research

2026

1. 

   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

2. 

   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

2024

1. 

   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},
   }

2022

1. 

   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},
   }