Ziyu Deng
DPhil Student
Ziyu Deng
DPhil Student
Ziyu Deng is a DPhil student in Information, Communication, and Social Sciences at the Oxford Internet Institute. Her doctoral research examines public discourse and opinion formation on social media platforms, with a focus on how users navigate social pressures and construct collective narratives in digital spaces. She also studies gendered digital participation, digital and virtual intimacy, AI companions, and digital youth culture. Her work has an East Asian regional focus. She received a Master in Public Policy at Sciences Po Paris, and a Master of Arts at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.
Digital discourse formation, gendered digital participation, digital and virtual intimacy, AI companions, digital youth culture.
Deng, Z. (2026) “Vibing over Communicating: Memeified Extremism in the Digital Age.” Oxford Political Review 18: 32-35.
Blomquist, K., Qian, Z., Deng, Z., Schroeder, R., & Thomas, A. (2025) “The (Geo)Political Economy of AI Openness: US and Chinese Open-Source AI Approaches in Historical Context.” SSRN preprint. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.5891084
Deng, Z. (2024). “They don’t mean to hurt”: Female gamers’ reluctance in recognizing and confronting sexism in gaming as an online-offline juxtaposition. New Media & Society, 28(1), 270-288.
16 December 2024
Ten Oxford Internet Institute (OII) DPhil students have received Dieter Schwarz Foundation (DSF) funding to enable them to begin 12-month AI- related research projects during the course of their studies.
Associate Professor in AI and Society
Ekaterina Hertog is an Associate Professor of AI and Society at Oxford Internet Institute and Institute for Ethics in AI. She studies how the rising digitalisation is reshaping private lives across the world.
Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow
Bernie Hogan examines how to capture, represent and think about social networks, especially personal social networks. His work focuses on the role of design in social media, network capture techniques and theories of relationships.
