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Previous research in security studies contends that information warfare (IW) is becoming a critical element in states' overall security strategies. Additionally, many researchers posit that artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly emerging as an important component of digital communications and states' military applications worldwide. However, less is known regarding how states are incorporating AI in their information warfare and influence operations (IWIO). Thus, given the growing importance of AI and IW in global security, this paper examines how the United States, China, and Russia are incorporating AI in their IWIO strategies and tactics. We find that the US, China, and Russia are utilizing AI in their IWIO approaches in significant ways depending on each state's overall IW strategy, with important implications for international security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Findings: Given that kindergartens are essential in sustaining children's education during the COVID-19 lockdown, this study investigates kindergarten-oriented educational practice during the initial class suspension (February–June 2020) in China. Articles published via twenty Chinese kindergartens' WeChat official subscription accounts during this period and relevant policy documents were collected and analyzed. This study found that during the class suspension, China's kindergartens were able to continue providing education by adding the topic of COVID-19 to the curriculum, remaining focused on subject-related learning, utilizing digital technologies as a communication platform, and assigning different roles to parents to support children's learning at home. However, activities prescribed by teachers and kindergartens were generally teacher-directed and structured, which led to the marginalization of children's voices and play. Practice or Policy: As kindergarten prescribed teaching and learning activities misalign with the "broad definition of learning" encouraged by macro-level documents, the policy-practice gap implies that: i) teachers could explore how digital technologies could be combined with child-centered activities in online learning; ii) parents need supports for extending children's learning and play at home; iii) policy-makers should provide more detailed guidelines and practical suggestions for teachers to support learning, including the post-COVID period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current digital era, crucial questions include whether and how nondemocratic regimes retain information control in the face of proliferating new communication technologies. The scholarship has long cited China as a prime example of how authoritarian regimes implement internet censorship. Echoing emergent studies that have called attention to the highly fragmented nature of China's censorship agencies, which operate at different government levels, this research addresses local censorship agencies and their practices. Combining participatory observations and in-depth interviews conducted in a district in H City, one of China's digital economy hubs, this research explores how the local censorship regime deploys soft forms of maintaining control over information. Based on an institutional approach, the findings show that the local censorship regime has adopted proactive strategies to build a reciprocal relationship with local news start-ups, forming a variant of 'contingent symbiosis'. The local censorship regime uses policy and economic stimulus to co-opt news start-ups, inducing them to distance themselves from politically sensitive issues and local negative news and boost local propaganda agendas. These internet organisations have attempted to sustain positive relationships with the local censorship regime to acquire government resources and patronage, which would ensure their stable operation and survival under stiff competition in a precarious institutional environment. This research further explains the conditions of fragmented governance and platformisation under which this contingent symbiosis forms and the routinised practices that sustain it. This relational governance is covert and brings new challenges to the free flow of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory essay, the editors consider the current challenges in understanding a networked China. We consider how the digital media landscape has changed just since an earlier collection of research in 2015, subtitled 'global dynamics of digital media and civic engagement.' We take up this orienting concept of civic engagement to explore emerging mediated spaces for cultural production through global connectivities. Beyond an area studies contribution, we focus on China more broadly as a complex global assemblage: an intersection of technology, norms, and socio-cultural structures. Our contributors were invited to consider 'what' and 'where' is China, and 'how do we know China?' Along with logistical challenges of fieldwork involving constraints of geopolitics and pandemic, we encouraged an epistemic reflexivity around reliance on certain paradigms, concepts and kinds of data. This research is further complicated by sensitivities around by the very vocabulary often involved, including public, civil society, and civic engagement itself. In the search for digital China, contributors consider how to think about China and how to locate a digital China. In exploring digital production and performance of and in China, we include analyses of fandom, idols, and the curation of collective pandemic memories. Together, this collection provides a rich set of deeply researched cases and