Bio

Jennifer Pan is a Professor of Communication and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Her research focuses on political communication and authoritarian politics. Pan uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity in China and other authoritarian regimes to answer questions about how autocrats perpetuate their rule. How political censorship, propaganda, and information manipulation work in the digital age. How preferences and behaviors are shaped as a result.

Her book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (Oxford, 2020) shows how China's pursuit of political order transformed the country’s main social assistance program, Dibao, for repressive purposes. Her work has appeared in peer reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and Science.

She graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government.

Academic Appointments

Program Affiliations

  • Center for East Asian Studies

Professional Education

  • BA, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs (2004)
  • PhD, Harvard University, Government (2015)

Contact

  • Academic
    jp1@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: Communication Position: Professor
    • 450 Jane Stanford Way Bldg 120 Rm 110
    • Stanford,  California  94305-2030 
    University - Faculty Department: Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) Position: Senior Fellow

Additional Info

Links

2022-23 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • How Information Flows from the World to China INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRESS-POLITICS Lu, Y., Schaefer, J., Park, K., Joo, J., Pan, J. 2022

    View details for DOI 10.1177/19401612221117470

    View details for Web of Science ID 000837345900001

  • How government-controlled media shifts policy attitudes through framing POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND METHODS Pan, J., Shao, Z., Xu, Y. 2022; 10 (2): 317-332

    View details for DOI 10.1017/psrm.2021.35

    View details for Web of Science ID 000777984100008

  • The digital repression of social movements, protest, and activism: A synthetic review. Science advances Earl, J., Maher, T. V., Pan, J. 2022; 8 (10): eabl8198

    Abstract

    Repression research examines the causes and consequences of actions or policies that are meant to, or actually do, raise the costs of activism, protest, and/or social movement activity. The rise of digital and social media has brought substantial increases in attention to the repression of digital activists and movements and/or to the use of digital tools in repression, which is spread across many disciplines and areas of study. We organize and review this growing welter of research under the concept of digital repression by expanding a typology that distinguishes actions based on actor type, whether actions are overt or covert, and whether behaviors are shaped by coercion or channeling. This delineation between broadly different forms of digital repression allows researchers to develop expectations about digital repression, better understand what is "new" about digital repression in terms of explanatory factors, and better understand the consequences of digital repression.

    View details for DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abl8198

    View details for PubMedID 35263143

  • Selectively localized: Temporal and visual structure of smartphone screen activity across media environments MOBILE MEDIA & COMMUNICATION Muise, D., Lu, Y., Pan, J., Reeves, B. 2022

    View details for DOI 10.1177/20501579221080333

    View details for Web of Science ID 000761615000001

  • Does ideology influence hiring in China? evidence from two randomized experiments POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND METHODS Pan, J., Zhang, T. 2022

    View details for DOI 10.1017/psrm.2021.77

    View details for Web of Science ID 000750662100001

  • Response to Manfred Elstrom's Review of Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS Pan, J. 2021; 19 (4)

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S1537592721003212

    View details for Web of Science ID 000728285000025

  • Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness (Book Review) PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS Book Review Authored by: Pan, J. 2021; 19 (4): 1274-1276

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S1537592721002851

    View details for Web of Science ID 000728285000022

  • Response to Manfred Elstrom's Review of Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS Pan, J. 2021; 19 (4): 1278-1279

    View details for Web of Science ID 000728285000108

  • Screenomics: A Framework to Capture and Analyze Personal Life Experiences and the Ways that Technology Shapes Them. Human-computer interaction Reeves, B., Ram, N., Robinson, T. N., Cummings, J. J., Giles, C. L., Pan, J., Chiatti, A., Cho, M. J., Roehrick, K., Yang, X., Gagneja, A., Brinberg, M., Muise, D., Lu, Y., Luo, M., Fitzgerald, A., Yeykelis, L. 2021; 36 (2): 150-201

    Abstract

    Digital experiences capture an increasingly large part of life, making them a preferred, if not required, method to describe and theorize about human behavior. Digital media also shape behavior by enabling people to switch between different content easily, and create unique threads of experiences that pass quickly through numerous information categories. Current methods of recording digital experiences provide only partial reconstructions of digital lives that weave - often within seconds - among multiple applications, locations, functions and media. We describe an end-to-end system for capturing and analyzing the "screenome" of life in media, i.e., the record of individual experiences represented as a sequence of screens that people view and interact with over time. The system includes software that collects screenshots, extracts text and images, and allows searching of a screenshot database. We discuss how the system can be used to elaborate current theories about psychological processing of technology, and suggest new theoretical questions that are enabled by multiple time scale analyses. Capabilities of the system are highlighted with eight research examples that analyze screens from adults who have generated data within the system. We end with a discussion of future uses, limitations, theory and privacy.

