Research activity information

• Sep. 2024 APSA Human Rights Section Best Paper Award


• Jul. 2023 神戸大学, 前之園記念若手優秀論文賞


• Jun. 2019 公益財団法人神戸大学六甲台後援会, 社会科学特別奨励賞（凌霜賞）


• Apr. 2019 Empirical Implications for Theoretical Models, EITM Certification Scholarship

• Quantifying women’s rights naming and shaming: A novel text-as-data approach

  Yuan Zhou, Ghashia Kiyani, Charles Crabtree

  Corresponding, Informa UK Limited, May 2025, International Interactions, 51(4) (4), 689 - 707

  [Refereed]

  Scientific journal


• Autocracies win the minds of the democratic public: how Japanese citizens are persuaded by illiberal narratives propagated by authoritarian regimes

  Tetsuro Kobayashi, Yuan Zhou, Lungta Seki, Asako Miura

  Informa UK Limited, Mar. 2025, Democratization, 32(6) (6), 1474 - 1495

  [Refereed]

  Scientific journal


• Voices from within: Tracing Chinese Public Perceptions of Democracy in the New Era

  Duancheng Yang, Yuan Zhou, Yun-han Chu

  Abstract Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) emphasis on whole process people’s democracy and democracy with Chinese characteristics, the type of democracy desired by the Chinese people remains debatable. Using two nationwide surveys conducted in 2015 and 2019, this study examines how ordinary Chinese people view democracy during Xi Jinping’s new era. Acknowledging the constraints of conventional methodologies, this study adopts a novel approach that uses automated text analysis to dissect open-ended survey responses about democracy. The results reveal that Chinese citizens primarily associate democracy with freedom of speech, consultation, and minben rather than competitive elections. Furthermore, this study reveals that a higher level of education, more frequent internet usage, and higher household income are positively correlated with a liberal perspective on democracy. This suggests that although the Chinese communist regime may not face immediate pressure to implement open elections, growing support for consultation and freedom may necessitate a greater focus on procedural democracy building by the CCP. By supplementing traditional research methods, this study contributes to a better understanding of China’s regime resilience and its potential future trajectories.

  Corresponding, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Jul. 2024, Journal of Chinese Political Science, 30(2) (2), 169 - 193

  [Refereed]

  Scientific journal

  Link to Kobe Univ. Repository (Kernel)


• Censor and Sensitivity: How China Handles US Embassy’s Public Diplomacy in Cyber Space

  Xiaoyu Pu, Chengli Wang, Yuan Zhou

  Sep. 2023, Journal of Chinese Political Science, English

  [Refereed]

  Scientific journal


• New evidence that naming and shaming influences state human rights practices

  Yuan Zhou, Ghashia Kiyani, Charles Crabtree

  Informa UK Limited, Nov. 2022, Journal of Human Rights, 22(4) (4), 451 - 468

  [Refereed]

  Scientific journal


• How Major Powers Diverge on Global Governance? Evidence from the United Nations General Debate

  Yuan Zhou, Kaoru Kurusu

  Mar. 2022, Kobe University Law Review, 54, 63 - 80

  Link to Kobe Univ. Repository (Kernel)


• China’s mediated public diplomacy towards Japan: a text-as-data approach

  Yuan Zhou

  Informa UK Limited, Feb. 2022, Asian Journal of Communication, 32(4) (4), 327 - 345

  [Refereed]

  Scientific journal


• Googling the World Health Organization during the COVID-19 Crisis

  Naoko Matsumura, Yuan Zhou

  Mar. 2021, Kobe University Law Review, 53, 51 - 71


• Theory-Driven Analysis of Large Corpora: Semisupervised Topic Classification of the UN Speeches

  Kohei Watanabe, Yuan Zhou

  There is a growing interest in quantitative analysis of large corpora among the international relations (IR) scholars, but many of them find it difficult to perform analysis consistently with existing theoretical frameworks using unsupervised machine learning models to further develop the field. To solve this problem, we created a set of techniques that utilize a semisupervised model that allows researchers to classify documents into predefined categories efficiently. We propose a dictionary making procedure to avoid inclusion of words that are likely to confuse the model and deteriorate the its classification performance classification accuracy using a new entropy-based diagnostic tool. In our experiments, we classify sentences of the United Nations General Assembly speeches into six predefined categories using the seeded Latent Dirichlet allocation and Newsmap, which were trained with a small “seed word dictionary” that we created following the procedure. The result shows that, while keyword dictionary can only classify 25% of sentences, Newsmap can classify over 60% of them accurately correctly and; its accuracy exceeds 70% when contextual information is taken into consideration by kernel smoothing of topic likelihoods. We argue that once seed word dictionaries are created by the international relations community, semisupervised models would become more useful than unsupervised models for theory-driven text analysis.

