[1] He is also the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, Director of the Center on Digital Culture and Society, and deputy director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China.
Yang is a current member of the editorial team for Global Media and Communication.
Yang's research is interdisciplinary covering issues in both communication and sociology while focusing on various aspects of social movements, online activism, and online protest which is the use of electronic communication to get information out faster about activism, digital culture, cultural sociology, historical sociology, critical theory which is the theory of applying certain knowledge to unearth a challenge in the power structure much like what Yang has discovered in China, global communication, environmental communication, and media and politics in China.
Many of his research papers, journal articles, books, and projects are based on his focuses in China with topics such as the internet and civil society, environmental NGOs (non-governmental organizations), the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, also known as the student movement, the Red Guard (Red Guards) movement, and collective memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
His research projects are mainly in three areas; Chinese culture revolution, the rise of the environmental movement in China, and internet activism.