Rate My Professor Wenhong Chen

Wenhong Chen is an associate professor of media sociology in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Sociology and the School of Journalism and Media. She serves as the founding co-director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries and as a Distinguished Scholar in the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Dr. Chen earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto in 2007, with a dissertation titled Spinning Transnational Webs: Ethnic Entrepreneurship and Social Networks in the Internet Age, an M.A. in Sociology from the same institution in 2001, and a B.A. in Economics from the University of International Business and Economics in China in 1995. Prior to joining UT Austin as an assistant professor in 2009, she held an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Duke University from 2007 to 2009. She was promoted to associate professor in 2017 and has affiliations with the Population Research Center, Center for Asian American Studies, and Asia Policy Program.

Dr. Chen's research focuses on media sociology, digital inequalities, social networks, transnational entrepreneurship, and the impacts of U.S. and Chinese AI policies on tech and media entrepreneurship. She has authored over 90 publications in top journals, including Digital Inequalities and Why They Matter (Information, Communication & Society, 2015), Sharing, Liking, Commenting, and Distressed? The Pathway between Facebook Interaction and Psychological Distress (Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2013), and recent works such as Red, Yellow, Green and Golden: The Post-Pandemic Future of China’s Health Code Apps (Information, Communication & Society, 2022) and Core Technical Support Networks: A New Perspective on Digital Inequalities in Public Housing Communities (Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2021). Her scholarship has earned the William F. Ogburn Mid-Career Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association (2016), Provost’s Teaching Fellow at UT Austin (2021), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship (2020), Barry Sherman Teaching Award (2022), and recognition as one of the top 2% most-cited researchers worldwide (2020). She chaired the ASA Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section (2017-2018) and serves on editorial boards for Information, Communication & Society, Journalism and Media, and others.