第二届中国传媒大学-西交利物浦大学博士生和青年学者国际会议：转型时代的传播、人工智能与环境可持续性

Communication, AI and Environmental Sustainability in an Era of Transformation

The Second CUC-XJTLU Joint International Symposium for PhD and Emerging Scholars

Communication University of China, Beijing, China

With limited online participation

June 13-14, 2026

Overview

Environmental crises, rapid technological change, and shifting forms of mediation are reshaping how societies understand sustainability, responsibility, and the future. Issues such as climate change, ecological risk, resource inequality, and environmental degradation are no longer experienced only as material conditions; they are increasingly encountered, debated, and negotiated through communication processes. News media, digital platforms, algorithmic systems, visual cultures, and everyday media practices play a central role in shaping what counts as environmental knowledge, whose voices are heard, and what forms of action become imaginable.

At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) and platform infrastructures are transforming the production, circulation, and governance of environmental information. These technologies reconfigure power relations among states, corporations, experts, activists, and citizens, raising urgent questions about visibility, accountability, authority, and participation. In this era of transformation, communication research offers critical tools for examining how environmental meanings are constructed, contested, and mobilised, and how sustainable futures are envisioned, legitimised, or foreclosed.

This symposium provides an interdisciplinary and international forum for PhD students and emerging scholars (within three years of PhD graduation) to engage with these debates, exchange ideas with reputable journal editors and international publishers, and foster collaboration. It invites theoretically grounded and empirically rich contributions that explore the intersections of communication, AI, and environmental sustainability across diverse social, political, and cultural contexts.

Organizers

National Joint Research Institute of International Communication of Ministry of Education at the Communication University of China (CUC), Beijing;

Department of Media and Communication, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), Suzhou.

With special support from:

• Popular Culture Section, IAMCR
• Global Media and China (Sage)
• National Centre for Communication Innovtion Studies, CUC

Scale

This symposium will be held at the Communication University of China (CUC) in Beijing on June 13-14, 2026. To support in-depth discussion, the number of formal invited scholars will be kept to around 30. We warmly encourage in-person participation, while a small number of online presentation slots will be available for international scholars who are unable to travel.

Prior to this symposium, the First International PhD and Emerging Scholars Symposium, which was held at the XJTLU campus in Suzhou on March 28-29, 2025, focused on the evolving landscape of cross-cultural communication in the digital age. The symposium attracted over 100 participants from 19 countries and regions, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Malaysia.

See more of the first event via this link:https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/uJkhOHYaC0WmGsUHOHI0Hg.

Themes

We invite papers that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Communication, AI and the social construction of environmental issues, with attention to how meanings, problems, and responsibilities are publicly framed.
• Digital platforms, algorithmic infrastructures, and sustainability, focusing on how media systems shape environmental practices and social change.
• Communication, governance, and environmental regulation, examining the mediated relations between institutions, platforms, and publics.
• Knowledge production, expertise, and environmental communication, addressing the role of media in shaping authority and credibility.
• Communication inequalities, power, and environmental justice, with emphasis on visibility, voice, and structural exclusion.
• Media, labor, and sustainability in digital economies, analyzing communicative processes within platform-based work and value extraction.
• Cultural narratives, imaginaries, and sustainable futures, considering how media storytelling enables or constrains social imagination.
• Social justice, human rights, equality, and inclusion in popular culture narratives in the AI era，examining the impact of popular culture on the sustainable development of social and cultural systems.
• Ethical perspectives and sustainability in popular culture, analyzing the ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence and their role in reshaping popular culture.
• Comparative, historical, and cross-cultural perspectives on communication and sustainability, highlighting diverse social and media contexts.
• Data, metrics, and the mediation of environmental problems, examining how quantification shapes governance and public understanding.
• Urban environments, smart technologies, and sustainable communication, investigating media’s role in shaping contemporary urban change.

Keynote Speakers

FUNG, Anthony Y. H, Wei Lun Professor of Journalism and Communication, & Dean of Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, & Director of Institute of Asia Pacific Studies, & Director, Centre for Youth Studies, & Editor-in-Chief, Global Media and China.

Simone Natale, Associate Professor in media theory and history, University of Turin, Italy, Visiting Fellow in Communication and Media Studies, Loughborough University, Assistant Editor of Media, Culture & Society.

Scholarships

To support PhD candidates and early-career researchers, the organizing committee will select three best papers and offer scholarships covering domestic travel and accommodation expenses.

Applicants for the scholarship will need to submit a full paper for consideration.

No registration fee is required.

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be approximately 400 words, including the title, authors’ names, affiliations, and contact information.Full papers for scholarship application should be no more than 6,000 words, excluding references.

Panel proposals should include an abstract for the panel as a whole (max 300 words) in addition to individual abstracts for papers to be included in the panel. We also welcome proposals for well established session formats such as roundtables and debates.

Please submit your abstract and any inquiries to cics@cuc.edu.cn.

Submission Deadline: April 15, 2026

Organizing Committee

Deqiang Ji, Communication University of China
Xiaoling Zhang, Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University
Dianlin Huang, Communication University of China
Michael Prieler, Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University
Xiaoke Guo, Communication University of China
Xianwen Kuang, Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University
Yongliang Gao, Communication University of China, Popular Culture Section of IAMCR;
Xiaomei Jiang, Communication University of China
Heyang Hu, Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University