  SAGE Publications, Feb. 2020, Social Science Computer Review, 40(2) (2), 346 - 366

  [Refereed]

  Scientific journal

• ICPSR Summer Program オリエンテーション講師

  周源

  May 2022, ICPSR 国内利用協議会

  [Invited]


• ICPSRの活用：ICPSR Summer Program 2019の経験から

  周源

  Sep. 2019, 六甲フォーラム、神戸大学経済学研究科

  [Invited]

• Semantic network analysis in social sciences

  Yuan Zhou, Sandrine Boudana, Elad Segev

  Contributor, Provocation Narratives in Chinese and US Newspapers, Routledge, 2021, English, ISBN: 9780367636524

• Depicting Democracy as Chaos: An Analysis of International News in Chinese Media

  Yuan Zhou

  International Political Science Association World Congress, Jul. 2025


• Depicting Democracy as Chaos: An Analysis of International News in Chinese Media

  周源

  日本選挙学会2025年度研究会, May 2025


• 混沌とする民主主義：中国国営メディアにおける国際ニュースの分析

  周源

  日本政治学会2024年度研究大会, Oct. 2024


• Impact of Authoritarian Illiberal Narratives on Democracy: The Case of Japan

  Tetsuro Kobayashi, Yuan Zhou, Lungta Seki, Asako Miura

  American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition, Sep. 2024


• Depicting Democracy as Chaos: An Analysis of International News in Chinese Media

  Yuan Zhou

  American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition, Sep. 2024


• Depicting Democracy as Chaos: An Analysis of International News in Chinese Media

  Yuan Zhou

  WINPEC Seminar, Aug. 2024

  [Invited]


• 混沌とする民主主義：中国国営メディアにおける国際ニュースの分析

  周源

  北海道大学メディア・コミュニケーション研究院, Jul. 2024

  [Invited]


• Why Autocrats Adopt Gender Quotas?

  Yuan Zhou

  Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, Jul. 2024


• China and India’s Perspectives on the Global South in a Changing Global Order

  Yuan Zhou, Raphaëlle Khan, Juan Acevedo, Tomoko Takahashi

  京都大学東南アジア地域研究研究所, Jun. 2024

  [Invited]


• Why Autocrats Adopt Gender Quotas?

  Yuan Zhou

  International Studies Association Annual Convention, Apr. 2024


• Measuring Human Rights Naming and Shaming: A Text-as-Data Approach

  周源

  計量・数理政治研究会冬季研究集会, Jan. 2024


• Twitterにおける日本語非民主的ナラティブの拡散：ネットワーク分析とテキスト分析によるアプローチ

  周源

  第42回政治コミュニケーション研究会, Dec. 2023

  [Invited]


• 日本人は非民主的ナラティブに説得されるか

  周源, 関颯太, 小林哲郎, 三浦麻子

  日本政治学会2023年度研究大会, Sep. 2023


• Persuasiveness of Undemocratic Narratives from Authoritarian States

  Yuan Zhou, Lungta Seki, Tetsuro Kobayashi, Asako Miura

  American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition, Sep. 2023


• Does Naming and Shaming Improve Women’s Rights?

  Ghashia Kiyani, Yuan Zhou, Charles Crabtree

  American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition, Aug. 2023


• 中国国営メディアは中央アジアをどう伝えてきたのか

  周源

  プロパガンダ国家としての中国―情報操作とメディア戦略―、神戸大学, Aug. 2023


• Why Autocrats Adopt Gender Quotas?

  Yuan Zhou

  ISA Asia-Pacific Region Conference, Aug. 2023


• Does Naming and Shaming Improve Women’s Rights?

  Ghashia Kiyani, Yuan Zhou, Charles Crabtree

  International Political Science Association World Congress, Jul. 2023


• Does Naming and Shaming Improve Women’s Rights?

