Di Ying and Sun Peng’s son, Sun Anzuo (now known as Sun Jianhao), was detained for 42 days due to a firearm incident. After being indicted on the 29th of last month, he was released on bail following a court ruling. Di Ying then shared an AI-generated video on Facebook, where she joyfully dances in an academic gown—seemingly celebrating her son’s ‘graduation and return home.’ This move unexpectedly triggered a chain reaction, leading netizens to dig up Di Ying’s 58-page master’s thesis, in which she used her son as a real-life research case, once again putting it in the public spotlight.
Di Ying’s thesis is titled “Post-Crisis Handling of Gen Z Self-Media Marketing & Career Development Strategy Planning.” In the motivation for her research, she candidly states that in 2018, Sun Anzuo’s fate drastically changed because of a careless joke made while in the US; after accompanying her son back to Taiwan when the legal matter ended, Sun Anzuo transitioned into being a YouTuber. This inspired Di Ying to use her thesis to deeply explore how to use self-media to reshape an image, inviting influencers such as Kuan Chang, Sun Sheng, Pong Huo, and Zhong Mingxuan for interviews.
The thesis’s final research findings cite the important mass communication and political science theory of the “Spiral of Silence.” In her writing, Di Ying uses herself and Sun Peng as examples, noting that when confronted with the hype and fabrication of public media opinion at the time, as parents, they consistently chose to “remain silent.” She believes this crisis management approach had a positive effect, successfully helping her son return to Taiwan. This thesis also helped her obtain her master’s degree in 2022.
Source: Apple News Network