Where will MEDCOM 2027 be held?

MEDCOM 2027, the 12th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication, will be held in the city of Bangkok, THA.

What is the primary focus of MEDCOM 2027?

The conference focuses on contemporary issues and future trends shaping global media and mass communication, providing a platform for academic and practical discourse in the field.

Who should attend MEDCOM 2027?

The conference is designed for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of media and mass communication, offering a forum for diverse perspectives and research findings.

MEDCOM 2027 – The 12th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication

Name: MEDCOM 2027 – The 12th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication
Start: 2027-04-05T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-04-06T00:00:00Z
Location: Bangkok

Apr 5–6, 2027Bangkok, ThailandIn-person

Registration open

MEDCOM 2027, the 12th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication, will convene in Bangkok, THA, offering a critical platform for scholars, researchers, and practitioners to dissect the evolving landscape of media and mass communication. This gathering aims to foster dialogue on current trends, challenges, and future directions within the field, drawing participants from diverse academic and professional backgrounds. The conference is structured to facilitate the exchange of ideas, present research findings, and explore innovative approaches in media studies.

Committees & topics

Topics
AI, Technology, and the Future of Media · Social Media, Influence, and Social Change · Journalism and Mediated Communication · Strategic Communication, Public Relations and Advertising · Civic Information, Press Freedom & Democratic Resistance · Risk and Crisis Communication · Environmental and Sustainability Communication · Communication and Culture

Why it matters

The annual MEDCOM conference series holds significant importance in an era defined by rapid technological advancements and shifting information paradigms. As media continues to shape public discourse, influence policy, and reflect societal values, understanding its complexities becomes paramount. This event provides a dedicated space for rigorous academic inquiry and practical application, ensuring that the discourse around media and mass communication remains dynamic and responsive to global changes.

For diplomats and international relations professionals, the insights gleaned from MEDCOM 2027 are invaluable. The conference's focus on global media trends directly impacts public diplomacy, international communication strategies, and the understanding of information warfare. Engaging with the research presented can enhance strategic communication efforts and provide a deeper comprehension of how narratives are constructed and disseminated across borders. The discussions will likely touch upon themes relevant to understanding global perceptions and managing international crises, making it a crucial event for those involved in shaping international relations.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the discussions at MEDCOM 2027, participants should undertake a comprehensive preparation strategy. Begin by reviewing the historical trajectory of media evolution, paying particular attention to how digital transformation has reshaped traditional communication channels. Consider how different national contexts, such as those in USA, CHN, and GBR, approach media regulation and freedom of the press, as these perspectives will likely inform many presentations.

Furthermore, a strong understanding of communication theories and their application in contemporary media environments is essential. Familiarize yourself with concepts related to information dissemination, audience reception, and the impact of social media on public opinion. Preparing for this conference also involves considering the ethical dimensions of media practice and the role of journalism in fostering informed societies. This comprehensive preparation will enable participants to contribute meaningfully to the discourse and extract maximum value from the conference's diverse offerings.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Thailand

Host nation for the conference, providing a regional perspective on media and communication trends in Southeast Asia.

Role in topic

As the host country, THA offers a unique vantage point on the dynamics of media and mass communication within a rapidly developing region. Its media landscape, influenced by cultural nuances and geopolitical shifts, provides a rich context for discussions on topics such as digital transformation, media literacy, and the role of communication in national development. The conference's location in Bangkok facilitates a focus on Asian media scholarship and practice.

United States

A major contributor to global media theory and practice, with significant influence on digital platforms and media innovation.

Role in topic

The USA plays a pivotal role in the global media landscape, being home to many of the world's largest media corporations and digital platforms. Its academic institutions are at the forefront of media research and theory. Discussions at MEDCOM 2027 will likely feature perspectives from USA scholars on topics such as media ethics, the impact of social media, and the future of journalism, reflecting its ongoing influence on global communication trends.

China

An emerging superpower with a distinct media ecosystem, characterized by state control and rapid technological adoption.

Role in topic

CHN's media environment presents a fascinating case study for the conference, characterized by its unique blend of state-controlled media and advanced digital technologies. Contributions from CHN scholars could offer insights into media's role in national governance, censorship, and the development of indigenous social media platforms. Understanding CHN's approach to media is crucial for a comprehensive global perspective on mass communication.

United Kingdom

A historical hub for media innovation and public service broadcasting, with a strong tradition of media studies.

