The academic from the UC Faculty of Communications and principal researcher of the ICLAC Millennium Nucleus, Claudia Labarca, participated in the 75th conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), held in Denver, Colorado.
The researcher's first presentation was held on Saturday, June 14th in the session “HIGH-DENSITY: (Re-)Thinking China’s Public Diplomacy in an Uncertain World: Models, Strategies, and Challenges”. There, she presented the paper “The Role of Social Media Influencers in China’s Two-Step Public Diplomacy Strategy in Latin America”, co-authored with Pablo Morales, de la London School of Economics & Political Science.
The research delves into how China uses social media influencers to project its image in Latin America. According to preliminary findings, the audiovisual content published by these actors on platforms like Instagram constructs an image of China as an "exotic, futuristic and safe country, where tradition and modernity coexist". The influencers show a highly technological country, with robots cleaning the streets and a thriving social media industry, along with a rich and multifaceted gastronomy. The study also notes that organized visits for these influencers that include places like the Chinese Communist Party Museum and the Xinjiang region, seek to counter narratives considered harmful to Beijing's interests in the region.
The Sunday, June 15th, Labarca presented at the panel “Glocal Public Relations: Contexts and Cultures”. The presentation was titled “Drivers Toward CommTech in the Public Relations Industry Across Latin America and the Caribbean”, and was developed together with co-authors Gabriel Sadi and Alejandro Álvarez-Nobell. This study analyzes the adoption of communication technologies (CommTech) in strategic communication in Latin America, concluding, based on a survey in 20 countries, that professionals in the area perceive that the benefits of these tools outweigh their risks.
The International Communication Association (ICA) is the main academic organization for communication field researchers globally, and its annual congress is a central platform for the dissemination of new findings. This year, the conference "ICA@75: Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research”, was an instance to critically reflect on the communication discipline and ICA's role in its development. Discussions focused on the field's history, the future of academic publishing, global inequalities in research, and the challenges presented by generative artificial intelligence.