Centre of Urban History, Culture and Media
Centre Fellow Prof. Zhong Hua Sara's research interests include social development and crime trends, cybercrime, substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and gender-crime nexus.
本中心成員鍾華教授的主要研究領域包括社會發展與犯罪趨勢、網絡犯罪、毒品犯罪，青少年犯罪與越軌行為、性別與犯罪等。
Her research team just completed a project about Chinese urban citizens' perceived safety. The study mainly focuses on the gendered mechanisms between social disorganization, social inequality and perceived safety among Chinese urban residents. Considering the rapid technological changes in the modern era and their threat to privacy, this research considers both perceived privacy safety and traditional types of perceived safety (eg, perception of safety if going out after 10pm). Regarding perceived privacy safety, the results suggest that trust in strangers significantly increases males' privacy safety but not females' , while police presence in a neighbourhood and perceived justice in law enforcement have significant positive effects on females' privacy safety but not males'. For perceived night safety, formal social control (eg,police performance) and perceptions of income inequality affect men and women similarly in urban China. In contrast with Western studies, collective efficacy is not that useful when explaining perceived night safety for either men or women, which is possibly due to the prevalence of security guards in urban communities. This research is pioneering as it implies that the social forces of perceived personal/property safety in urban China are relatively gender-neutral, whereas the mechanisms of perceived privacy safety are gendered and strongly related to both offline gender inequality and digital gender inequality.which is possibly due to the prevalence of security guards in urban communities. This research is pioneering as it implies that the social forces of perceived personal/property safety in urban China are relatively gender-neutral, whereas the mechanisms of perceived privacy safety are gendered and strongly related to both offline gender inequality and digital gender inequality.which is possibly due to the prevalence of security guards in urban communities. This research is pioneering as it implies that the social forces of perceived personal/property safety in urban China are relatively gender-neutral, whereas the mechanisms of perceived privacy safety are gendered and strongly related to both offline gender inequality and digital gender inequality.
鍾教授的團隊剛剛完成一個關於中國城市居民安全感的項目，該研究的焦點在於社會解組與社會不平等影響中國城市居民安全感的分性別機制。考慮到當代科技的高速發展及其對公民隱私產生的顯著威脅，本研究涵蓋了隱私安全感和傳統類型的安全感（例如在晚上10點之後外出是否覺得安全）。在隱私安全方面，研究結果表明，陌生人的互信極大提高了男性的隱私安全感，但不能增強女性的安全感；而社區中的警力配備以及主觀感覺到的執法公正對女性的隱私安全感存在明顯的積極影響，卻極少作用於男性。而在夜間安全感的分析中，正式社會控制（例如警方表現）和主觀感覺到的收入不平等對中國的都市男女有相似作用。與西方同類型研究不同，在詮釋中國男性或女性的夜間安全感時，集體效能的理論並不太適用，原因可能是中國城市社區中普遍配置了市場化的帶薪保安服務。本研究具有一定的開創性：這些成果意味著中國城市的社會因素對個體/財產安全感的影響無顯著性別差異，然而對隱私安全感的作用機制是性別化的，這與中國社會現實和網絡上的性別不平等狀態息息相關。
Currently Prof Zhong is collaborating with Tencent on projects related to protection of youth from victimization of cybercrime and cyberbullying. She is also using big data to examine the patterns of cyber fraud in Hong Kong and Mainland China and the social forces behind it.
目前，鍾華教授正在與騰訊集團合作，開展預防青少年網絡犯罪和網絡霸淩受害的相關項目。同時，她也在運用大數據檢視香港和內地的網絡詐騙模式及其背後的社會力量。