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The 12th Chinese Communication Conference themed “Communication and Transformation: New Media, New Age” was held in Beijing on October 27. China Media Culture Promotion Association president Li Dongdong and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) secretary-general Gao Xiang attended the conference and gave speeches.

Li noted that the media, as the nerve center of the modern governance system, should continue striving for modernization yet also contribute to boosting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. He called on experts and scholars in the fields of journalism and communication to use the current period of transition to make industry-wide efforts to produce world-class research findings with Chinese characteristics, Chinese manner and Chinese style. 

Gao said that it is a crucial task for the Party to understand and make use of the law of new media communication and motivate new media to spread positive energy by promoting the modernization of the governance system and governance capacity. Experts and scholars engaged in journalism and communication have a duty to shoulder this responsibility, he said.

Gao offered four suggestions to attendees at the conference: to conduct in-depth research on the features and rules of new online media to guide public opinion on the Internet properly; to probe ways and means to utilize and manage new media to serve the modernization of the governance system and governance capacity; to carry out further study on the unity of traditional media and new media to provide theoretical support for the development of news reportage; and to increase the exchange between communication studies and other disciplines in social sciences to further consolidate the status of communication studies.

Cui Baoguo, vice dean of the Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication, said that media studies should become the focus in communication studies. More empirical research should be conducted in future communication studies while continuing normative research, Cui said.

Shen Hao, a professor from the Television School in the Faculty of Journalism and Communication at Communication University of China, claimed that data science enables us to perceive complex human behavior models, stressing our future depends on data-based technology. Data itself does not determine the future, but we can gain more useful knowledge through data, said Shen.

Zhu Huaxin, secretary-general of the Public Opinion Monitoring Office at the People's Daily Online, made the following suggestions for Internet governance: to rule by law; to reduce pressure for Internet media and properly guide public opinion; to govern according to the nature of the Internet; to hedge Internet media with traditional media; and to increase cultural connotation embodied in Internet media.

The conference was co-hosted by the communication branch of the China Media Culture Promotion Association and CASS Institute of Journalism and Communication Studies. It was chaired by Zhao Tianxiao from the Institute of Journalism and Communication Studies, and attended by nearly 200 scholars and experts from media and communication research institutes and related departments at colleges and universities.

Five sub-forums were held at the conference themed “New Media and Communication,” “Media and Society” “Media and Culture,” “Third Interpersonal Communication Forum” and “News Communication History Forum.”

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 662, October 29, 2014.