Role in topic

The GBR has a long and influential history in media, particularly in public service broadcasting and journalism. Its academic contributions to media theory are substantial. Participants from GBR might focus on topics such as media regulation, the challenges facing traditional journalism, and the role of media in democratic societies, offering perspectives shaped by a mature and diverse media landscape.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

AI, Technology, and the Future of Media

The integration of artificial intelligence into media production, distribution, and consumption has accelerated dramatically since the public release of large language models in 2022 and the subsequent proliferation of generative image, audio, and video tools. Newsrooms from Reuters to the Associated Press have deployed automated drafting systems, while platforms like Meta, Google, and ByteDance increasingly mediate audience attention through opaque recommender algorithms. These shifts have collapsed traditional revenue models, accelerated the decline of local journalism, and raised novel questions about authorship, copyright, and the provenance of audiovisual content. Regulatory responses have diverged sharply. The European Union's AI Act, adopted in 2024, imposes transparency and labelling obligations on generative systems, while the United States has favoured a lighter sectoral approach grounded in executive orders and voluntary commitments from major labs. China, meanwhile, requires algorithmic registration and content watermarking under rules issued by the Cyberspace Administration. UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI remains the principal global normative reference, but enforcement is uneven and the pace of technological change continues to outstrip governance. The debate today centres on whether media systems can preserve epistemic integrity — verifiable facts, attributable sources, and pluralistic voices — as synthetic content becomes indistinguishable from human-produced work. Questions of platform liability, training-data consent, and equitable access to AI tooling for newsrooms in the Global South remain unresolved.

Key players

Journalism and Mediated Communication

Journalism has been undergoing a structural crisis for more than two decades, as classified advertising migrated to digital platforms and audiences fragmented across new media. The collapse of local news in much of North America and Europe — chronicled by reports from the Reuters Institute and Northwestern's Medill School — has produced a growing number of 'news deserts.' At the same time, the rise of nonprofit investigative outlets, cross-border consortia such as OCCRP and ICIJ (responsible for the Panama and Pandora Papers), and platform-native creators has diversified the ecology of mediated communication. Legal and economic interventions have proliferated. Australia's 2021 News Media Bargaining Code, Canada's Online News Act of 2023, and similar measures in France and Indonesia have sought to compel platforms to remunerate publishers, with mixed results — Meta blocked news in Canada in response. UNESCO's Windhoek+30 Declaration reaffirmed the public-good nature of journalism, while the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders continue to document record numbers of journalist killings, most acutely in Gaza since October 2023. The contemporary debate addresses how mediated communication can sustain accurate, verifiable, and pluralistic reporting amid commercial pressure, AI-generated content, and erosion of trust. Questions of media literacy, public-service broadcasting, and the legal protection of sources remain central.

Key players

Strategic Communication, Public Relations and Advertising

Strategic communication has evolved from a corporate and government discipline into a sprawling industry that intersects with diplomacy, branding, electoral politics, and crisis management. The global advertising market, valued at over one trillion US dollars by 2024 according to GroupM, is now dominated by programmatic digital placements on Google, Meta, Amazon, and TikTok. Public relations firms — from Edelman to WPP-owned agencies — increasingly advise states on nation branding and reputation management, while specialised consultancies offer 'perception' services that have been linked to electoral interference operations exposed by investigations such as Forbidden Stories' 'Story Killers' project. The regulatory environment is uneven. The EU's Digital Services Act and forthcoming Political Advertising Regulation impose transparency obligations on targeted political ads; the United States relies on FTC guidance and patchwork state laws on influencer disclosure; and many jurisdictions have no enforceable rules on native advertising or AI-generated endorsements. Self-regulatory bodies such as the ICC and national advertising standards authorities continue to set voluntary codes, but enforcement against cross-border digital campaigns is weak. The contemporary debate concerns the ethical boundaries of persuasion in an era of micro-targeting and synthetic media, the accountability of PR firms working for authoritarian clients, and how advertising-funded business models shape the information environment.

Key players

Civic Information, Press Freedom & Democratic Resistance

Press freedom has eroded measurably over the past decade. Reporters Without Borders' 2024 Press Freedom Index recorded an unprecedented number of countries in 'difficult' or 'very serious' situations, citing the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the closure of independent media in Russia and Hong Kong, the criminalisation of reporting under Section 124A-style laws in parts of South Asia, and the use of spyware such as Pegasus against journalists documented by Citizen Lab and Amnesty International. UNESCO's annual report on the safety of journalists continues to register impunity rates above 85 per cent for journalist killings. Civic information — the everyday reporting that allows citizens to hold power accountable, navigate public services, and participate in elections — is increasingly under pressure from both authoritarian capture and platform-driven collapse of local news. Democratic resistance movements, from Belarusian exile media to Iranian diaspora outlets and Myanmar's underground reporters, rely on encrypted communication, circumvention tools, and international solidarity networks supported by the Media Freedom Coalition and the International Fund for Public Interest Media. The debate today addresses how the international community can defend journalists in conflict zones, push back against transnational repression, sanction the spyware industry, and sustain independent media in closing civic spaces — while resisting the instrumentalisation of 'fake news' laws to silence dissent.

