The 5th Academic Camp on New Media and Justice Communication in the Global Information Society

Following the success of the first four Academic Camps on New Media and Justice Communication in the Information Society held in successive years from 2012 to 2015, we cordially invite you to attend our 5th Academic Camp at Fudan University between August 25th to September 1st, 2016. Supported by Journalism School and the Center for the International Publishing Studies of Fudan University, the program seeks to address the most recent developments in new media technology, communication theories and practices. This Academic Camp aims at fostering students’ reflective and critical thinking skills and encourage them to use and advance communication theories to examine the current digital information society. We also hope to develop a sense of social responsibility among young scholars when they face the drastic transformations in the global society.

As the second decade of the 21st century unfolds, we see an unprecedented “global expansion” of giant media conglomerates, and a rising trend towards the commercialization, privatization, centralization and deregulation of the communication industries. Digital content production, broadcasting, telecommunication, and information services have increasingly converged. The most modernized methods of business administration including production, marketing, financing and accounting are now employed in every part of the media industry. All of these changes have contributed to the development of an advanced version of capitalism—communicative capitalism, which has been widening social inequalities and consolidating the cultural power of developed nations.

China has been inevitably involved in this process. The development of new communication technologies as well as the country’s economic transformation has brought about a significant societal change. Power relations in terms of rural/urban status, class, gender, sexuality, regional, national or civil identity are under constant renegotiation. Therefore, the changes individuals or communities are experiencing on a daily basis have become an important subject for academic research. It is especially important for communication scholars to critically investigate how the new technologies empower, or “un-power,” our lives. 

Against this backdrop, the Academic Camp aims to provide a platform for young scholars including junior faculty members and graduate students from communication or relevant fields to exchange ideas and learn from senior communication researchers through lectures, workshops and research presentations. Our program explores subjects including digital ethnography methodology, digital media and new consumerism, digital cultural industry, digital labor, subjectivity and identity, digital activism, new media and social movement, gender and social justice, new media rhetoric and China’s new market economy, the power structure of the Internet, and queer theories. 

We encourage young scholars to pay more attention to important issues in China and to broaden their international horizons by introducing them to a theoretical framework that draws from Marxist political economy of communication and gender studies from the West. The ultimate goal of the Academic Camp is to build relationships between institutions in China and those from the West through academic exchanges and conversations.

Featuring a multinational, interdisciplinary group of leading communication researchers, the Academic Camp is held in Shanghai or other Chinese cities every summer. After each meeting, an executive report will be sent to the School of Journalism and the Center for the International Publishing Studies at Fudan University, the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, and our overseas partner institutions. Over the past four years, more than 500 communication researchers from over 100 universities in China and abroad have participated in the Academic Camp.