    View details for DOI 10.1080/07370024.2019.1578652

    View details for PubMedID 33867652

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC8045984

  • Capturing Clicks: How the Chinese Government Uses Clickbait to Compete for Visibility POLITICAL COMMUNICATION Lu, Y., Pan, J. 2020

    View details for DOI 10.1080/10584609.2020.1765914

    View details for Web of Science ID 000550071300001

  • How Saudi Crackdowns Fail to Silence Online Dissent AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Pan, J., Siegel, A. A. 2020; 114 (1): 109–25

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S0003055419000650

    View details for Web of Science ID 000504568700008

  • Censorship's Effect on Incidental Exposure to Information: Evidence From Wikipedia SAGE OPEN Pan, J., Roberts, M. E. 2020; 10 (1)

    View details for DOI 10.1177/2158244019894068

    View details for Web of Science ID 000517294700001

  • Online field experiments ASIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION Muise, D., Pan, J. 2019; 29 (3): 217–34

    View details for DOI 10.1080/01292986.2018.1453850

    View details for Web of Science ID 000467880200002

  • How Chinese Officials Use the Internet to Construct Their Public Image POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND METHODS Pan, J. 2019; 7 (2): 197–213

    View details for DOI 10.1017/psrm.2017.15

    View details for Web of Science ID 000466762400001

  • REJOINDER: THE CHALLENGES OF "MORE DATA" FOR PROTEST EVENT ANALYSIS SOCIOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY, VOL 49 Zhang, H., Pan, J., Alwin, D. F. 2019; 49: 76–82

    View details for DOI 10.1177/0081175019866425

    View details for Web of Science ID 000501594000009

  • Screenomics: a framework to capture and analyze personal life experiences and the ways that technology shapes them Human-Computer Interaction Reeves, B. 2019

    View details for DOI 10.1080/07370024.2019.1578652

  • How the Market for Social Media Shapes Strategies of Internet Censorship DIGITAL MEDIA AND DEMOCRATIC FUTURES Pan, J., DelliCarpini, M. X. 2019: 196–230

    View details for Web of Science ID 000464289800009

  • Computational Communication Science: A Methodological Catalyzer for a Maturing Discipline INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION Hilbert, M., Barnett, G., Blumenstock, J., Contractor, N., Diesner, J., Frey, S., Gonzalez-Bailon, S., Lamberso, P. J., Pan, J., Tai-Quan Peng, Shen, C., Smaldino, P. E., Van Atteveldt, W., Waldherr, A., Zhang, J., Zhu, J. H. 2019; 13: 3912–34

    View details for Web of Science ID 000488766000004

  • CASM: A DEEP-LEARNING APPROACH FOR IDENTIFYING COLLECTIVE ACTION EVENTS WITH TEXT AND IMAGE DATA FROM SOCIAL MEDIA SOCIOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY, VOL 49 Zhang, H., Pan, J., Alwin, D. F. 2019; 49: 1–57

    View details for DOI 10.1177/0081175019860244

    View details for Web of Science ID 000501594000005

  • Concealing Corruption: How Chinese Officials Distort Upward Reporting of Online Grievances AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Pan, J., Chen, K. 2018; 112 (3): 602–20

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S0003055418000205

    View details for Web of Science ID 000437428100011

  • China's Newsmakers: Official Media Coverage and Political Shifts in the Xi Jinping Era CHINA QUARTERLY Jaros, K., Pan, J. 2018; 233: 111–36

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S0305741017001679

    View details for Web of Science ID 000428650500006

  • China's Ideological Spectrum JOURNAL OF POLITICS Pan, J., Xu, Y. 2018; 80 (1): 254–73

    View details for DOI 10.1086/694255

    View details for Web of Science ID 000419487800033

  • Framing and Agenda-setting in Russian News: a Computational Analysis of Intricate Political Strategies Field, A., Kliger, D., Wintner, S., Pan, J., Jurafsky, D., Tsvetkov, Y., Assoc Computat Linguist ASSOC COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS-ACL. 2018: 3570-3580

    View details for Web of Science ID 000865723403082

  • How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW King, G., Pan, J., Roberts, M. E. 2017; 111 (3): 484–501

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S0003055417000144

    View details for Web of Science ID 000406688200004

  • Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence From a Survey Experiment in China COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES Meng, T., Pan, J., Yang, P. 2017; 50 (4): 399-433

    View details for DOI 10.1177/0010414014556212

    View details for Web of Science ID 000394902400001

  • How Market Dynamics of Domestic and Foreign Social Media Firms Shape Strategies of Internet Censorship PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM Pan, J. 2017; 64 (3-4): 167–88

    View details for DOI 10.1080/10758216.2016.1181525

    View details for Web of Science ID 000402099100005

  • Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Chen, J., Pan, J., Xu, Y. 2016; 60 (2): 383-400

    View details for DOI 10.1111/ajps.12207

    View details for Web of Science ID 000374005500007

  • No! Formal Theory, Causal Inference, and Big Data Are Not Contradictory Trends in Political Science PS-POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICS Monroe, B. L., Pan, J., Roberts, M. E., Sen, M., Sinclair, B. 2015; 48 (1): 71-74

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S1049096514001760

    View details for Web of Science ID 000347159500026

  • Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized experimentation and participant observation SCIENCE King, G., Pan, J., Roberts, M. E. 2014; 345 (6199): 891-891

    View details for DOI 10.1126/science.1251722

    View details for Web of Science ID 000340524700035

  • How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW King, G., Pan, J., Roberts, M. E. 2013; 107 (2): 326-343

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S0003055413000014

    View details for Web of Science ID 000318942500007

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4818-0122