Stephen Yang | Politics of Technology, Society, Environment

I'm Stephen Yang, a writer, researcher, and educator. I study the politics of collective life at the interstices of media, technology, and (built) environments.‍

Presently, I'm a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, where I'm supported by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP).

I also bring critical scholarship to inform industry practices and policymaking. I have done so through research appointments at Microsoft Research (Social Media Collective), Center for Democracy & Technology (AI Governance Lab), and Partnership on AI.

I'm always open to new connections and opportunities. You can find me on Bluesky or reach out to me at stepheny [at] usc [dot] edu.

Broadly, I study the co-formation of environmental and communication infrastructures, the ways they organize collective life, and how computation reworks their relation. My work draws on communication theory, materialist media studies, and science and technology studies to attend to the mutual imbrication of media, technology, and environment. Across research and teaching, I attend to what is made sensible, relevant, and addressable amidst shifting infrastructural conditions, while asking what alternatives might better serve public interests.

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2026

July 2026 - My article, “Making Life Multiplanetary”: Promise and Imperative of Scaling, has just been published in the International Journal of Communication!
May 2026 - I just passed my qualifying exam, defended my dissertation prospectus, and advanced to PhD candidancy (ABD status)! Very thrilled about this next stage of my journey :)

2025

October 2025 - I will be presenting my work on speculative failure in the age of AI at the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). see you in Rio!
September 2025 - I'll be presenting my work on the paradoxes between longtermism and accelerationism at the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)! See you in Seattle :)
January 2025 — I'm honored to be selected as a finalist for the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans! 77 finalists were selected from 2,617 applicants.

2024

Summer' 24 — I interned at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where I worked on AI policy research as part of the AI Governance Lab. Here's a research report I produced

Jan 2024 — As part of Data & Society's series on participatory methods series on AI design and accountability, I presented my EAAMO'23 paper on participatory approaches to AI design that I co-authored with Fernando Delgado, Michael Madaio, and Qian Yang!