Dr. Zhe Xu
Welcome!
My name is Zhe Xu, and I am currently a research associate and Walter Benjamin postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Media and Communication at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, affiliated with Prof. Dr. Thomas Hanitzsch’s team and Prof. Dr. Neil Thurman’s team (by courtesy). I am also a PI in the German Research Foundation project Global Humanitarian Journalism (2024-2026). I received my Ph.D. from the University of Cologne in 2023.
Using methods from social, computational, and network sciences, my research primarily investigates: (1) journalistic practices during global crises such as refugee displacement, climate change, and war, with a focus on institutional roles, news framing, and the use of AI, algorithmic, and immersive technologies; and (2) their effects on the public, including compassion fatigue and socio-psychological mechanisms of moral passivity. Together, these efforts aim to critically analyze the processes of (de)politicization, platformization, and algorithmization in the mediation of global humanitarian crises. Please feel free to check the full list of my publications on my Google Scholar.
During my bachelor’s in engineering science, I quickly realized engineering wasn’t my path, despite my love for math. Drawn by journalism and social justice, I shifted to the social sciences in the UK, earning a master’s degree in media studies. Now, the rise of data science and modeling in communication has reignited my passion for math. To deepen my expertise, I have undergone extensive training in computational and data science at the University of Cologne’s CA III Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems and the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute.
When I’m not immersed in academia, you’ll likely find me hiking, mountaineering, or bouldering with my wife and our little one in various parts of the world.
Areas of Specialization
- Crisis and Conflict Communication: mediation of human vulnerability, politics of humanitarian journalism, public moral passivity, refugee and asylum seekers
- Computational and Immersive Journalism: computing the news, technocolonialism in journalism, plausibility illusion in VR storytelling, algorithmic accountability and transparency, journalistic data mining
News
- [Aug. 2024] Thrilled to join LMU Munich as a research associate and meet so many wonderful new colleagues!
- [May. 2024] I’m very grateful to the German Research Foundation for awarding me a Walter Benjamin grant (€220,000) to support my new project!
- [Aug. 2023] Successfully defended my Ph.D. at the University of Cologne. My advisor, Prof. Dr. Martin Scott, addressed me as Dr. Xu for the first time!
Selective Publications
-
2023
International Communication Gazette, 86(8), 633-654, 2023 -
2022
The Communication Review, 25(3-2), 181-203, 2022. Also in P. Reilly and V Salojärvi (Eds), (De)constructing Societal Threats During Times of Deep Mediatization.
Ongoing Funded Projects as PI
-
DFG
Using computational NLP, ML, and network analysis, this 2-year project conducts an extensive, cross-national, and longitudinal analysis of news data to examine how transnational media across diverse countries use framing to portray the global migration crisis and define their journalistic roles.
Selected Working Papers
- “Journalistic Role in Humanitarian Crises” (led by Zhe Xu)
- “Journalistic Framing of Humanitarian Crises” (led by Zhe Xu)
- “Online Climate Change Controversies Under Authoritarian Censorship” (led by Mengrong Zhang)
- “Political and Media Trust in Asia” (led by Ke Du)
University Teaching & Supervision
- MA Journalism, Media & Globalisation, LMU Munich, 2024-2025
- MA Chinese Studies & Media Studies, University of Cologne, 2022-2023
Services
Invited Conference, Report & Grant Reviewers
Czech Science Foundation (GACR) European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) United Nations Network on Migration
Invited Journal Reviewers
© 2024 Zhe Xu | Site hosted by GitHub | Powered by Jekyll and Minimal Light theme.