Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty

Overview

Join Lifetime Learning and Aynne Kokas of UVA’s Miller Center and Media Studies Department, A&S, as she discusses her book Trafficking Data: How China Winning Battle Digital Sovereignty. Kokas delivers an urgent look into the technology firms that gather our data and how the Chinese government capitalizes on this data flow for political gain. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the U.S. and China, Kokas will explain how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy and hence the data that defines our public and private lives.

Speaker Biography

Aynne Kokas, C.K. Yen Professor, The Miller Center, Associate Professor of Media Studies, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and Director, East Asia Center, University of Virginia

Aynne Kokas is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Kokas’ research examines Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. Her book Trafficking Data: How China Winning Battle Digital Sovereignty argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. Her award-winning first book Hollywood Made in China, argues that Chinese investment and regulations have transformed the U.S. commercial media industry, most prominently in the case of media conglomerates’ leverage of global commercial brands.