The School of Media and Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University hosted the second edition of the SJTU–IAMCR Emerging Media Forum on 17–18 April 2026.
Co-sponsored by IAMCR, and supported by the journal Emerging Media, the two-day conference was convened under the theme “Creative Communication and Empowerment.”
It brought together international scholars to explore how emerging media are reshaping creative practice, public engagement, and communication research.
The event attracted over 300 scholars and students from institutions worldwide, with participation from IAMCR representatives and international keynote speakers, including:
• Daya Thussu (IAMCR President, Hong Kong Baptist University)
• Nico Carpentier (Former IAMCR President (2020-2024), Charles University)
• Changfeng Chen (Member of the International Council of IAMCR, Jinan University)
• Xiaoling Zhang (IAMCR Ambassador in China, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University)
• Liangwen Kuo (IAMCR Ambassador in China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
• Lev Manovich (Professor, City University of New York)
• Andreas Hepp (Professor, University of Bremen)
Through keynote speeches, 22 parallel sessions, and 151 peer-reviewed paper presentations selected from 551 total submissions, the forum reflected both academic rigor and global diversity.
Under the theme “Creative Communication and Empowerment,” the conference connected global theoretical debates in media and communication with Chinese empirical experiences, focusing on how emerging media are reshaping content production, cultural expression, public participation, and social connection.
It further raised critical questions for communication research in the intelligent era: how creativity is being reconfigured by technology, how technological empowerment can be translated into people’s capacities for expression, connection, and action, and how algorithmic power, platform structures, and other emerging inequalities should be critically examined.
In doing so, the conference also echoed IAMCR’s mission to promote transnational academic dialogue and plural forms of knowledge exchange.
Image by School of Media and Communication, SJTU.