Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia and Senior Faculty Fellow, Miller Center for Public Affairs.

Expert Bio

Aynne Kokas is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Kokas’ research examines Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. Her book Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford University Press, October 2022) argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. Her award-winning first book Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017) argues that Chinese investment and regulations have transformed the U.S. commercial media industry, most prominently in the case of media conglomerates’ leverage of global commercial brands. 

Kokas is a non-resident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow in the National Committee on United States-China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program.

She has received fellowships from the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Japan’s Abe Fellowship, and other international organizations. Her writing and commentary have appeared globally in more than 50 countries and 15 languages. In the United States, her research and writing appear regularly in media outlets including CNBC, NPR’s Marketplace, The Washington Post, and Wired. She has testified before the Senate Finance Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Wilson Center Project

2021-2022: “A Tense Triangle: Japanese Data Security Amidst the U.S.-China Tech War.”

2017-2018: "Border Control on the Digital Frontier: China, the United States, and the Global Battle for Data Security"

Project Summary

"Border Control on the Digital Frontier: China, the United States, and the Global Battle for Data Security"

The Internet once promised the free and open flow of data across borders, but the demands of national sovereignty are increasingly limiting the movement of data between countries. Nowhere is the tension between the free movement and the regulation of data flows more significant than in the Sino-US relationship. Through analyses of corporate case studies, Chinese data regulations, and interview data, I contend that China’s increasing control of the global movement of data draws much of its power from a combination of US investors and the absence of a centralized US media and technology policy. Using cases from the global entertainment, payment, mobility, surveillance, and cybersecurity industries, my project examines how US free market policies ultimately enhance, rather than counteract, Chinese efforts to enact new standards and control the global movement of data.

Major Publications

• Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017)
• Kokas, Aynne, Chuck Tryon, Hugh Gusterson and Josh Braun. “The Freedom Edition: Considering Sony Pictures and ‘The Interview.’” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 60, no. 4 (2016).
• Tao, Zhu, Aynne Kokas, Rui Zhang, Daniel S. Cohan, and Dan Wallach. "Inferring Atmospheric Particulate Matter Concentrations from Chinese Social Media Data." PLOS ONE 11, no. 9 (2016), 1-15.

Previous Terms

Fellow: 09/05/2017 - 08/24/2018