Zhe Xu

Walter Benjamin Fellow

Postdoctoral Researcher

LMU Munich, Germany

My name is Zhe Xu, and I am a Walter Benjamin fellow and postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Media and Communication at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Thomas Hanitzsch and Prof. Dr. Neil Thurman.

I currently work in humanitarianism and political communication through computational modeling and social computing, studying how information and technology engage with humanitarian crises and how public decision-making is shaped as a result. Two current directions:

using natural language processing to analyze news corpora through the lens of communication ethics;
studying responsible AI and virtual reality embodiment in the mediation of humanitarian crisis.

I have been a Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). I hold degrees in engineering science and media studies and received my PhD in 2023 from the University of Cologne under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Martin Scott. While there, I served as a research and teaching assistant in media studies and received training in data science and machine learning from the Center for Data and Simulation Science (CDS) and the Department of Digital Humanities (IDH).

news

Jan 15, 2026	So happy to share that three of my leading and co-authored papers have been accepted for ICA 2026! Super excited for the conference and can’t wait to see everyone in South Africa!
Nov 20, 2025	Selected to participate in the 2026 Knowledge Frontiers Symposium, organized by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the British Academy in Bonn, Germany.
Nov 10, 2025	I am at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as a visiting scholar, hosted by Prof. Dr. Lilie Chouliaraki.
Sep 16, 2024	Excited to join the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich as a Research Associate.
May 17, 2024	Awarded the Walter Benjamin Grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (€221,400).
Jun 27, 2023	Successfully defended my PhD dissertation at the University of Cologne.

selected publications

The Political Functions of Humanitarian Journalism: A Multistage Natural Language Processing Approach

Zhe Xu, Martin Scott, Shuai Wang, Dani Madrid-Morales, and Kate Wright

Working paper, 2026
A Longitudinal Unsupervised Machine Learning Analysis of Refugee Framing in Humanitarian News

Zhe Xu, Yotam Ophir, Ke Du, Gaia Guatri, Shuai Wang, Dani Madrid-Morales, and Kate Wright

Working paper accepted for presentation at the 76th Annual ICA Conference, 2026

How News Media Visually Dehumanize Victims of Humanitarian Crises through Framing Disparities: A Quantitative Comparative Analysis

Zhe Xu and Mengrong Zhang

International Communication Gazette, 2024

Bib HTML

@article{xu2024news,
  title = {How News Media Visually Dehumanize Victims of Humanitarian Crises through Framing Disparities: A Quantitative Comparative Analysis},
  author = {Xu, Zhe and Zhang, Mengrong},
  journal = {International Communication Gazette},
  volume = {86},
  number = {8},
  pages = {633--654},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England},
}

The “Ultimate Empathy Machine” as Technocratic Solutionism? Audience Reception of the Distant Refugee Crisis through Virtual Reality

Zhe Xu and Mengrong Zhang

The Communication Review. As part of the special issue (De)constructing Societal Threats During Times of Deep Mediatization, edited by Paul Reilly and Virpi Salojärvi, Routledge , 2022

Bib HTML

@article{xu2022ultimate,
  title = {The “Ultimate Empathy Machine” as Technocratic Solutionism? Audience Reception of the Distant Refugee Crisis through Virtual Reality},
  author = {Xu, Zhe and Zhang, Mengrong},
  journal = {The Communication Review},
  volume = {25},
  number = {3-4},
  pages = {181--203},
  year = {2022},
  publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
}