COSMOS Research Center has been honored with the prestigious Best Paper Award at the International Conference on AI-based Media Innovation (AIMEDIA 2026), held July 5 to 9, 2026, in Nice, France! Hosted by the International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA), AIMEDIA serves as an international forum dedicated to evaluating artificial intelligence across media ecosystems, addressing emerging challenges related to information integrity, algorithmic bias, and ethical media innovation.

The research, titled “Symbolic Communication in the 2025 Tariff Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of X and Weibo”, led by Prof. Nitin Agarwal, examines how international trade conflicts are discussed online across different cultures and digital spaces, focusing specifically on the 2025 trade/tariff wars. By analyzing thousands of posts on X and Weibo, we investigated the drivers of public interest and engagement during global economic disputes. The team used three distinct artificial intelligence systems as digital interpreters to categorize the underlying themes of each post as social, cultural, economic, or political.

The findings reveal two distinct online environments with markedly different communication styles. Discussions on X tend to be straightforward, narrow, and primarily focused on financial figures, with most posts sticking to a single topic. On the other hand, conversations on Weibo are highly energetic and multi-layered, frequently blending multiple themes at once and heavily relying on cultural symbols, metaphors, and emotional and nationalistic expressions.

By applying mathematical models typically used by epidemiologists to track how viruses spread, the study showed that Weibo discussions spread significantly faster and wider than those on X. Across both platforms, the research highlights that technical policy debates only truly capture the public’s imagination when they are framed with cultural and emotional resonance. This demonstrates that to understand the public impact of international trade policies, we must look beyond spreadsheets and pay close attention to the cultural stories people share.