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This article analyses the coverage of the current US–China trade war in the Global Times. Some scholars argue that official nationalism, which stress the unity of the Chinese people, is challenged by popular nationalism, which privileges the dominant Han ethnicity, and that official nationalism is forced to make concessions to popular nationalism. If this is true, then one would expect to find evidence in the coverage of international issues in a ‘popular’ official newspaper like Global Times. The newspaper’s coverage stresses negative features of the USA, but devotes considerable space to the damage that Trump's policies are doing to ordinary Americans. It does not present China as the unique victim of US economic aggression. The coverage stresses broad international agreement for free trade, leaving the USA isolated in adopting protectionist policies. At least in this instance, state-led nationalism remains central and no concessions are made to popular sentiments.

This study proposes the interventionist and the detached orientations to watchdog journalism through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance. Based on a content analysis of 33,640 news stories from sixty-four media outlets in eighteen countries, we measure and compare both orientations across different countries using three performative aspects of monitoring: intensity of scrutiny, voice of the scrutiny, and source of the event. Our findings show that the interventionist approach of watchdog journalism is more likely to be found in democracies with traditionally partisan and opinion-oriented journalistic cultures or experiencing sociopolitical crises. In turn, the detached orientation predominates in democracies with journalistic traditions associated to objectivity. Although both orientations have a lower presence in transitional democracies, the detached watchdog prevails, while in non-democratic countries the watchdog role is almost absent. Our results also reveal that structural contexts of undemocratic political regimes and restricted press freedom are key definers of watchdog role performance overall. However, the type of political regime is actually more important—and in fact the most important predictor— for detached than for interventionist reporting.

This article reports on research into the relations between reporters and sources in a Chinese newspaper in a transitional period brought about by the diffusion of smartphones and instant messaging...

Based on a standardized operationalization of the watchdog, civic, interventionist, loyal-facilitator, infotainment, and service roles, this study combines survey ( N = 643) and content analysis data ( N = 19,908) to explain gaps between newspaper journalists’ role conceptions and the performance of their press organizations in nine countries from Latin America, Western Europe, and Asia. Taking an institutional approach by focusing on institutional influences on the conception–performance gap at three levels (individual, organizational, societal), our results show that these gaps are largest for the two roles most connected with the public functions of journalism, the civic, and the watchdog roles. Multilevel analyses offer significant evidence on that, across all six analyzed roles, the size of the gaps differed more clearly between journalists and between media organizations, than among countries. Although influences on an individual level (i.e., perceived autonomy) have some explanatory power, influences on the organizational level and, more specifically, ownership and codified editorial policies are the factors that best explain conception–performance gaps. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the public skepticism about the performance of journalism and the media.

The development of the market has produced a differentiation inside the Chinese press between an ‘official’ press with traditional propaganda functions on behalf of the Communist Party and a ‘commercial’ press whose objective is to maximise revenue. Scholarly opinion has differed over whether marketization undermines Party control and whether new forms of journalism have arisen that lead to conflicts. These discussions have rested on little evidence as to the practises of Chinese journalism. This article presents empirical data on the extent of the differentiation, reporting on a content analysis of the national news in People’s Daily and Southern Metropolitan Daily. These titles are popularly believed to represent the polar opposites of official, orthodox journalism and commercial, liberal journalism. The evidence presented here demonstrates that while there are indeed significant differences in the journalism of the two titles, there remains a substantial overlap in their choice of subjects, their use of sources and the degree to which news is presented ‘objectively’. Southern Metropolitan Daily does display some ‘popular’ features and does contain more ‘watchdog’ journalism, but it shares with its official cousin an emphasis upon the party as the source for news.

New communication technologies have had a major impact on the newspaper press in China. They have lost readers and advertisers and have experienced economic difficulties. These have been more sever...

This article considers the opportunities and difficulties in extending China’s cultural influence, usually termed ‘soft power’, among those of its close neighbours through which it is envisaged the construction of the ‘New Silk Road’ will pass. The article considers three variables that can be argued to have an effect on the degree of cultural influence a nation can wield: the degree of media independence from the state, the overall size of the economy and the relative prosperity of the individual members of a society. It argues that in those countries that are near neighbours to China, it does have some resources that can promote its cultural influence but that it also faces local and global competitors who can deploy alternative resources.

