In his speech at the annual conference of Chinese Association for History of Journalism and Mass Communication (CAHJC) on Aug 18, Jonathan Zhu of the Lab focused on theoretical contributions that computational methods have made to communication research.  In particular, computational communication research provides large-scale and verifiable behavioral evidence to two core theories of communication – the nature of audience and the size of media effects – which have been debated for more than half a century.

CAHJC is the parental organization of a dozen journalism/communication associations in the mainland ranging from journalism practice to new media research.  Held on Aug 18-19 in Zhengzhou, Henan, CAHJC 2017 was the first time when all of the associations held their annual conferences under the same roof.  With more than 1,000 attendants, the conference set the record in the discipline in mainland China.