Wang, Tricia

Sociologist, technology researcher, and ethnographer

She travels from New York, USA

Bureau announcement: Tricia Wang has moved away from her China-focused research on big data and the China Speakers Bureau is no longer representing her. When you are looking for other experts on China’s digital transformations, do check out this list.

Tricia Wang is a researcher who uses a range of ethnographic methods to create commercially and culturally relevant insights about how people use technology in their day to day lives. She works closely with designers, engineers, and strategists, translating how people’s hopes and beliefs play out in their online behaviors and interactions with digital products. Her analysis guides leading organizations to create compelling & genuine stories and products for their users.

She is passionate about turning ethnographic research into applied knowledge. She spends a lot of time with teenagers, emerging middle-class, low-income and marginalized communities, and middle-class families. She turns their stories into insights about the future of digital technology use, Chinese society, and global trends.

Tricia is fascinated by how people use digital technologies in disruptive ways. She inspired by technology practices that emerge from marginalized communities. Often times, they are the forgotten users. Yet, despite policy and market constraints, they are some of the most innovative users.

She specializes in consumer-facing technologies, emerging markets, youth culture, families, domestic spaces, and Tier 1 & 2 cities in China, and Mexico. Her regional focus is China, Latin America, and the United States.

She is a National Science Foundation scholar and the first invited scholar from the US to research at The Chinese Internet Network Information Center CNNIC (equivalent to US’s FCC) in Beijing, China. She is also a Fulbright Scholar and British Council Transatlantic 2020 Fellow. Her projects have received funding and awards from multiple organizations.

She gave talks at conferences and institutions such as New York University, IDEO, Nokia, SXSW, etc.

She writes about design and digital culture at Cultural Bytes, fieldwork in China at Bytes of China, Chinese media & tech at 八八吧 88 Bar, and ethnographic methods at Ethnography Matters. Here’s a list of the best of her writing, including transcripts to talks.

She has returned to New York after living two years in China, investigating media and memes in their collisions with markets, governments, and local thugs. Her current research is about how trust is developed in online networks and what the implications are for companies who want to engage in their users online.

Online identities: how many governments, companies and ad firms get the development of online identities completely wrong. Tricia Wang in Malmo, Sweden, August 2013.

Building trust on the internet, Tricia Wang in Malmo, Sweden, August 2012