Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries

Staff

Prof. Matthew Ming Tak CHEW

Associate Professor

PhD. Princeton University
MA. Princeton University
BA. University of California, Berkeley

Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries
Lingnan University

Email: [email protected]

Associate Professor
About Prof. Matthew Ming Tak CHEW

Professor Matthew Chew is a cultural sociologist whose empirical research analyzes creative industries, digital media, and popular communication in China and Hong Kong. He earned his MA and PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. His past research focused on the video games industry, comics and animation, the nighttime economy, Internet memes, celebrity systems, and electronic dance music in China.

More recently, he has been extending his empirical investigative foci to fantasy webnovels, danmei (boys’ love) culture, political communication, digital activism, social eating, cyberbullying, rap music, and carnivalesque digital cultures in China.

Cultural sociology, creative industries, digital media, social theory, political communication, decolonial studies.

Awards and Honors

  • The Eduard B. Vermeer Prize for the Best Article in 2023, China Information.
  • Hong Kong Studies Outstanding Papers of 2021–2022, The Academy of Hong Kong Studies.
  • Marion Levy Jr. Award for Comparative Sociology.

Journal Articles

  • 2025. Wei X, Matthew M. Chew and Hu D. ‘Representing trans in Sinophone films: Uncovering local critical evaluations, storytelling performative marriages, promoting trans decoloniality, and illustrating transgendered cis-casting.’ Popular Communication 23(2): 105–118.
  • 2023. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Chinese gold-farming in the 2000s: Worker empowerment and local development through video games-based digital labor.’ Games and Culture 18(6): 783–803.
  • 2023. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Cybernationalist authoritarianism: Fangirls’ peer production of the virtual celebrity “Oppa China.”’ China Information 37(1): 75–99.
  • 2023. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Non-digital fan networking: How Japanese animation and comics disseminated in China despite authoritarian deterrence.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies 26(1): 34–51.
  • 2022. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Open-ended analyses of the sociopolitical impact of celebrity change: Advantages, operationalization, and an illustration with Hong Kong celebrity.’ Sociological Forum 37(2): 557–580.
  • 2022. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Rethinking the cultural relations between Hong Kong and China: An analysis of the Chinese reception of Stephen Chow’s films.’ Modern China 48(4): 785–813.
  • 2021. Matthew M. Chew. ‘The translocalism of Hong Kong popular culture: An analysis of a critical Internet meme co-created across Hong Kong and China.’ Hong Kong Studies 3(1): 1–27.
  • 2020. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Discovering the digital Stephen Chow: The transborder influence of Chow’s films on the Chinese Internet in the 2010s.’ Global Media and China 5(3): 124–137.
  • 2019. Matthew M. Chew and Sophie Mo. ‘Toward a Chinese hip-hop feminism and a feminist reassessment of hip-hop with breakdance: B-girling in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China.’ Asian Studies Review 43(3): 455–474.
  • 2011. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Virtual property in China: The emergence of gamer rights awareness and the reaction of game corporations.’ New Media and Society 13(5): 722–738.
  • 2009. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Research on Chinese nightlife and night-time economies: Significance, problematics, and current development.’ Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 42(2): 3–21.
  • 2009. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Cultural sustainability and heritage tourism: Problems in developing Bun Festival tourism in Hong Kong.’ Journal of Sustainable Development 2(3): 34–43.
  • 2007. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Contemporary re-emergence of the qipao: Political nationalism, cultural production, and popular consumption of a traditional Chinese dress.’ The China Quarterly 189: 144–161.
  • 2001. Matthew M. Chew. ‘An alternative metacritique of postcolonial cultural studies from a cultural sociological perspective.’ Cultural Studies 15(3–4): 602–620.

Book Chapters

  • 2025. Matthew M. Chew. ‘The intellectual delegitimation of “lowbrow” Hong Kong popular culture: How the coloniality of knowledge operates in the Global East.’ In Sanchez P.Z., Imbong R.A., Chew M.M., and Schöpf C.M., eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Decoloniality in Asia. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • 2024. Matthew M. Chew. ‘Mic-shouting in China and Hong Kong, 1996–2020: Toward histories of non-Western local electronic dance music.’ In Garcia-Mispireta L. and James R., eds. The Oxford Handbook of Electronic Dance Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Research Projects

  • A cognitive and relational framework for analyzing popular culture: Exploring Chinese webnovels’ sociopolitical impacts and successful diffusion.
  • A normative theorization of cyberbullying for interdisciplinary research and an empirical analysis of how the cyberbullying concept is ideologically appropriated in Hong Kong.
  • Analysis of the undemotic turn of celebrity-making in Hong Kong.

Undergraduate Courses

  • History of Animation
  • Technology, Platforms, and Creative Media Industries
  • Digital Games: Markets and Users
  • Editorial Committee Member, Journal of the Korean Society for Computer Game
  • Academic Editor, Plos One
  • Associate Editor, Aguipo Global South Journal