Mobile Media, Political Participation, and Civic Activism in Asia: Private Chat to Public Communication

Ran Wei is the Gonzales Brothers Professor of Journalism in the School of Journalism & Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina, USA. He is also a Distinguished Honorary Professor of Communication University of China and Shanghai Jiaotong University, China. He earned his Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University in 1995. A former TV journalist, active media consultant, and Editor-in-Chief of Mass Communication & Society, his research focuses on media effects and communication technology. He is a pioneering scholar in mobile media research and has published extensively in the emerging field of mobile communication. Over his career, he has published 170 books, book chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations. He was identified as one of the top 5% most cited scholars in the field by the Council of Canadian Academies. Wei is a member of eight editorial boards, including the #1 ranked Communication Research. His recent work appears in internationally known texts such as Robert Footner and Mark Fackler (Eds.) International Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory, Hong Cheng (Ed.) Handbook of International Advertising Research, Gianpietro Mazzolen (Ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication.