LI Baiqi and Jenny LI, PhD students in the Individualized Interdisciplinary Program (IIP), have received the Best Student Paper Award from the International Chinese Communication Association (ICCA) research session at the 109th Annual Conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), one of the most prestigious academic organizations in journalism and mass communication globally, held in New Orleans, USA, from August 5 to 8, 2026.

The award-winning paper, “Constructing University Reputation in China’s Platformed Public Sphere: A Comparative Study of Bilibili, Douyin, and Weibo (2021–2025),” was jointly completed by Baiqi Li and Jenny Li. The study explores how social media platforms shape the public reputation of universities in China. As social media and video-sharing platforms increasingly influence how young people access information, online visibility and reputation have become important components of institutional branding. Focusing on China’s digital media landscape, the research analyzes university-related content on Bilibili, Douyin, and Weibo from 2021 to 2025. Using web-scraped data and a combination of quantitative and computational methods, the study examines how universities from Mainland China, Hong Kong, East Asia, and Western countries are represented in youth-oriented online communities. The findings reveal the growing role of platform-based digital cultures in shaping perceptions of higher education, institutional prestige, and social mobility.

The judging panel praised the study’s robust cross-platform and cross-regional design. In particular, they commended the paper’s clear evidence demonstrating how short-video platforms, especially Douyin, drive user engagement, as well as its nuanced application of topic modeling and interaction effects to reveal how sentiment and regional contexts shape perceptions through different platform affordances.

Congratulations to Baiqi and Jenny on this outstanding international achievement!