The 2021 ANPOR-APCA Annual Conference, jointly hosted by the Asian Network for Public Opinion Research (ANPOR) and the Asia-Pacific Communication Alliance (APCA), was successfully held on December 14, 2021 in Bangkok, Thailand (offline) and online. The theme of the conference was: “Understanding Wellbeing in Asian Societies: The Impact of Digital Media on Environmental and Social Resilience.” At the conference, scholars from more than 10 countries and regions, including mainland China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, the United States, Japan, Pakistan, and Cambodia, gave 96 presentations over a wide range of journalism and communication research topics.
The annual conference featured in-depth discussions of the impact of digital media on environmental and social resilience in Asia-Pacific regions. The conference was rich in content and diverse in format, including one keynote speech, 15 parallel sessions, workshops, and round table discussions. Professor Min Hang, Associate Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, gave the keynote presentation titled “Covering China’s Economic Development: Issues and Strategies in a Digital Era.” In this presentation, Professor Hang used rich data to analyze the changes and recovery of the world economy since COVID-19, especially the resilience of the economic recovery in Asia. She focused her research on China’s macroeconomic policies and discussed the concept of the “New Development Paradigm” proposed and implemented by China. Based on international media coverage of this new economic development paradigm of China, Professor Hang analyzed the narrative of these reports, proposed methods and strategies for international economic communication in the new media era, and envisioned future collaboration in international and interdisciplinary research.
