About the NTU-Kim Koo Professor
About Kim-Koo NTU Professor Public Talk
Each year, the College of Social Sciences and the Global Asia Research Center invite a globally renowned scholar to serve as the NTU-Kim Koo Professor and teach a mini-course. This annual NTU-Kim Koo Professorship Lecture Series enables students and faculty members to exchange scholarly ideas with distinguished scholars beyond Taiwan. This year, we are more than honored to have Professor Florian Alexander SCHNEIDER from Leiden University to talk about Studying Political Communication and Media in East Asia.
Course Description
This block-course introduces students to the theories and methods of studying political communication and media in East Asian societies (specifically in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese-speaking contexts). The focus is on practical, empirical skills: the course will walk students through four thematic blocks, each expanding their analytical toolbox. The module begins with an overview of media studies and communication studies questions before introducing discourse and framing analysis methodologies (session 1). It then turns to visual communication, providing students with the conceptual and practical tools for studying political images, e.g. magazine covers or short videos (session 2). Students will then learn how to explore communicative and mediated interactions in space, for instance during high-profile mass events like world expositions and Olympic games (session 3). Expanding the toolbox further, the course then explores the politics of digital communication, asking what research methods can help us make sense of the complex interactions that take place on social media platforms but also in media formats such as video games (session 4).
About Florian Alexander Schneider
Florian Schneider is Chair Professor of Modern China at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies. He is managing editor of Asiascape: Digital Asia, academic director of the Leiden Asia Centre, and the author of several books, including: Studying Political Communication and Media in East Asia – A Playful Approach (Amsterdam University Press, 2025), Staging China: the Politics of Mass Spectacle (Leiden University Press, 2019, recipient of the ICAS Book Prize 2021 Accolades), and China’s Digital Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2018). His research interests include questions of governance, political communication, and digital media in China and East Asia, as well as international relations in the region.
