Han-Teng Liao
- DPhil student, October 2007 -
Han-Teng Liao is a student of various disciplines whose research aims to reconsider the role of keywords (sociolinguistics) and hyperlinks (webometrics) in shaping groups (governance) as bearers of ideas (political communication). He holds an MSc in Computer Science and Information Engineering, an MA in Journalism, a BSc in Electrical Engineering and a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures, all from the National Taiwan University.
Specifically, his DPhil project is a comparative study of two major user-contributed Chinese encyclopedias, Chinese Wikipedia and Baidu Baike. Based on preliminary data and analysis, he expects that Chinese Wikipedia, as the local embodiment of the larger global Wikipedia movement, has the potential to integrate knowledge from previously segregated linguistic, political and cultural spheres among regions such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. More so than Baidu Baike which, as a follow-on and competing project launched by China's leading search engine company, in effect reinforces Beijing's official boundary between filtered and unfiltered Internet.
His current assumptions about the general significance of user-generated encyclopedias:
Similar to search engines, user-generated encyclopedias provide indexes of entries to the world (-wide web) that could be linguistically and geographically bounded.
The routine boundaries drawn by search engines and user-generated encyclopedias are determined by computational linguistic and users' linguistic capacity, which defines a certain linguistic and geographic sphere of Internet.
Some events may temporarily or even eventually redraw the boundaries.
Hence, it is necessary to understand how the boundaries are drawn and redrawn through user-generated encyclopedias.
Research interests
Net linguistics, Chinese-written Internet, governance (dynamic order), political communication, Internet filtering regime
Contact information
Han-Teng Liao, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, 1 St Giles Oxford OX1 3JS, United Kingdom. Telephone: +44 (0)1865 287210 Fax: +44 (0)1865 287211 Email: han-teng.liao@oii.ox.ac.uk
Supervisors
Dr Ralph Schroeder, Director of Research, MSc Programme Director and Senior Research Fellow
Publications
- Liao, H. (2009) Conflictual Consensus in the Chinese Version of Wikipedia. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine.
- Liao, H. (2009) The First Class for the Internet [in Chinese]. The First Popular Science Writing Award for Social and Applied Sciences. Taiwan: National Science Council.
- Liao, H. (2008) Forum: Open Source Textbook? Lessons from Wikipedia [in Chinese]. Journal of Textbook Research 1 (2) 129-135.
- Liao, H. (2008) On Academic Freedom, Governance, and Collaboration: An "Internet Governance" Perspective [in Chinese]. Cultural Studies Monthly 82.
- Liao, H.-T. (2006) Towards creative da-tong: An alternative notion of Creative Industries for China. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9: 395-406.
- Liao, H.-T. (2004) From Commemorations to Carnivals: On Emergent Popular-Culture Nationalism in Taiwan [in Chinese, English abstract available] (Dissertation for MA Journalism: University of Taiwan).
- Liao, H.-T. (2003) From Commemorations to Carnivals: A Media Event Analysis of 1994-2003 New Year Eve Party. Chinese Journal of Communication Research 3: 37-82.
Last updated on: 3 February 2010