Participants of the Asia-Pacific Communication Forum 2023 pose for a photo during the event at the University of Macao. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The Asia-Pacific Communication Forum 2023 successfully concluded on Sunday after tackling emerging trends in media and the new global communication order.

The forum, organized in Macao by Asia-Pacific Communication Exchange Association and Asia-Pacific Communication Forum Alliance (Macao), featured a distinguished keynote speech session that included well-known communication scholars and industry leaders in the region.

The forum is on its fifth year and had the theme “New Order of Global Communication: History, Present and Future”.

Director of the Department of Information and Public Diplomacy of the Commissioner's Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China in the Macao Special Administrative Region Gao Yuan attended the opening ceremony.

A sub-forum, with the theme Telling the Great Bay Area Story, was also hosted in the conference to enhance the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area’s image in international communication

Shahbaz Khan, Director of the UNESCO Multisectoral Regional Office for East Asia and UNESCO Representative to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Japan, Mongolia, People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea, gave an online speech titled “The Trend of Global Media”.

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Jonathan ZHU, Chair Professor of Computational Social Science and Director of Centre for Communication Research at City University of Hong Kong emphasized the basic logic and structure underlining the AI language model in the communication transformation.

Agnes Lam, Director of the Centre for Macao Studies, University of Macao, focused on the importance of individuals in the changes of global media.

Karen Arriaza Ibarra, Professor in Audiovisual Communication, Complutense University in Spain and Chair of the International Communication section of International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) highlighted the contradiction between the concentration of global digital media platforms and the ideal of globalism and multiculturalism.

Lu Xinyu, Zijiang Distinguished Professor of East China Normal University, reviewed the history of the first wave of calling for the new order in world communication in the 1970s and 80s and called for a new discussion on the construction of a new world information and communication order.

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Meanwhile, Zaharom Nain, Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia (UNM) and Chair of the Malaysian Academic Movement (GERAK) argued that the previous new global communication order movement had some blind spots and world is now facing a new environment of citizens media and global influence.

On the other hand, Angus Cheong, President of Macau Association of Internet Research, and Xu Min of Donghua University, Shanghai, discussed the application of artificial intelligence tools and the frames of sustainable development promotion in government communication strategies.

A sub-forum, with the theme Telling the Great Bay Area Story, was also hosted in the conference to enhance the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area’s image in international communication.

A world-class urban agglomeration, the GBA has been emerging in the Pearl River Delta, which is at the forefront of China's reform and opening-up policy.

It is one of the regions with the highest degree of openness and the strongest economic vitality in China.

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The sub-forum explored the issues of global branding of GBA, which includes joint efforts of obtaining greater presence in international media and expanding a network of collaborative media organizations.

About hundred scholars and graduate students in the field of communication from the region and the Asia-Pacific participated in over 20 online and offline panels during the forum.

The  discussed various issues in relation to the inequality and problems in the global media, new threats and opportunities brought about by the rapid development and application of artificial intelligence, the global branding of GBA, and Macao’s role in promoting globalism and multiculturalism. Macao Foundation is the sponsor of the forum.