Jane Yeahin Pyo

Hi! I am Jane Yeahin Pyo (she/her). I am currently an Assistant Professor at Tulane University's Department of Communication. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Communication Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab (GloTech Lab@UMass).  

I received my PhD from the Institute of Communications Research, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

My interdisciplinary research brings together digital media studies, critical technology studies, and global studies. I bring critical and global perspectives to how digital media technologies impact our democratic and social life. Specifically, I look at how digital technologies reshape journalism as a democratic institution.

My book project, Profitable Harassment: How the News Industry Exploits Anti-Press Attacks in South Korea, examines how online harassment of journalists persists and gets amplified. Exploring the emergence of a new political repertoire within South Korean left-wing activism that utilizes online harassment to challenge the conservative press, I argue that news institutions capitalize on online hostility and compromise their journalistic duties in the digital news economy. 

I also look at digital technologies' impact on politics within global and transnational flows of disinformation. Since Fall 2023, I am working on the “Co-Insights: Fostering community collaboration to combat misinformation” NSF-funded project, and lead a multi-method, multidisciplinary, and community-engaging research project on racialized disinformation targeting Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Within this project, I explore how global digital platforms (e.g., KakaoTalk, WeChat) create an intimate yet intimidating environment for diasporic Asians in their encounter with misinformation.

I received my MA in Communication from Yonsei University (2017) and BA in Media Studies and English Literature and Language from Korea University (2015). In my free time, I love working out--weightlifting, swimming, running..sometimes all in one day!