang, Robbie Fordyce, with Luke Heemsbergen worked with ABC, to uncover political disinformation on Chinese social media platform RedNote @fanyang.bsky.social @coolrobbie.bsky.social sky.social bit.ly/41KYczP

Chinese social media new election battleground - ABC listen Nearly 700,000 Australians use the Chinese platform Rednote, and it's become a new battleground for targeting Chinese-Australian voters.

Chinese social media new election battleground. Hear more from ADM+S researchers Fan Yang and Robbie Fordyce on ABC's The World Today @fanyang.bsky.social @coolrobbie.bsky.social #misinformation bit.ly/4iFwawv

News media’s legitimization of disinformation: propaganda and the length of the Uluru Statement News media notionally plays an important role in democracy by disseminating quality information which the public needs to make democratic decisions in their best interests. Yet, news media can also...

News media’s legitimization of disinformation: propaganda and the length of the Uluru Statement
Victoria Fielding, Robert Boucaut, Catherine Son & Alexander H. Beare - [Open Access] www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Donna Haraway, elder intellectual white woman, speaking before a tight group of people with save science signs amidst the redwoods at UCSC.

Donna Haraway leading #StandUpForScience at #UCSC. Situating science in helping us live together in better ways. She's giving deets on cuts to science, incl #Indigenous science, ag, USAID, medicine, dangers to farm workers, dangers of data loss. Donna's a master at connecting all the relations. ❤️

Frontiers | Editorial: Sociology of emotion and affect in the age of mis-, dis-, and mal-information In recent public discourse, particularly with elections in powerful countries, the term disinformation has entered our lexicon. Although the intentional spre...

Oh hey! The special issue that I co-edited is out now. "Sociology of emotion and affect in the age of mis-, dis-, and mal-information". A collection of three fascinating papers at the horizon of what we know about this topic.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/soc...

YouTube video by ADM+S Centre Platforms, misinformation, and migrant communities

Researcher Spotlight 💡

ADM+S Research Fellow Dr @fanyang.bsky.social (UoM) is interested in studying technologies, #digital labour, and information distribution among #migrant communities in Australia.

🔗 View GenAI Concepts: apo.org.au/node/327400
📍 Learn more: www.admscentre.org.au/fan-yang/

Cover of DeepAesthetics: Computational Experience in a Time of Machine Learning by Anna Munster. The cover features a navy blue background; white, diagonally aligned title text that starts in the top-left corner; and a slightly blurred closeup of a pink flower that takes up most of the lower half.

In "DeepAesthetics," Anna Munster explores aesthetics, artificial intelligence, & machine learning to understand the contours of computational experience and the possibility to artfully use AI to create new futures. Read the intro for free on our website now! #CriticalTheory
https://buff.ly/4hIcJmz

AI Countergovernance: Lessons Learned from Canada and Paris | TechPolicy.Press The Paris AI Action Summit showed that “participatory AI” and “public interest AI” are often co-opted by government and industry to advance their agendas.

AI Countergovernance: Lessons Learned from Canada and Paris

"We learned three lessons from Canada’s failure to pass national AI legislation. These lessons can be applied to oppose unaccountable state-led AI governance around the world."

Deepening the data divide: Marginalised perspectives and non-profit priorities in Australian data sharing reforms - Xiaofang Yao, Anthony McCosker, Yong-Bin Kang, 2025 This paper investigates open public data and data sharing reforms in Australia (2018–2022) and their potential role in deepening the ‘data divide’. In the conte...

One way to understand what is at stake in an AI-driven society is to look at the increasing Data Divide that is marginalising the voices of civil society, not-for-profits and all organisations and collectives working toward social innovation. New paper!! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Particularly on the matters of human rights, equity, and environment, on the matters that they particularly care about.

Informal disinformation debunking is often voluntary and emotional taxing.