Hi, I'm Ruohan, a Postdoctoral Fellow from the Department of Marketing, CUHK.

First, let me decode my name for you. "Ruohan" (若菡) literally means "like a lotus flower" - my parents were basically hoping I'd have that whole "pure and untainted despite growing in muddy waters" merit. For the longest time, I also went by Rebecca (yes, after that ambitious character from Vanity Fair). Feel free to call me either name, though these days I'm partial to just plain Ruohan.

I earned my PhD from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), where I had an absolutely fantastic time diving deep into the wonderfully chaotic world of Chinese influencer/wanghong industrialization. Currently, I'm doing my postdoc in the Department of Marketing at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where I'm investigating how influencers wield their linguistic superpowers to make us all want to buy things from them. 

My research focuses on influencer marketing, platform culture, how content creators present themselves across different platforms, and the social and economic forces that make the influencer universe tick. I like to think of myself as an influencer scholar - I'm working hard to make myself deserve this name.

When I'm not researching on the mysteries of internet fame, I'm busy being a mom to one big Golden Retriever and one little human kid. Both are equally demanding, though only one of them brings me their toys at 6 AM.

Fair warning: if you show even the slightest interest of my dog, I will talk about him for hours. 

Selected work

• Li, R.* & Abidin, C., The nesting strategies of e-commerce wanghong: promotional temporalities in online shopping festivals on Chinese platforms. [Accepted, Social Media + Society, SSCI, JCR-Q1: 5/228 in Communication]

• Li, R.*, Jiang, L. and Wagner, C. (2025), “Balancing self-representation and self-commodification: how influencers transform social media fame and authenticity into e-commerce sales in China”, Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-03-2024-0511 [SSCI, ABS 3, JCR-Q1]

• Li, R.*, & Lin. J. (Forthcoming). From the “unlikely creative class” to “participatory exploitation”: MCNs and the evolution of Chinese wanghong production. In the Oxford Handbook of Chinese Digital Media. Oxford University Press (New York).

• Li, R.* (2018). The secret of internet celebrities: a qualitative study of online opinion leaders on Weibo. In Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Get in touch at [lrh92092@gmail.com]

For detailed CV, please see this.