Political pressure and censorship are unavoidable conditions for producing an entertainment show in Chinese TV. The relationships between a production team and the government are, however, extremely complex. Based on participant observation in a TV channel and in-depth interviews with related television professionals, this article analyses the tensions between production and politics in Chinese television. The article argues that a centralized and top-down model fails to capture all the aspects of power relations in television production. A more productive starting point is that television production necessarily involves negotiation between different participants. This article analyses relations between the production team, the central broadcasting authorities and local governments. The production team in this case study utilized different strategies to negotiate with multiple levels of government.

The national elections in India in 2014 that swept the controversial leader Narendra Modi to power have generated a great deal of scholarship on their transformative impact with regard to the Indian polity. This article argues that, in fact, the elections demonstrate a continuity in the media’s relationship with dominant members of the political elite. Favourable, partisan reporting of dominant figures or families has a long history in India since the journalistic field reorients its subservience towards the new power structure. This research examines the similarities and differences in how authoritative and populist leaders like the Gandhis and Modi manipulate media power. While scholars have noted a close correspondence between politics and media in India, there is a research deficit in the analysis of the architecture of the media’s subservience to selected members of national significance, in the world’s largest democracy. This research draws into dialogue two influential theories – Field and New Institutionalism theory – to assert that the natural state of the Indian journalistic field is heteronomy in its relationship with hegemonic members of the political elite. This is occasionally pierced by limits imposed by populist politics in an electoral democracy. The relationship between the news media and individuals of the political elite, thus, can be conceptualized as that of contingent heteronomy.

This article reviews the debates about the end of dictatorships that pre-occupied this journal in its early years. It is argued that the issues debated then remain of central importance for understanding the role of the media in contemporary societies. Two central arguments that remain extremely influential in the study of the media—that all societies are undergoing necessary evolution towards democracy and that marketisation is a key accompaniment to this process, in the media as much as anywhere else. This article demonstrates that the evidence does not support the claims of this “transitological” perspective. There is no evidence of a uniform development towards democracy and no evidence of a necessary link between political democracy and the market. The contradictory developments that have marked the last 30 years are better understood as various attempts by ruling classes to maintain their power and influence through a range of strategies from the embrace of political democracy through various degree...

Influential research on comparative media systems identifies distinctive models according to which certain countries—particularly advanced democracies—share key features in their journalistic cultures. Revisionist literature has not only emphasized the limitations of such models, but also highlighted the hybridization of journalistic cultures elsewhere. This article tests the hybridization thesis, analyzing the presence of six journalistic roles in print news from 19 countries (N = 34,514). Our findings show patterns of multilayered hybridization in the performance of professional roles across and within advanced, transitional, and nondemocratic countries, with journalistic cultures displaying different types of hybridity that do not resemble either existing ideal media system typologies or conventional assumptions about political or regional clusters. The implications of these findings for future studies are discussed.

This article analyses the localization, as Hurry Up, Brother, of the Korean celebrity reality game show format Running Man by the Chinese broadcaster Zhejiang Satellite TV. Based upon field work involving participant observation and interviews with Chinese and Korean production personnel, the article explores the complex forces involved in realizing the final, highly successful, project. It is argued that localization involves the interplay of complex forces, the outcome of which is a process of negotiation. In particular, the article analyses in detail two major players in this production, Korean format consultants and the Chinese production team. It details the distinctively Korean practice of licensing a format without recourse to a formal specification of production details, and Chinese television professionals’ response to these practices. It is shown that the more informal methods employed result in a transfer of decision-making power from the Korean company to the Chinese company in the course of the production. As a television format show produced in China, the production of Hurry Up, Brother necessarily involved interaction with political forces as well as cultural differences between China and Korea. The article concludes with considering the implications of the findings for our concepts of globalization, localization and hybridization.

It is commonly stated that the press in China can be divided into two main categories, the party-oriented official press and the market-oriented commercial press. This article examines an official paper, China Youth Daily, which is a central organ of the Communist Youth League of China. The findings of a content analysis demonstrate that this title differs significantly from other central official titles, like People’s Daily, but also from commercial papers, like Southern Metropolis Daily. While China Youth Daily’s journalism is close to the official pole in the amount of propaganda-related material it covers, it also has a greater emphasis on watchdog journalism than does People’s Daily. It places a much greater emphasis on infotainment than do either of the official and commercial poles. It is more likely to use journalistic techniques like sensationalism and the revelation of personal details than are the other titles analysed. These findings lead to the conclusion that the bi-polar characterization of the Chinese press requires modification. At least one prominent national title is best described as ‘popular official’ media. One of the main features of this kind of journalism is that it presents the party and business elite in a human light and thus constitutes a renewal of the repertoire of hegemonic devices at the party’s disposal. What is certainly the case is that the frequent claim that there is a contradiction between popular journalism responding to audience tastes and official journalism constrained by the propaganda needs of the party is mistaken.

