Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia —“Living with ChatGPT: Social, Psychological, and Economic Impacts of Generative AI in East Asia”
Guest Editor: Dr. Weiwen Yu (Arizona State University) and Dr. Chun Shao (Marquette University)
The rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in recent years has fundamentally transformed how societies engage with and experience technology. AI is increasingly understood not only as a technological innovation but also as a communicative construct that shapes interaction across diverse sectors. Among these tools, the release of ChatGPT in late 2022—alongside its Chinese counterpart, DeepSeek—marked a critical turning point. Conversational AI entered the mainstream, signaling a broader shift in how the public encounters and interprets AI systems (Liu & Lyu, 2025). Once confined to industry applications, generative AI now permeates classrooms, workplaces, and households, reshaping how people learn, write, code, seek guidance, and even develop emotional attachments to machines (Fan, 2025).
While “AI” encompasses a wide range of technologies—from autonomous vehicles to predictive analytics—ChatGPT represents a particularly visible and transformative case. Unlike sector-specific AI, it interacts through natural language, making it a deeply social technology that invites personal, cultural, and political interpretation (Piani, 2025). Its rapid diffusion across East Asia offers a timely and concrete lens through which to examine how societies negotiate the cultural, psychological, and economic dimensions of living with AI.
East Asia provides distinctive contexts for such inquiry: China’s evolving regulatory landscape (Sheehan, 2023), Japan’s emphasis on human–machine harmony (Tokuhisa & Morimoto, 2025), and South Korea’s digitally driven labor markets (Ayhan, 2024) all highlight diverse trajectories of integration. These developments pressing questions: How are generative AI tools reshaping educational practices, from exam preparation to creative writing? How are businesses deploying them in customer service, marketing, or software development? How do public debates grapple with the ethical, cultural, and linguistic challenges posed by generative AI? And what social and psychological factors influence adoption and use across different contexts?
This special issue seeks to move beyond technical assessments and policy analyses to foreground the lived experiences of AI in East Asia. We invite contributions from across disciplines that explore how generative AI products both shape—and are shaped by—the cultural norms, economic realities, and psychological landscapes of the region. This special issue is interested in conceptual, methodological, and empirical studies. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
AI tools in education: opportunities, academic integrity, and evolving pedagogy
Generative AI tools in creative industries: literature, art, film, and fan culture
Language, translation, and cultural nuance in AI-generated content
Economic implications: automation, gig work, productivity, and deskilling
AI and emotional labor: companionship, counseling, and social bots
Public perceptions, moral panics, and regulatory debates
Everyday resistance, adaptation, and creative appropriation of AI tools
Variations in public adoption, perception, and use of generative AI across East Asian societies.
Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words in English to both guest editors, Dr. Weiwen Yu (weiwenyu@asu.edu) and Dr. Chun Shao (chun.shao@marquette.edu), and cc the official JCEA email (j.c.eastern.asia@gmail.com). The subject line should include “JCEA Special Issue.”
Proposed Key Dates:
• Abstract Submission Deadline: November 30, 2025 • Notification of Invitation to Submit Full Papers: December 15, 2026 (Invitation to submit a full paper does not guarantee publication. All submissions will undergo the journal’s standard peer review process.) • Full Paper Submission Deadline: May 15, 2026.
Please note: The Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia requires a charge of USD 100 (KRW 150,000) for all authors. Those who publish funded research must pay an additional USD 200 or KRW 300,000. The APC is applicable to accepted manuscripts and must be paid at the time of publication. Associate Editors of JCEA are exempt from APC for up to one publication per year. This only applies to unfunded research. For more information about the journal, refer to https://jceasia.org/