  Ghashia Kiyani, Yuan Zhou, Charles Crabtree

  International Studies Association Annual Convention, Mar. 2023


• 何が一番敏感なのか？アメリカ大使館の微博に対する検閲

  周源

  中国ソーシャル・メディア研究の今―理論と方法の接合を目指して―、早稲田大学, Mar. 2023

  [Invited]


• 中国国内におけるウクライナ侵攻をめぐる世論形成：Weibo上における中国語書き込みの量的テキスト分析から

  于海春, 周源

  日本国際政治学会2022年度研究大会, Oct. 2022


• An Empirical Study of China’s Foreign Propaganda during COVID‐19

  周源

  日本政治学会2022年度研究大会, Oct. 2022


• What Kind of Democracy do Chinese People Want? Chinese Perceptions of Democracy Reconsidered

  Duancheng Yang, Yuan Zhou, Yun‐han Chu

  China Programme Workshop, Nanyang Technological University, Mar. 2022

  [Invited]


• An empirical study of China’s foreign propaganda during COVID-19

  Yuan Zhou

  International Studies Association Annual Convention, Mar. 2022


• A Formal Theory of Authoritarian Foreign Propaganda

  周源

  計量・数理政治研究会冬季研究集会, Jan. 2022


• A Formal Theory of Authoritarian Foreign Propaganda

  周源

  日本国際政治学会2021年度研究大会, Oct. 2021


• Does Naming and Shaming Influence State Human Rights Practices?

  Yuan Zhou, Ghashia Kiyani, Charles Crabtree

  American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition, Sep. 2021


• What Kind of Democracy do Chinese People Want? Chinese Perceptions of Democracy Reconsidered

  Duancheng Yang, Yuan Zhou, Yun-han Chu

  International Political Science Association World Congress, Jul. 2021


• A Formal Theory of Authoritarian Foreign Propaganda

  Yuan Zhou

  International Studies Association Annual Convention, Apr. 2021


• 中国人は民主主義をどう思うのか

  周源

  計量・数理政治研究会冬季研究集会, Jan. 2021


• 中国人は民主主義をどう思うのか

  周源

  神戸大学政治学研究会, Dec. 2020

  [Invited]


• Signaling and Censorship: US Embassy in China’s Social Media

  Xiaoyu Pu, Chengli Wang, Yuan Zhou

  American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition, Sep. 2020


• 中国のメディアを用いた対日パブリック・ディプロマシー

  周源

  計量・数理政治研究会冬季研究集会, Jan. 2020


• Convergence and Competition in Global Governance: Discourse Analysis of the Major Powers’ Value Perceptions in the United Nations General Assembly Debates

  Yuan Zhou, Kaoru Kurusu

  Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, Jun. 2019


• Semi-Supervised Topic Classification of the UN Speeches

  Kobe Watanabe, Yuan Zhou

  Kobe‐CityU Joint Research Workshop, Mar. 2019

  [Invited]

• 日本選挙学会

  Oct. 2024 - Present


• ヨーロッパ政治学会（EPSA）

  Mar. 2024 - Present


• 世界政治学会（IPSA）

  Jul. 2021 - Present


• 日本政治学会

  Apr. 2021 - Present


• 日本国際政治学会

  Sep. 2020 - Present


• アメリカ政治学会（APSA）

  Jun. 2020 - Present


• 世界国際関係学会（ISA）

  May 2019 - Present

• 習近平政権における幹部選抜基準の実証研究：能力と忠誠心に注目して

  日本学術振興会, 科学研究費助成事業, 若手研究, Apr. 2025 - Mar. 2028, Principal investigator


• 変動するグローバル秩序における中国とインド：「グローバル・サウス」をめぐるリーダーシップの競合

  高橋知子, 周源, Raphaëlle Khan, Juan Acevedo-Ossa

  国際科学技術財団, 平成記念研究助成, Apr. 2025 - Mar. 2026, Coinvestigator


• 中国国営メディアによる国際ニュース報道に関する研究

  ヒロセ財団, 研究助成, Dec. 2023 - Nov. 2025, Principal investigator


• 選挙権威主義体制におけるクォータ制の効果に関する実証研究

  日本学術振興会, 科学研究費助成事業, 研究活動スタート支援, Aug. 2023 - Mar. 2025, Principal investigator


• 政権安定化の手段としての中国対外プロパガンダ：理論と実証

  日本学術振興会, 科学研究費助成事業, 特別研究員奨励費, 神戸大学, Apr. 2022 - Aug. 2023


• 新型コロナ感染症時代における中国の対外プロパガンダ

  松下幸之助記念財団, 研究助成, Oct. 2021 - Mar. 2023


• 中国政府によるメディアを用いたパブリック・ディプロマシー：理論と実証

  村田学術振興財団, 研究助成, Jul. 2020 - Dec. 2021

• 国際政治をいかに「分析」するか～海外と日本の研究者の対話から～

  共立女子中学高等学校

  Panelist, 19 Jul. 2025