Reorienting Communication Research: Toward A New Knowledge Paradigm For The Global South—Interview With Yuezhi Zhao

As global geopolitics and communication landscapes undergo rapid change, the Global South has become a crucial space for rethinking international communication and knowledge production. Through a series of in-depth interviews conducted by Xinyu Wang, Chinese-Canadian communication scholar Yuezhi Zhao reflects on how communication research should be “reoriented” through a sustained engagement with Global South realities. The first part traces the intellectual and practical origins of the Harare Forum for Africa, outlining its vision as a practice-based platform that links interdisciplinary inquiry with fieldwork and dialogue across sectors and societies. The second part turns to theoretical reflection, reconstructing the internal logic of Zhao’s scholarly reorientation and her critique of the structural dilemmas facing contemporary communication research in both China and the English-language academy. The article highlights her transcultural political economy of communication as a framework for understanding the frictions between capitalist modernity and diverse local social realities in the Global South. It also introduces “global rurality” as an analytical extension of Global South research that foregrounds the urban–rural divide within and across nations. Finally, the article calls for a new knowledge paradigm for the Global South—one that treats practice as method, values mutual and equal knowledge production, and calls for a revolutionary praxis-centered Marxism in reimagining the purpose and direction of communication research.