Zhe Xu

I am an early-career computational social scientist in the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich, affiliated with the chairs of Prof. Dr. Thomas Hanitzsch and Prof. Dr. Neil Thurman, where I serve as PI of a German Research Foundation (DFG) Walter Benjamin project. I also serve as a research fellow at the Public Tech Media Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

I hold degrees in engineering science and media studies and received my PhD in 2023 from the University of Cologne. While there, I served as an associate lecturer in media studies and received training in natural language processing and machine learning from the Center for Data and Simulation Science and the Department of Digital Humanities. I was also a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

I work in media ethics, computational journalism, and computational social science, answering questions about: (1) how information ecosystems shape public decision-making around humanitarian issues; (2) how emerging technologies, including virtual reality, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, are transforming journalism and media institutions; and (3) how computational methods, including unsupervised clustering, semantic embeddings, and multimodal large language models, can be developed, validated, and theoretically grounded for communication research (e.g., bertopic4news and the forthcoming VisFrameCluster). My work has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly and International Communication Gazette, among other peer-reviewed journals. The DFG, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and LMU Munich have supported my work.

For academic service, I review for journals including Digital Journalism, New Media & Society, Social Science & Medicine, Journalism, and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and I serve as a grant and conference reviewer for the Czech Science Foundation (GACR), ECREA, and IAMCR. I was also one of the core planners of the 8th International Conference on World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

news

Sep 01, 2026	Joined the Public Tech Media Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Sep 16, 2024	Joined the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich.
Jun 01, 2024	Awarded a €221,430 Walter Benjamin Grant by the DFG.

selected articles

Journal Article

Prioritizing Journalistic Norms or Humanitarian Values? A Multistage Computational Analysis of Journalistic Role Performance in Humanitarian News

Zhe Xu, Martin Scott, Dani Madrid-Morales, Kate Wright, and Shuai Wang

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, in press

Bib Data

@article{xu2026roles,
  title = {Prioritizing Journalistic Norms or Humanitarian Values? A Multistage Computational Analysis of Journalistic Role Performance in Humanitarian News},
  author = {Xu, Zhe and Scott, Martin and Madrid-Morales, Dani and Wright, Kate and Wang, Shuai},
  year = {in press},
  journal = {Journalism \& Mass Communication Quarterly},
  data = {https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/collections/97e435a1-7faa-499a-822d-cdb0078f2273/search},
  keywords = {published}
}

Journal Article

How News Media Visually Dehumanize Victims of Humanitarian Crises through Framing Disparities: A Quantitative Comparative Analysis

Zhe Xu and Mengrong Zhang

International Communication Gazette, 2024

Bib HTML

@article{xu2024news,
  title = {How News Media Visually Dehumanize Victims of Humanitarian Crises through Framing Disparities: A Quantitative Comparative Analysis},
  author = {Xu, Zhe and Zhang, Mengrong},
  journal = {International Communication Gazette},
  volume = {86},
  number = {8},
  pages = {633--654},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England},
  keywords = {published}
}

Journal Article

The “Ultimate Empathy Machine” as Technocratic Solutionism? Audience Reception of the Distant Refugee Crisis through Virtual Reality

Zhe Xu and Mengrong Zhang

The Communication Review, 2022

Special Issue: (De)constructing Societal Threats During Times of Deep Mediatization, edited by Paul Reilly and Virpi Salojärvi

Bib HTML

@article{xu2022ultimate,
  title = {The “Ultimate Empathy Machine” as Technocratic Solutionism? Audience Reception of the Distant Refugee Crisis through Virtual Reality},
  author = {Xu, Zhe and Zhang, Mengrong},
  journal = {The Communication Review},
  volume = {25},
  number = {3-4},
  pages = {181--203},
  year = {2022},
  note = {Special Issue: (De)constructing Societal Threats During Times of Deep Mediatization, edited by Paul Reilly and Virpi Salojärvi},
  publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
  keywords = {published}
}

Working Paper

Modeling the Framing Network of Refugee Issues in Humanitarian News: A Longitudinal Computational Analysis

Zhe Xu, Yotam Ophir, Ke Du, Gaia Guatri, Dani Madrid-Morales, Kate Wright, and Shuai Wang

Under Review, 2026

Bib Data

@article{xu2026agenda,
  title = {Modeling the Framing Network of Refugee Issues in Humanitarian News: A Longitudinal Computational Analysis},
  author = {Xu, Zhe and Ophir, Yotam and Du, Ke and Guatri, Gaia and Madrid-Morales, Dani and Wright, Kate and Wang, Shuai},
  journal = {Under Review},
  year = {2026},
  data = {https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/collections/97e435a1-7faa-499a-822d-cdb0078f2273/search},
  keywords = {working}
}

Working Paper

Platformized Victimization? Examining Social Media Engagement through Visual Framing of Refugees in Humanitarian Communication

Zhe Xu, David Ongenaert, Mengrong Zhang, Canan Cetin, Shuai Wang, Michela Cimarelli, and David Luu

Under Review, 2026

Bib

@article{xu2026victimization,
  title = {Platformized Victimization? Examining Social Media Engagement through Visual Framing of Refugees in Humanitarian Communication},
  author = {Xu, Zhe and Ongenaert, David and Zhang, Mengrong and Cetin, Canan and Wang, Shuai and Cimarelli, Michela and Luu, David},
  journal = {Under Review},
  year = {2026},
  keywords = {working}
}