False scare campaigns and scams are common on Chinese-language media and social media in Australia, particularly targeting people who are anxious about their residency status. Who is behind it, and what can be done to protect our Chinese-language community?  

Dr Fan Yang is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S). Her work focuses on technologies and governance, digital ethics, innovative research methods, migration politics, and postcolonial technoscience. Her doctoral thesis, entitled ‘News Manufactories on WeChat’, provided one of the first insights into the internal operation of WeChat in Australia as a content production platform. 

Read more of Fan’s work: 

• Contextualizing critical disinformation during the 2023 Voice referendum on WeChat: Manipulating knowledge gaps and whitewashing Indigenous rights 

Justice is a podcast of Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples as the Traditional Owners of the unceded land on which we record, publish, work, learn and live.