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Qinyuan Lei is a filmmaker and researcher. Her artistic practice and research focus on the topics of communication technologies, social media, online communities, digital ethnography, and how new technologies impact the everyday life of young people in China. Committed to the practice of media-based research and ethnography, she considers it her long-term goal to document the future of China in changing times.
She founded the “Digital Communities in China” research group in 2020 with a group of young Chinese Communication and Media Studies researchers. The group investigates the impact of communication technologies on contemporary Chinese society. Their work has been published at top Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Communication Studies venues such as ACM CSCW and the International Communication Association (ICA) conference. She serves as a reviewer for journals and conferences such as ACM CSCW, the International Communication Gazette, and the Chinese Journal of Communication.
Aside from her academic research, her documentary has been shown in international film festivals, such as International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), RIDM-Montreal International Documentary Film Festival, DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, and DOK.fest Munich.
She received her BA in Comparative Literature at Brandeis University and her PhD in East Asian Studies at Princeton University. She also completed a master course in Cinematic Arts at Art-on-the-run Film School in Berlin, Germany. Before joining the School of Creative Media, she taught at Southern University of Science and Technology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Currently, Lei is working on a new film titled Ms. Love (working title), which is also part of her ongoing research into digital communities. This film focuses on three young Chinese women who explore love within the subculture of Erciyuan. The project has been accepted to the “Storytelling Lab” of Docs by the Sea in Indonesia in 2024.
Lei, Q., Tang, R., Ho, H. M., Zhou, H., Guo, J., & Tang, Z. (2024, May). A Game of Love for Women: Social Support in Otome Game Mr. Love: Queen’s Choice in China. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-15).
Lei, Q., Tang, R. (2024). Coded, Playful, and Emotional Language: Discursive Strategies on Chinese Social Media during the Pandemic. Discourse and Communication (accepted).
Lei, Q., Kuksenok, K., Tang, R., Guo, J., Ji, R., & Li, J. (2023). Identity Struggles as Online Activism in China: A Case Study Based on “The Inviting Plan for 985 Fives” Community on Douban. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 7(CSCW2), 1-25.
Lei, Q (director). The One Who Runs Away Is the Ghost (2021). (Feature-length documentary)
