About People

Lokman Tsui

Research Fellow

Lokman Tsui (徐洛文) is a research fellow at the Citizen Lab. He is currently working on a book, a personal history of authoritarianism.

Tsui is a writer, recovering academic, and amateur activist on issues of freedom and authoritarianism, with a focus on free speech, new technologies, and Hong Kong. He was an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2014-2021). Before joining CUHK, he was Google’s head of free expression for Asia and the Pacific (2011-2014). He received his PhD degree from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where his dissertation was awarded the Gene Burd Journalism Research Prize for Best Dissertation in Journalism Studies. He was a Faculty Associate (2015-17) and a Fellow (2008-9) at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. He is also the co-editor of The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age (2008) together with Dr. Turow.

Publications

Beautiful Bauhinia

“HKLeaks” – The Use of Covert and Overt Online Harassment Tactics to Repress 2019 Hong Kong Protests

In August 2019 a wave of websites and social media channels, called “HKLEAKS,” began “doxxing” the identities and personal information of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. While the creators of these sites and channels claimed that HKLEAKS was the product of local volunteer communities, several indicators suggest a coordinated information operation conducted by professional actors in alignment with Chinese state interests.

July 13, 2023