Key players

Risk and Crisis Communication

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed both the centrality and the fragility of risk communication. WHO's characterisation of an 'infodemic' running parallel to the disease underscored how rumour, mistrust, and politicised messaging could undermine public health responses. Subsequent crises — from the 2023 Türkiye–Syria earthquakes and Libya's Derna floods to wildfires in Canada, Greece, and Hawaii, and the ongoing humanitarian emergencies in Sudan and Gaza — have repeatedly tested governments' capacity to deliver timely, accurate, and culturally competent information to affected populations. Institutional frameworks have evolved accordingly. The WHO's Emergency Risk Communication framework, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030), and IFRC guidance on community engagement and accountability now constitute the operational baseline. Yet practice lags: trust in official sources has declined in many democracies according to Edelman Trust Barometer data, while platform-mediated rumour spreads faster than authoritative correction. The rise of generative AI raises new risks of fabricated crisis imagery, as already seen during the 2023 Pentagon explosion hoax and Hurricane Helene in 2024. The debate now focuses on pre-bunking strategies, multilingual and disability-accessible communication, the role of trusted community messengers, and how international actors coordinate messaging in conflict zones where information itself becomes contested terrain.

Key players

Environmental and Sustainability Communication

Environmental communication has moved from a specialist niche to a defining challenge of contemporary media practice. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (2021–2023) emphasised that effective communication of climate risk is itself a determinant of mitigation and adaptation outcomes. The annual COP cycle — from the Paris Agreement at COP21 to the loss-and-damage fund operationalised at COP28 in Dubai and the climate finance debates at COP29 in Baku — has produced both unprecedented media coverage of climate diplomacy and persistent gaps in coverage of biodiversity loss, ocean health, and pollution. The communication landscape is shaped by competing pressures. Climate denial campaigns, documented in research by InfluenceMap and the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, have evolved from outright denial toward delay narratives and greenwashing claims now targeted by EU rules on green claims and by national consumer protection authorities. Indigenous and frontline communities increasingly contest who has standing to narrate environmental change, while youth-led movements from Fridays for Future to grassroots campaigns across the Global South have reshaped public discourse. The contemporary debate addresses how journalism, advertising, and strategic communication can support science-based public understanding, how to regulate greenwashing without chilling legitimate corporate speech, and how to ensure that communities most affected by environmental harm have voice in mediated representation.

Key players

Communication and Culture

The relationship between communication and culture has been a foundational concern of the field since UNESCO's 1980 MacBride Report called for a New World Information and Communication Order to redress imbalances in global media flows. Four decades on, the picture is paradoxical: streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime have globalised the distribution of content from South Korea (Squid Game, Parasite), Spain, Türkiye, India, and Nigeria's Nollywood, while a small number of US-headquartered firms still dominate the underlying infrastructure and revenue capture. UNESCO's 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions remains the principal multilateral instrument, but its implementation has been complicated by digital trade rules and the rise of algorithmic curation. Debates over content quotas (notably France's exception culturelle and the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive), the discoverability of local content, the repatriation of cultural artefacts, and the protection of Indigenous and minority languages — supported by the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032) — all sit at this intersection. The rapid spread of K-pop, Afrobeats, and Latin music demonstrates that cultural flows are no longer unidirectional, even as concerns persist about homogenisation and the marginalisation of smaller linguistic communities. The contemporary debate concerns how to sustain cultural diversity and linguistic plurality in algorithmically mediated environments, how to value cultural and creative industries within development frameworks, and how communication can support intercultural dialogue rather than reinforce stereotypes and conflict.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for MEDCOM 2027 – The 12th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Ken Martin's DNC Autopsy Reveals Party Strugg

DNC Autopsy Reveals Democrats' 2024 Failures

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Media & Press Relations

Persuasion & Influence

Cross-Cultural Communication

Advanced Negotiation

Thailand April 2027

By committee

Frequently asked questions

MEDCOM 2027 – The 12th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication

Apr 5–6, 2027Bangkok, ThailandIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
AI, Technology, and the Future of Media · Social Media, Influence, and Social Change · Journalism and Mediated Communication · Strategic Communication, Public Relations and Advertising · Civic Information, Press Freedom & Democratic Resistance · Risk and Crisis Communication · Environmental and Sustainability Communication · Communication and Culture

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Thailand

Host nation for the conference, providing a regional perspective on media and communication trends in Southeast Asia.

Role in topic

United States

A major contributor to global media theory and practice, with significant influence on digital platforms and media innovation.

Role in topic

China

An emerging superpower with a distinct media ecosystem, characterized by state control and rapid technological adoption.

Role in topic

United Kingdom

A historical hub for media innovation and public service broadcasting, with a strong tradition of media studies.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

AI, Technology, and the Future of Media

Key players

Journalism and Mediated Communication

Key players

Strategic Communication, Public Relations and Advertising

Key players

Civic Information, Press Freedom & Democratic Resistance

Key players

Risk and Crisis Communication

Key players

Environmental and Sustainability Communication

Key players

Communication and Culture

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for MEDCOM 2027 – The 12th World Conference on Media and Mass Communication.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Ken Martin's DNC Autopsy Reveals Party Strugg

DNC Autopsy Reveals Democrats' 2024 Failures

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Media & Press Relations

Persuasion & Influence

Cross-Cultural Communication

Advanced Negotiation

Thailand April 2027

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

Lawyers TED Talk: The Role of Thai Lawyers in International Law Competition (Inaugural)

CYSEC THAILAND 2026 – Thailand Cyber Shield: Advancing the Nation's Digital Security

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Frequently asked questions