2018年5月23日，由国际传播学会（ICA）全球传播与社会变迁分会和中国浙江大学传媒与国际文化学院联合举办的国际传播学会2018年会会前会——“作为传播的一带一路”（Preconference: Conceptualizing The New Silk Roads as Communication: Towards A New International Order？），将在捷克首都布拉格举行。
本次会议将聚焦于“一带一路”倡议——在西方被描述为“新丝绸之路”——背景下全球政治经济秩序和传播格局的变迁，尤其是中国所扮演的特定角色，与此同时，探讨传播在全球化进程中的建构性作用。
会议的召集人为浙江大学的洪宇教授和英国威斯敏斯特大学的Daya Thussu教授。
摘要提交截止日期为：2017年12月1日。
*有关会议详情，请查阅如下英文通告全文：
International Communication Association Prague 2018
Date & Time:
Wednesday, May 23, 2018; 9:00 am to 5.00 pm
Location/Venue:
2018 Conference Venue: Hilton Prague
Division Affiliation:
Global Communication and Social Change
Organizers:
Yu Hong, Zhejiang University, China, yuhonguiuc@gmail.com
Daya Thussu, University of Westminster, UK, d.k.thussu@westminster.ac.uk
Description and Objective:
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI - formerly called One Belt, One Road), known as the New Silk Roads in the West, is China’s ambitious developmental and foreign policy initiative unveiled in 2013. It is aimed at creating dense connectivity of capital, goods, and people across the Eurasian surface, with a possible effect of rewiring global economic networks while further centralizing China in the global economy as a regional and even global power.
The rise of parochial and anti-globalization tendencies on the international scene, exemplified by Brexit, Trump’s presidency, and the ascent of terrorism, are complicating BRI but also giving China an unprecedented opportunity to redefine the territoriality, power formation, and political economy of globalization. Experts from area studies and International Relations have begun to engage with BRI as a crucial and grandiose China-centric project. They ask, will BRI facilitate a new international order or buttress the existing capitalist world order? With China’s rise, BRI as a state-led global intervention extends traditional inquiry about globalization and encourages closer attention to contestation, international order, transformation of states, and new requirements of global capitalism.
The communication perspective, however, has been largely missing from the discussion, although communication, as business, systems, discourses, and practices, permeates the programs and ramifications of BRI. For example, concepts such as connectivity, circulation, people-to-people exchange, and, above all, building a ‘Community of Common Destiny’ have set the tone for the official narrative; transport and communication infrastructures have spearheaded the formation of a China-centric socio-economic space; and the expansion of cyber business, cultural ties, and political influence hinges not only on techno-financial prowess but also on the capacity of consensus formation.
Thus conceptualizing BRI as involving new communication processes and formative communication spaces encourages scholars to delve more deeply into intersecting dynamics of a possible new international order, which include but are not limited to states and capitals, subnational and transnational regions, interstate relations and social formation, master narratives and social imaginations.
This preconference is intended to encourage focused discussion of BRI from the communication perspective, broadly defined. We welcome empirical studies from multiple conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and levels of analysis. Papers selected will document and characterize BRI as historical processes in relation with globalization, capitalism, and international order and, theoretically, reveal communication’s constitutive role in globalization as contested processes, in power formation amidst the changing dynamics of capitalist international relations, and in social formation across fractured national spaces.
Participants (TBC):
Anbin Shi, Tsinghua U
Yonghua Zhao, Renmin U
Wenshan Jia, Renmin U
Terry Flew, QUT
Michael Keane, Curtin U
Xin Xin, U of Westminster
Yu Hong, Zhejiang U
Daya Thussu, U of Westminster
How to participate
If you wish to present a paper at this event, please send an abstract of 300-400 words. This must be submitted to 21723031@zju.edu.cn by December 1, 2017. The organizers will consider these submissions and advise on acceptance by January 20, 2018.
With financial support from College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University, registration fees will be waived for paper presenters (including breaks and lunch). For other participants, $75 per person for ICA full members and $40 per person for students
Note: it is assumed that presenters will be available to attend the event for the full day. If you are coming from overseas, we recommend that you arrive in Prague by May 22, and make appropriate accommodation arrangements for that night.
About Zhejiang University as the Co-host:
Zhejiang University was founded in 1897 and is one of the earliest modern academies of higher education in China. Its College of Media and International Culture was established in 2006, of which the Department of Journalism was set up in 1958 and is one of the oldest journalism departments in China. Currently, the college has four departments and several research institutes, covering a wide range of robust and outstanding programs such as communication studies, journalism studies, new media and critical theory, international culture and social thought, and so forth.
