Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
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wytang.bsky.social
Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
@wytang.bsky.social
330 followers 690 following 430 posts
Erasmus Rotterdam University - Lecturer
Communications Ph.D. - Media Psychology - Videogames & Sexism
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
joshuafoust.com
I love this study because it highlights two things:

1) Esports are like regular sports: you’re mostly watching other people play; and
2) not everyone who enjoys watching Esports is necessarily a player of those same games

Normalizing Esports as just another sport opens up more research! #commsky
Paying, Playing, and Spectating: Relationships Between Digital Game Play and Spectating Esports - Joseph Macey, Topias Mattinen, Juho Hamari, 2025
The association between playing digital games and watching esports has, to date, been an explicit assumption of many works, specifically that there is a strong ...
journals.sagepub.com
November 17, 2025 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
orbenamy.bsky.social
📣 Digital Research Community!

The new UK Adolescent Health Study will follow 100k young people (8–18yrs) for 10+ years. Please share what digital technology measures you think it should include.

Please complete this survey (by 24th November 2025 @ 9AM): cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Adolescent Health Survey - Digital Media
Expert guidance shaping digital media questions in upcoming Adolescent Health Study.
cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
christinawurst.bsky.social
Meine Diss, jetzt zum Lesen / Download erhältlich! /
My thesis, now available for reading / downloading!

bibliographie.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/bitstr...

#FanStudies
Cover that says "ANTI / FAN ACTIVISM" (the slash is a lightsaber) Ideological Negotiations in Star Wars Fan Conflicts on Social Media from 2015 to 2024 PhD thesis by Christina Wurst Keywords: Social Media, Critical Discourse Analysis, Star Wars, Fan Activism, Anti-Fandom, (Anti-)Feminism, Populism, Shipping "Back" of the cover that says: "“Anti/Fan Activism” examines how political polarization manifests within movie and television fandoms, focusing on the Star Wars franchise as a key site of ideological negotiation. While previous scholarship has explored fan activism as a form of participatory politics and analyzed the dangers of toxic fan cultures such as #Gamergate, little attention has been paid to how political polarization unfolds within fan discourse itself. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this thesis demonstrates how language, visuals, and platform affordances shape power relations, ideologies, and community boundaries in online fan spaces across YouTube, Twitter/X, and Tumblr. Through three case studies, the thesis demonstrates how anti/fan activism, i.e. fan activism driven by negative affect towards a text, manifests differently depending on political alignment. Reactionary fans engage in bottom-up attempts to reshape the media industry through “anti-woke” campaigns and a fan-populist style that constructs an authentic (male) fandom in opposition to elite “corporate” producers. Progressive fans, by contrast, focus on lateral policing within fandoms, deploying social justice rhetoric to suppress content and fan behaviors they perceive as harmful. Across the Star Wars sequels and related productions, fan conflicts such as discussions about “Mary Sues”, YouTube’s right-wing media analysis essays, and Tumblr’s anti-shipping movements reveal how broader socio-political anxieties about feminism, masculinity, and diversity are projected onto media texts. Ultimately, these fan conflicts illustrate how the logics of the visibility economy amplify polarized discourse and turn fandom into a stage where ideological struggle and affect-driven participation intersect."
November 16, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
brookenewman.bsky.social
Message to all faculty: your expertise is no longer trusted or valued at this so-called “university.”
A thread by an A&M professor describing how the new rules will impact faculty. Syllabi must be fed into AI to be checked for content not aligned with approved syllabi; students will be encouraged to report faculty for inaccurate content; and young people are now being told they get to decide what a professor should teach.
November 14, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
malte.the100.ci
👀
psyarxivbot.bsky.social PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 4d
Open Play: A longitudinal dataset of multi-platform video game digital trace data and psychological measures: https://osf.io/nz96c
November 14, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
jameeljaffer.bsky.social
MAGA’s ongoing war on academic freedom, reflected in headlines from the last 24 hours.
November 14, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk 🎤

If you’ve read this far and still need convincing, please check out our preprint arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 and this infographic: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
10/10
The four-fold drain of scientific publishing: Money, Time, Trust, and Control.
November 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing.

Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n
November 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
joshuafoust.com
I feel like in 2025 the demand to explain why Twitch is worth analyzing as a type of media should be treated with the same incredulousness as demanding someone justify analyzing television or social media. To ask the question is to demonstrate ignorance.
November 13, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
revdaniel.bsky.social
Remember Virginia.🕊️
Photo of Virginia Guiffre - which is being added by people to all White House posts. Virginia died by suicide in April, but her persistence and courage led to the exposure of Jeffrey Epstein and his accessories in sex trafficking and rape. She - along with the other survivors - may well help to bring Trump down.
November 13, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
josephcox.bsky.social
New: Google has chosen a side in Trump's mass deportation campaign. Google is hosting a CBP facial recognition app to hunt immigrants; no indication Google will remove. At same time Google takes down apps for reporting ICE sightings

“Big tech has made their choice”

www.404media.co/google-has-c...
Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump's Mass Deportation Effort
Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable gr...
www.404media.co
November 13, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
cecianasta.bsky.social
If this happens in the games industry, I will be very unhappy www.wired.com/story/google...
Google, Microsoft, and Meta Have Stopped Publishing Workforce Diversity Data
Other big tech companies including Amazon, Apple, and Nvidia have continued their annual disclosures this year even as the Trump administration cracks down on DEI.
www.wired.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
nordmedianetwork.bsky.social
Research on gender faces growing pressure worldwide — a reality game studies scholars know well, from #Gamergate to ongoing harassment. PhD candidates Tom Legierse and Ida Martine Gard Rysjedal call for a network of care among gender and games researchers.

nordmedianetwork.org/latest/news/...
November 10, 2025 at 7:48 PM
wytang.bsky.social
Cc @aftermath.site
patrickaiken.bsky.social Patrick Aiken @patrickaiken.bsky.social · 12d
Very happy to share our study on the vocal health of voice actors in video games!

Voice actors are elite vocal athletes who face unique vocal health challenges. Research, education, and training are needed to support the profession and their performances.

#voiceactor #vocalhealth #videogames
Understanding the Vocal Health of Voice Actors in the Video Game Industry: A Survey Study of Vocal Symptoms, Impacts, and Demographics
To characterize the demographics of video game voice actors (VGVAs), their health, occupational behaviors, and report the prevalence, frequency, and i…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 10, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
lukeplunkett.com
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE

This has consumed around 4 months of my life. We've rebuilt the business from the ground-up. New site, new backend, new customer experience, new platform, new everything.

we spent two years flailing, having no idea how to run a business. now...we have more of an idea.
aftermath.site Aftermath @aftermath.site · 8d
Despite the ravages of age and an internet steeped in misinformation, your eyes – in this one case – do not deceive you: Website different. It’s taken an immense amount of time and effort, but welcome to Aftermath version 2.0:

aftermath.site/aftermath-rela...
November 10, 2025 at 3:53 PM
wytang.bsky.social
Keeping America Great: The Importance of Broadening Participation in #STEM by @tiffanyito.bsky.social Abigail M. Folberg @charlottemoser.bsky.social & @evaspietri.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1111/spc3...
Keeping America Great: The Importance of Broadening Participation in STEM
This review highlights how research aimed at increasing women's interest and achievement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is critical to U.S. national interests. STEM exper...
doi.org
November 10, 2025 at 6:11 PM
wytang.bsky.social
Wu, C., & Chang, C.-H. (2025). How multiplayer online games can yield positive effects on individual gamers, gaming companies, and society as a whole. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12. doi.org/10.1057/s415...
Big title, big claims, big statistical model
cc @celestialsem.bsky.social
November 9, 2025 at 2:50 PM
wytang.bsky.social
youtu.be/JiOc0r31-Os?...
Debunking Transphobia
YouTube video by JasperDasper
youtu.be
November 8, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
picardtips.bsky.social
Picard management tip: When a policy is doing more harm than good, you must examine and revise that policy. It may require simplification, or it may require greater sophistication. Either way, you must change it.
November 6, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
nbedera.bsky.social
I don’t have to read this piece to know that women are getting blamed for all the ways men made work worse to punish women for entering their workplaces.

Stagnated or declining wages? Gig work? Sexual harassment? All reflective of men’s hostility to women in public life.
sameyler.bsky.social Sam Eyler-Driscoll 🍉🌻🍁 @sameyler.bsky.social · 12d
The whole press is Breitbart now
November 6, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
nbedera.bsky.social
There’s no such thing as “conservative feminism.”

They’re co-opting the label “feminist” as a shield against critiques of their misogyny. But you can’t be a feminist if your entire platform is stripping rights from other women to hand them to men.
November 6, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
megansquire.bsky.social
More on the platform and this whole sordid episode here: www.splcenter.org/resources/ha...
Extremists Are Cashing in on a Youth-Targeted Gaming Website
White supremacists and other extremists have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars through a youth-targeted, video livestreaming service called DLive, according to a researcher of online, far-righ...
www.splcenter.org
February 28, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
prosocialdesign.bsky.social
Model science here. Finds that nudges work in a survey experiment - but then discovers mostly null effects when tested in a more ecologically valid setting.

Kudos to authors and editors for a) pipelining to ecologically valid settings and b) publishing null results.

tinyurl.com/5dmjr8v9
November 6, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Reposted by Wai Yen Tang Ph.D.
briannosek.bsky.social
Ouch
November 6, 2025 at 2:31 AM