This paper reports the results of a content analysis of five newspapers selected from the Chinese daily press. The research was conducted as part of an international project designed to explore the relationship between journalistic self-conceptions and journalistic practice. This paper reports only upon journalistic practice, in particular the extent to which different models of journalism are present. The results of the analysis demonstrate, firstly, that while the concept of a uniform ‘national media system’ is of some utility in comparative studies, there are, even in the highly structured Chinese case, very significant differences within a single country. Secondly, it demonstrates that the common division of the Chinese press into a politically oriented party press and a market-oriented commercial press is inadequate to explain the identifiable differences between titles in the sample. A four grouping solution fits the data much better and demonstrates that there are newspapers that combine st...

Chinese newspapers are beginning to feel the effects of digital media both on their circulations and advertising revenues. In contrast to the west, where newspaper circulation has been problematic for some years, this represents a new situation since they have enjoyed 25 years during which both circulation and advertising grew very rapidly. The response of Chinese newspapers has some similarities with that experienced in the West, and notably the United States, but it also has major differences. Newspapers elsewhere have responded to the situation primarily as economic units, but in China, the political dimension has had a central role. The article reviews the comparative impact of the crisis and gives an overview of the Chinese response in terms of cost cutting, raising new revenues and changing journalistic practices. Alongside the technological and economic factors, it notes that the Xi leadership has taken a much more interventionist stance on editorial content and that this has further constrained newspapers’ possible responses. It concludes by considering some of the implications of the changed situation and the ways in which newspapers have responded to it.

Drawing on fieldwork at the Beijing News, this paper examines how emerging economic pressures facing newspapers, the increasingly draconian political climate under the new leadership, and the development of new media challenge Chinese investigative journalists. In order to remain competitive, the investigative reporting unit of the Beijing News has reshuffled its organization and readjusted its reporting strategy. The paper concentrates on the interplay between political and economic factors in defining the context of Chinese investigative journalism. It argues that studies of Chinese journalism should not only consider the enduring political control that trammels journalistic practice, but also pay attention to the impact of other factors, notably technological developments and economic pressures.

This essay reviews the coverage of the Occupy Central movement in the UK national daily press from the first notice of the growing movement in July 2013 to the time of writing in January 2015. This is a relatively small subset of the total mentions of Hong Kong in the UK press, which cover a wide range of cultural, leisure, sport, and business stories. Hong Kong is very far from invisible to the UK press in “normal” times but, given that the UK is the former colonial power in Hong Kong, and that the terms under which the territory was returned to China were formalized in an inter-state agreement between the UK and China (the Joint Declaration, ratified in 1985), it is reasonable to assume that developments in the constitutional situation would attract very considerable attention on the part of the UK government. Studies of foreign news suggest that nationally specific factors tend to influence news salience so we would concomitantly expect that the UK newspaper press would devote substantial amounts of sp...

This article begins with a consideration of the different meanings that have been given to the digital divide, and to the normative concerns that researchers have brought to its investigation. It then examines three major traditions of research into the subject: that which stresses issues of physical access; that which adds to the discussion of technical availability astress upon some of the cultural competences and skills necessary to utilise the technologies fully; and a third which examines situations in which technical availability is almost universal but in which social and cultural factors play a determinant role in the kinds of usage adopted. Building upon the existing state of knowledge, the article goes on to consider its implications both for future research and for the kinds of policies which might be adopted to address the problems of social inclusion today and in the future. Članek se začenja z obravnavo različnih pomenov, ki so jih dobili "digitalni razkorak" in normativna vprašanja, ki so jih raziskovalci uvedli v svoje raziskovanje. V nadaljevanju proučuje tri glavne raziskovalne tradicije področja: tisto, ki izpostavlja vprašanja fizičnega dostopa; tiste, ki razpravi o tehnični razpoložljivosti dodajajo poudarek na nekatere kulturne kompetenc in spretnosti, potrebne za polno uporabo tehnologije; in tretjo, ki raziskuje situacije, ko je tehnična dostopnost skoraj univerzalna, v katerih pa igrajo družbeni in kulturni dejavniki odločilno vlogo v oblikovanju specifičnih načinov uporabe. Na temelju dosedanjih spoznanj članek v nadaljevanju proučuje njihove posledice tako za prihodnje raziskave kot za vrste politik, ki bi jih lahko sprejeli za reševanje problemov socialne vključenosti danes in v prihodnosti.

