Ph.D.

Professor

School of Journalism and Communication

Tsinghua University

Research Interests

Media and Civil Society, Environmental Communication, Corporate Social Responsibility, New Media and Public Opinion

Teaching Interests

News Reporting, Media and Civil Society in China

Biography

Fanxu Zeng is a Professor at Tsinghua University. His researches concentrate on communication and environmental protection, media and civil society, as well as new media and public opinion in China. He has been a project leader in research projects such as “Environmental Crisis and Communication Strategy”, “Environmental Movement and Media Framing”, “Media, Collective Actions and Grassroots Politics in China”, “the Rebranding of Non-profit Organizations” and “the Rise of Public Participation Agendas in China”.

Dr. Zeng is the author of “Negotiating Public Agenda in China: When NGOs Meet the Media”, “Media as Mediators: Popular Contention and Public Deliberation”(forthcoming), “Advanced News Reporting”(forthcoming), and he has published nearly twenty articles in leading peer-reviewed journals from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. He is also a frequent contributor to influential newspapers and magazines in China, including Southern People Weekly, Energy Observer, and others.

Based on his research, Dr. Zeng has provided series of professional services: 1.Helped NGOs, such as Oxfam and Greenpeace, to develop their communication strategies. 2. Submitted reports and policy proposal to different government sectors in order to promote their communication with NGOs and social activists and advance sustainable governance. 3. Helped the leading Chinese Internet company Tencent to evaluate its corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. 4. Writing column articles to introduce the most recent Chinese citizen activisms and CSR practices of leading global companies. 5.Being a reviewer for several international academic journals and reviewing articles about environmental communication in China.

Dr. Zeng was a visiting scholar at Harvard-Yenching Institute (2010-2011), Hong Kong Baptist University and Hong Kong City University. At Harvard, he organized an international conference on “Creative Forms of Public Participation in China”, trying to establish a research network among scholars from America, Europe and China.

Previously, Zeng was a journalist for the Southern Newspaper Group in Guangzhou for about six years, specializing in stories about grassroots politics and innovative business practices in China. During the period, he won several awards from the media he worked for.