Two online sessions on digital security with Tian Jian, and the 26 August one is still open¶
Tian Jian's learning platform TJ Field School is running a two-session series on digital security and privacy. Toomore from our community gave the first session on 12 August, and Mashbean takes the second on 26 August. Registration is still open.
Both sessions are conducted in Mandarin Chinese.
About Tian Jian and TJ Field School¶
Tian Jian is the Chinese-language publication of the China Media Project, an independent research project founded in 2004 at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong, now based in the United States with a research centre in Taipei. It covers the development of and challenges facing Chinese-language media worldwide, and encourages exchange across media circles. Its about page reads: "We firmly believe in press freedom, and we work towards a democratic and open society across the Chinese-speaking world." The core team is three people: Heng Yu Chien as chief editor, Su Hsiao Fan as reporter, and Lu Yihsuan as investigations coordinator. An editorial advisory board sits alongside them, including an independent journalist, the chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at CUHK, the founder of the digital media literacy lab FactLink, an author writing on Malaysian Chinese communities in Taiwan, and the editor-in-chief of the data journalism outlet READr.
TJ Field School is its learning platform for Chinese-language journalists and content creators, and both courses and events are free. The series description on the event page reads: "In an age where security risks are everywhere, a personal digital footprint matters especially to news workers. This series starts from taking stock of your own devices, and moves on to how platform intermediaries can become a shield that protects information flow and supports safe collaboration."
The split between the two sessions is clear. The first covers the devices and accounts a journalist holds, and the second covers the platforms a journalist depends on.
Session one, personal privacy and the sources in your hands (finished)¶
- Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2026, 19:30 - 21:00 (+0800)
- Speaker: Toomore, co-maintainer of anoni.net
The session began by taking stock of personal privacy: reviewing location permissions on your phone, assessing where your current protections stand, and handling incidents that come up in reporting work.
Su Hsiao Fan, a reporter at Tian Jian, wrote up the session in a set of notes published on 18 August 2026 (in Chinese):
(By Su Hsiao Fan, Tian Jian, 18 August 2026)
The notes are organized into six parts: a personal privacy checkup, contacts and calendars, accounts and passwords, WiFi and mobile devices, reaching sources, and recommended tools. The write-up is easier to follow than the session was live, so if you missed it or want to review it, that article is the fastest way to catch up. One line from the notes works well as a starting point: "try not to let your apps touch your address book."
The topics from that session all have matching pages on this site.
| Section in the notes | Further reading |
|---|---|
| Personal privacy checkup | What an ordinary person should actually do, How platforms collect your data |
| Contacts and calendars | Metadata, and why it matters |
| Accounts and passwords | Getting Started with Password Managers, Asian Diceware |
| WiFi and mobile devices | Device minimization and border crossings in Asia, A browser fingerprint cannot be cleared the way a cookie can |
| Reaching sources | Journalists and source protection, Secure messaging compared |
On the advice to build a passphrase from three to six randomly ordered English words, we maintain a wordlist with an Asian flavor: Asian Diceware.
Session two, how platform intermediaries can shield independent journalists (26 August)¶
- Time: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, 19:30 - 21:00 (+0800), 13:30 - 15:00 CET, 07:30 - 09:00 US Eastern
- Speaker: Mashbean, Allen Lab Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and general manager of Matters
- Format: online via Webex, free, conducted in Mandarin Chinese
- Topics: anonymity, privacy protection, communication security and moving resources safely, along with practical tools you can adopt right away
Registration goes through the button on the event page, and it requires a TJ Field School account. Tian Jian will send participants a digital booklet after the session.
Why we recommend this one¶
The first session focused on what a journalist controls directly: devices, accounts, browser fingerprints, and the channels used to reach sources. Once that work is done, a large share of the remaining risk sits with the platforms. Whose servers hold the messages. What a platform does when it is asked to hand over data. Whether the work survives a takedown or an account suspension. None of that is reachable through personal settings. The second session takes up what platform intermediaries can do for journalists, which covers the half we left out.