The theory of media and cultural imperialism is today largely discredited. This article reviews the classical theory, particularly as developed by Schiller and identifies a number of its key elements. The main objections to this view are then briefly rehearsed, and their conclusive force is accepted. The article then considers how changes in the last decade have made the successor theories, which are variants of globalization, increasingly unsatisfactory. It is noted that in other disciplines these real-world developments have led to a revival of theoretical and empirical discussions of imperialism. In the light of these developments, the article reconsiders the requirements of theories of imperialism and proposes an account which differs in significant respects from the version advanced by Schiller. It is argued that this new version (a) does not suffer from the crippling defects of the classical account (b) explains much better the historical realities of imperialism and (c) provides a superior theoreti...

This essay argues that much of the writing about journalism in China has suffered from an approach that is increasingly unhelpful in understanding both the ways in which the mass media operate on a...

This article analyses the media emerging from the fall of the apartheid state, with reference to other transitions that took place during the same time period. Theoretically, the article questions the ‘transitological’ paradigm for studying change that has been developed in the political sciences. It is demonstrated that the key claims of this paradigm cannot be sustained empirically. In the place of this failed account, a model of change is proposed, centring on the process of elite continuity and renewal. It is shown that this model allows the South African case to be compared to other political and economic transitions. South Africa, which lies at the ‘renewal’ end of the spectrum, represents one of the most completely ‘democratic’ of the transitions. It is noted, however, that this process elsewhere has not been irreversible, and that democratisation is a contingent factor in transition, not its defining characteristic. The reasons for the relative absence of direct political intervention in ...

This article analyzes the coverage of China in the UK national daily press for the calendar year 2008. The article demonstrates that, although there were many articles mentioning China, these were distributed throughout the year so as to emphasize large-scale and dramatic events. Second, the articles were not evenly distributed across the titles analyzed. The big-selling down-market titles had very few substantial articles on China. The mid-market titles had more, but the total was still very small. Only the up-market titles, with their elite readership, covered China regularly and in depth. The article then compares the quality of the coverage through an analysis of the frames present in the Sun, the Daily Express, and the Financial Times. The article finds that the coverage had some similarities across all titles, but that the two more popular titles concentrated on negative aspects of China while the elite title carried more nuanced coverage. It is speculated that the Financial Times has more detailed ...

This paper reviews the main academic theory of post-communist societies, which argues that these are examples of transition towards the models existing in the free-market western democracies. It argues that the empirical evidence suggests that the theory is incorrect in that it is unable to account for the variety of contradictory outcomes that have been experienced. Some of the post-communist states are democracies, in the sense used in this tradition of analysis, but others clearly are not. At the same time, China has experienced a transition away from a command economy towards a market economy, while the Communist Party has remained in complete control of political life and no transition towards democracy can even be discerned. The paper argues that the various attempts to rescue this dominant orthodoxy by minor adaptation have been unsuccessful and that it is time to abandon the approach. In its place, the paper advances an alternative theory, “elite continuity and renewal” which it is argued explains the nature of the changes, particularly in the mass media, much more satisfactorily than does the old theory.

The situation of investigative journalism in China is precarious. There are serious pressures from both the party-state and advertisers that have reduced the opportunities for this kind of journalism. On the other hand, investigative journalism has proved a very important tool in the economic development of some newspapers, and has been integrated into their organizational structure as well as providing what might be termed a professional ideology for journalists. But as the pressures on news organizations have grown, they have been forced to respond. Some, notably television but also many newspapers, have more or less abandoned investigative journalism. Others attempt to retain the practice, but adopt a very cautious strategy. In some cases, however, the market position of the newspaper and the self-identity of the journalists mean that they retain a strong commitment to investigative journalism. In this, they are aided by the development of the Internet, which provides a good source for stories, an arena in which it is possible to publish material that could not appear in the traditional media, and a way of ensuring that sensational stories gain a wider audience. On the other hand, even those newspapers that pride themselves on maintaining their commitment to this kind of journalism have developed strategies to minimize the negative political and economic consequences of their activity. The article concludes that while investigative journalism in China faces a difficult future, it is very far from entirely defunct.

