"Navigating Chinese Social Media For Research" with Chu Yang

About this episode

Chu Yang discusses the landscape of Chinese social media and offers insights and tools for research.

This week’s episode features researcher Chu Yang, a specialist in Chinese audience insights. She joins us to break down the most popular social media platforms in China, offering a clear overview of how they work and why they matter. Chu also shares practical tips for accessing these platforms from outside the country, along with useful tools for analysing trends both within China and across global Chinese communities. The talk was hosted by Charlotte Maher on April 30th 2026. Music featured is courtesy of Artlist. Recorded live in our Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/bellingcat Links: The guide on Xiaohongshu written by Chu Yang: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2026/04/20/xiaohongshu-rednote-open-source-guide/ Mentioned resources: weibo.com/hot newrank.cn whatsonweibo.com chinadigitaltimes.net citizenlab.ca https://zh.greatfire.org/analyzer Chu's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chu-yang-cn

People in this episode

Host: Charlotte Maher

Guest: Chu Yang

Topics covered

• Chinese social media
• audience insights
• research tools
• social media analysis
• global Chinese communities

Keywords

• Chinese social media
• research
• audience insights
• Xiaohongshu
• Weibo
• social media trends
• global communities

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bellingcat, weibo.com, newrank.cn, whatsonweibo.com, chinadigitaltimes.net, citizenlab.ca, greatfire.org

Books & works: Xiaohongshu

Places: China

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