Monday 29 June | 13:30 – 15:30
Way back in 1986 the IAMCR General Assembly passed a resolution noting its deep concern about the increasing pressures to dismantle the United Nations system – set up after World War II to maintain the hard-won peace - and emphasizing the critical importance of multilateralism in international relations. Forty years on, our planet faces acute problems and formidable geopolitical challenges, with the world’s most powerful nation determinedly pursuing unilateralism, weaponising global trade and undertaking wars of aggression. The toxic propaganda emerging from this has been amplified by increasingly sophisticated AI, which can manipulate information on a scale and scope unprecedented even a decade ago.
What role does an international association such as IAMCR have in addressing these vital issues? IAMCR has a distinguished record as a constructively critical voice within the UN system, particularly in UNESCO’s debates in the 1970s on the demands for a New Information and Communication Order (NWICO). In an age of growing global polarisation, the need for a new communication order is crucial at a time when the dominant post-war order is frayed and fragmented and new groupings such as BRICS+ are championing alternatives. This panel, comprising a range of different voices, aims to address the implications of these geopolitical changes for multilateralism and a pluralistic and inclusive global communication order in an era of war.
Panel chair
Daya Thussu
President of IAMCR.
Daya Thussu is the President of IAMCR. He is currently Professor of International Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, University of London.
A leading scholar of global communication, he has a PhD in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and was, for many years, Professor of International Communication at the University of Westminster in London where he was also co-director of the India Media Centre and Research Advisor of the China Media Centre
Panellists
Sylvie Coudray
Director of the Division for Freedom of Expression, Media Development and Media and Information Literacy at UNESCO, and Secretary of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).
She has worked at UNESCO for over 30 years, leading global efforts on press freedom, safety of journalists, media development, internet freedom, and media and information literacy. She holds degrees in history from the Sorbonne and in media and communication from the Institut Français de Presse, and has edited publications on media, new technologies, terrorism, and conflict.
Marwan Kraidy
The Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture at Northwestern University, Marwan M. Kraidy is also Dean and CEO of Northwestern Qatar, leading the team that established the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South. A Fellow of the International Communication Association, Kraidy founded and directed for 7 years the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kraidy chairs the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies in New York and serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut and on the Board of Trustees of the American School of Doha.
Fernando Oliveira Paulino
Professor at the University of Brasilia (UnB), president of the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers (ALAIC), member of the World Journalism Education Council (WJEC)´s Steering Committee, and CNPq and São Paulo State University (UNESP) researcher.
Member of the Chair "Public Communication for Social Justice, Human Rights and Territorial Development" (UNESCO). He was also visiting professor at the TU Dortmund, Germany (2020-2021), visiting researcher at the George Washington University, USA (2022), and one of the founders of the Brazilian National Network of the Media Watchers (RENOI) and the Forum for the Right to Access Public Information.
Li Zhang
Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, China.
She is also Director of the Institute of Public Relations and Strategic Communication at Tsinghua. She holds a PhD from the University of Leeds and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. Before joining Tsinghua, she had held a permanent academic position at the University of East Anglia, UK, where she supervised PhD students toward completion.