This article discusses the transformation of the media system in three countries moving away from the classical “communist” model: Poland, Russia and China. Despite very significant differences, all three of these societies displayed similar starting points in terms of economics, politics and media. The dominant political science tradition has discussed post‐communism as part of a more general theory of “transitology”, seeing the processes involved in these cases as examples of a world‐wide transition from dictatorial regimes towards western‐style democracy. An alternative is to see the shift away from communism as an example of “elite continuity”, in which the former bureaucratic ruling class attempts to restructure itself as the owners of private capital. The article tests the two theoretical views in these three cases. It is demonstrated that transitology gives very little insight into the prevailing situations, and that the theory of elite continuity accounts much better for major features of the medi...

This article reviews the range of views that are grouped together under the heading `theories of globalization'. Rather than advocating one from the range of conflicting theories, the article attempts to establish the basic ideas that they have in common. These, mostly very abstract, ideas are then developed in order to arrive at propositions that may be examined in relation to evidence about the contemporary world. It is found that none of the five major planks upon which most theories of globalization rest are accurate. On the contrary, even quite easily available evidence contradicts them. It is therefore concluded that, whatever their popular appeal, theories of globalization are not an accurate guide to the investigation of the world. The distorted consequences that flow from an adherence to a mistaken theory are demonstrated through a consideration of the nature of contemporary migration, which is shown to be an overwhelmingly intra-state, rather than transnational, phenomenon. It is argued that processes like this, and the other developments considered here, are better explained by developing the same kinds of analytic tools that were appropriate to an earlier phase of capitalist development. Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

The ‘propaganda model’ of news production in capitalist democracies elaborated by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in 1988 was met with initial hostile criticism and then more or less complete neglect. In the last five years, there has been a renewal of interest, although opinion remains seriously divided. This article adopts a sympathetic stance towards the main ideas of the model, but suggests that there are a number of ways in which in its classical iteration it is insufficiently sensitive to the nature of the pressures and constraints on news production arising from the economic and political realities of capitalist democracy. If one takes account of these complexities and modifies the model accordingly, it is possible to give a much more complete account of processes of news production and to respond effectively to the main criticisms that have been advanced against Herman and Chomsky’s views. From this perspective, rather than the tendency towards uniformity predicted by the classical iteration of the model, it becomes possible to account for the real, if limited, variety of news and opinion that are observable features of mass media. It further follows from this account that the majority of ordinary journalists, far from being the more or less willing collaborators in propaganda, are potentially allies of those who wish to build a different and better world.

This article examines the online presence of the U.K. national daily newspaper press. The differences between the offline and online markets for the content of newspapers are examined and the performance of the 10 daily titles is compared in the 2 spheres. It is shown that the success in attracting audiences of the online editions does not reproduce the patterns of offline editions. In particular, the online sites of "quality" newspapers are much more successful than those of "tabloid" newspapers. The possible reasons for this are reviewed and it is concluded that the kinds of material normally found in quality newspapers are enhanced by their presentation in the new medium, whereas those found in tabloid newspapers are often provided better online by other specialist competitors. A typology of online newspapers is then proposed, constructed in terms of the relationship between offline and online titles and the implications of the different categories are considered. In conclusion it is noted that, althou...

Studies of the relationship of the mass media and democracy either rely very heavily on American and European experience, or they are focused studies of national cases. There are relatively few attempts to generalise from the rich diversity of the last thirty years. This article is an initial attempt to compare the experiences of the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe with the various dictatorships of East and South East Asia. It is argued that, despite the fact that there are important differences between communist and capitalist dictatorships, it is nevertheless theoretically possible to compare the two categories. An outline theory of the relationship between media and social power in both is introduced. In comparing Europe and Asia, it is argued that oppositions between “Western” and “Asian” values are not at all useful, despite their considerable popular currency at the time of writing (September 2001). In both cases, key democratic values like reason and media freedom h...