Prof. ZHANG Xinzhi (張昕之)

I am a tenured Associate Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Media and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK).  My research focuses on AI and journalism, political communication, AI law and policy, and computational social science. I study how emerging technologies, particularly Generative AI and digital media platforms, are transforming news production and dissemination, as well as how technology-mediated communication influences citizens’ public engagement and government policymaking. 

My research has been supported by several internationally competitive funding schemes, including the General Research Fund (GRF) by the University Grants Committee (UGC) of Hong Kong SAR, and the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme (PPR) from the Hong Kong Government. I have published extensively in leading academic journals such as Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Social Media + Society, Journalism, Health Communication, and Digital Journalism. My contributions have been recognized with Best Paper Awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the International Communication Association (ICA). 

Before joining CityUHK, I was a tenured Associate Professor at the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), where I served as the founding Programme Director of the Master of Science (MSc) in AI and Digital Media (2019-23), a pioneering postgraduate program of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region. This programme is selected for sponsorship under the University Grants Committee’s (UGC, Hong Kong) Targeted Taught Postgraduate Programmes Fellowships Scheme. I also spearheaded the establishment of Hong Kong’s first data journalism undergraduate programme, the Data and Media Communication concentration in 2017, in collaboration with faculty members from HKBU's Journalism Department and Computer Science Department, to advance computational journalism, data-driven investigative reporting, and innovative news products for local and global audiences. I was a visiting scholar of the Department of Communication at the University of California at Davis in 2022.  

I currently serve on the Editorial Boards of Human Communication Research, Digital Journalism, and Chinese Journal of Communication.

I am looking for PhD students in 2025. Please refer to the [Position(s) Available] section for more details. 

• Digital journalism
• Political communication
• Computational social science
• AI law, policy, and regulations 
• Content regulation, surveillance, and censorship 
• Comparative media studies

• 2024 – 2026. Co-Investigator (Co-I), General Research Fund (GRF), the Research Grants Council (RGC), Hong Kong SAR. How Does Censorship Drive Conspiratorial Beliefs? The Roles of Information Uncertainty and Motivated Reasoning. [411,855 HKD]. On-going.
• 2021 – 2022. Principal Investigator (PI), Public Policy Research Funding Scheme (PPR) from the then Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office (PICO) of the Government of the Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong Media’s Coverage of Political Polarization and its Effects on People’s Political Attitudes and Behaviors. [356,972 HKD]. Completed.
• 2020 - 2023. Co-Investigator (Co-I). The Interdisciplinary Research Clusters Matching Scheme (IRCMS) by the University Research Clusters, Hong Kong Baptist University. Engaging the Audience with AI-powered News Chatbots: Developing and Evaluating a Critiquing-oriented Conversational Recommender System for Digital News. [937,500 HKD]. Completed.
• 2020 – 2022. Principal Investigator (PI), General Research Fund (GRF), the Research Grants Council (RGC), Hong Kong SAR. Why Fact-Checking Fails? Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Corrective Messages Countering Misinformation on Social Media: A Comparison of Hong Kong, the United States, and the Netherlands. [408,256 HKD]. Completed.
• 2019 – 2021. Principal Investigator (PI). General Research Fund (GRF), the Research Grants Council (RGC), Hong Kong SAR. The Making and Unmaking of the Public Sphere: Outcomes of Political Disagreement, Expression Avoidance, and a Filtered Information Repertoire. [445,520 HKD] Completed.

• Member, College Research Committee (CRC), College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), City University of Hong Kong 
• Affiliated Member, The Brain Cluster, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), City University of Hong Kong
• Director of Research, Department of Media and Communication (COM), City University of Hong Kong