China and Europe in conversation about media

The fourth Europe – China Dialogue: Media and Communication Studies Summer School by the China Media Observatory (CMO) has recently concluded. The courses were organised by the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) and the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University (PKU), which was the first Chinese University to launch a course in media and journalism in 1919.

The School targets doctoral and Master students seeking an academic career. The different themes and subjects approached during the programme ranged from media political economy, and cultural studies. This year, the School was specifically themed to discuss the challenges posed by the digitalization of the media sphere and the new trends in global communication. The history of media, internet studies, strategic communication, international journalism and crisis communication were also among the other issues tackled during the courses.

In the past four years, 105 researchers hailing from 67 research centres and from 16 different countries have attended the Europe – China Dialogue: Media and Communication Studies Summer School.

Inspired by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), the programme is organised in three stages: lectures, students research projects presentations, and the students feedback workshop, consisting of a feedback on the projects by lecturers and peers. Among this year’s secondary activities, the visit to the headquarters of the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily and the meeting with head of digital news Guan Yuxia.

USI faculty was represented by professors Gabriele Balbi, Matthew Hibberd, and Giuseppe Richeri, and by Dr. Zhan Zhang (Managing Director for the western session) and Gianluigi Negro. Prof. Daya Thussu (University of Westminster), Nathalie Coulter (York University) and Dr. Emma Lupano (Confucius Institute, University of Milan) were also members of the Western Faculty. Prof. Xu Jing (Managing director for the Chinese session), Hu Yong, Lu Shaoyang, Liu Xinchuan, Wu Jing were the members of the Chinese faculty. This year’s additions to the team were Qiu Linchuan and Li Xigen (City University of Hong Kong), Shi Anbin and Guo Zhenzhi (Tsinghua University), Jiang Fei (Academy of Social Sciences) and Hu Baijing (Renmin University).

Following the tradition, awards to the best research projects were assigned at the end of the programme. This year the prizes were awarded to Zeng Hujie (University of Copenhagen) and Xi Yipeng (Sun Yat Sen University). The programme could count on the important cooperation of institutional partners such as USC US-China Institute, the UK–China Media and Cultural Studies Association, the Department of Applied Linguistics (Zurich University of Applied Sciences), the Confucius Institute, University of Milan, and Blue Future, which sponsored of the project since the very beginning.

Web Site Summer School: http://www.euchinamediadialoguesummerschool.usi.ch

Web Site CMO: http://chinamediaobs.org/