About Zerui Liang

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I am a communication and new media researcher whose work sits at the intersection of media effects and institutional communication. My training is in Communication and New Media (MA, City University of Hong Kong), and my current role is in higher education practice and institutional development at Zhongyuan Institute of Science and Technology — which gives me a double vantage point: I study communication, and I also practice it inside an institution.

How I got here

My path runs from the studio to the seminar room to the administration floor:

  • Broadcasting & presenting (BA, Southwest University) taught me how messages are built for audiences.
  • Communication and New Media (MA, City University of Hong Kong; exchange at UC San Diego) trained me to study those messages empirically.
  • As a Research Assistant and Lecturer at CUHK (2015–2020), I ran quantitative communication research — risk perception, news framing, social media strategy — and taught visual and multimedia communication.
  • As an international education consultant (Seafame, 2019–2022), I worked cross-culturally with students navigating foreign universities.
  • Today, in university governance at Zhongyuan Institute of Science and Technology, I advise on institutional development and communication strategy — closing the loop between studying communication and operating it.

The through-line: communication as both the object of study and the instrument of institutions.

What I am working on now

I am extending classic selective-exposure theory into the algorithmic age — building on Li Xigen’s three-element model and bringing in generative exposure and AI literacy as new variables. The aim is a framework for understanding choice and attention when the source is no longer only human. → See Research Agenda.

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