Stephen Yang is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, where he is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP). His research examines the temporal politics of digital media and their infrastructures, looking at how conceptions of speed are bound up with the future imaginaries of these technologies, their sociomaterial entanglement, and the cultures around them.

Looking at the broader assemblages that constitute digital media, Yang traces how speed is imagined, produced, experienced, and contested across human actors — from tech developers, cultural producers, to chip workers, as well as across material scales — from smartphones, generative AI tools, to computing infrastructures. Through the lens of speed, he ruminates on what futures we want to create with and beyond digital media.

Yang's scholarship offers critically oriented design and policy principles for emerging technologies. He has held several research appointments outside of academia, including Microsoft Research, Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and Partnership on AI. He also participated in the Consortium of Media Policy Studies (COMPASS) in Washington, D.C., where he contributed to U.S. federal policymaking. Most recently, his research on participatory approaches to AI design is cited by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the leading U.S. federal agency that develops AI governance frameworks.

Prior to USC, Yang worked in journalism and advertising at organizations like VML and Taipei Times. He earned his B.S. in Communication and Information Science from Cornell University.

Read more about Yang here: www.stephen-yang.com