Seminar

MCCI Connect: China and the changing geopolitics of global communication

Wednesday, 21^st October 2026, 17:00 – 19:00 (BST)
Room ELG02, and online
Public
Free

This is a recurring event: View all events in the series “MCCI Connect Series”

Abstract

While global geopolitics and its mediatization continues to be dominated by the US-led Western nations and corporations based there, in the past two decades there have been visible changes in the way it is conducted and communicated in an increasingly digitized and connected world.

The traditional conceptions of geopolitics are being challenged by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries, notably China and Russia, and, to a lesser extent, by India. Competing narratives on global affairs, for example, debates surrounding a ‘democratic’ vs. an ‘authoritarian’ version of AI, are beginning to undermine Western discourses at a time when the West appears to be in decline, while the ‘rest’ is on the rise.

This presentation, based on the speaker’s recent book Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication analyses these changes within such domains as digital infrastructure, commerce, and digital for development, supported by recent examples, to underscore the primacy of communication in international relations.

About the speaker

Daya Thussu is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. He is the President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). For seven years, he was Professor of International Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University.

For the academic year 2018-2019, he was Distinguished Visiting Professor and Inaugural Disney Chair in Global Media at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University in Beijing. He was, for many years, Professor of International Communication at the University of Westminster in London.

Professor Thussu is the author or editor of 20 books, including International Communication - Continuity and Change, fourth edition (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming, 2027) and, most recently, Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication (Routledge, 2025). He is founder and Managing Editor of the Sage journal Global Media and Communication, and since 2009, book series editor for Internationalizing Media Studies and Routledge Advances in Internationalizing Media Studies, both published by Routledge.