imaginative new strategies to understand how the contradictions of digital China – between connectivity and control – are playing out, with important implications for the changing nature of public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of digital communication technologies (DCTs) has greatly changed the way of information transmission, reduced the cost of communication and expanded the space of information spread. A largely growing literature shows that the communication technologies development lead to 'the death of distance'. To verify this assertion, this paper empirically test the effect of DCTs on agglomeration premium measured by the innovation performance advantage. By using a large number of firm-level patent data from China, we find that the spread of DCTs does not reduce the innovation premium of agglomeration. Conversely, innovative enterprises agglomerated benefit from the utilization of DCTs. This article highlights the importance of agglomeration for innovation activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2014, "plot twist news" as a controversial news phenomenon has appeared extensively in Chinese digital communication. In the context of journalism, this refers to news facts provided in follow-up reporting that contradict the facts provided in the initial reporting. Based on interviews with 25 journalists who specialize in in-depth reporting in Beijing in 2017, this study suggests that the phenomenon of plot twist news in the Chinese context urges us to think about how "truth" is being interpreted by different social actors and how the different versions of narrated truth drive journalistic investigation. Built upon field theory, this article argues that the doxa and habitus of the journalism field are challenged by the audience in such a way that journalists try to respond to audience demands through reporting the truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heightened securitisation of Islamic terrorism has received significant attention in Western countries, but little is known about the extent to which netizens in centralised political systems such as China have responded to this threat. This article seeks to address this gap by examining the localisation of the globalised fear of terrorism in China. It analyses online posts about international terrorism that appeared on Sina Weibo in China between 2011 and 2016, and shows how the opinions about terrorism expressed in the Chinese digital media sphere are strongly polarised. We argue that in China's online sphere the localisation of the "war on terror" frame generates two key polarised public responses – "negotiated acceptance" and "negative re-utilisation" – and that this polarisation of opinions about terrorism stems, in part, from China's stability-oriented approach to managing terrorism. These findings point to both an acceptance of and a resistance to the securitisation of terrorism and the globalised fear that it (re)produces. Moreover, the findings offer insights into the extent to which local security concerns and beliefs in the Chinese political system can create a divergence between the local perspectives on terrorism and the Western experiences and practices of security labelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atlases contain a large number of maps, and their design requires unity and coordination. When designing map symbol sizes, we must consider not only the requirements of single maps, but also the coordination of the whole atlas. Changing the map scales and statistical unit resolution alters the visual perception of maps, even if the symbols are unchanged. Therefore, appropriate and coordinated atlas symbols are required. This paper analyzes the main factors influencing the symbol design of the National Economic Atlas of China, establishes a visual-variable system of atlas symbols, and models the variable combinations and sizes of experimental symbols. It also analyzes 592 experimental maps and constructs an adaptability evaluation model of map symbol sizes under multivariate conditions. By relating the appropriate symbol sizes to the thematic data, we formulate the symbol size under multivariate conditions, thereby improving the standardization of symbol design in the National Economic Atlas of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the design and construction of the Phoenix Centre in Beijing, China. The project has two main reinforced concrete buildings: office building and broadcasting buildings. These buildings are connected by a spatial steel shell with a complex curved surface. The project is composed of six structural parts that are not structurally independent and form a complicated system. A three-dimensional (3D) modelling software is used to build precise 3D geometric and computation models. The best architectural effects are fulfilled by designing the curved surface with the members under spatial bending–torsional conditions. A series of measurements are implemented to assure certain computation accuracy, design efficiency and construction feasibility. A smooth takeover from the complex steel design to fabrication and construction is accomplished through the information transmission technology with the Digital Project software developed based on the 3D modelling software CATIA, Rhino and Auto CAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the interplay between political, economic and technological factors in China has resulted in the taming of critical journalism since the rule of Xi Jinping in 2012. While trying to reduce ideological ambiguity and revive Maoist ideology, the authorities operate overt and covert mechanisms of media control that dramatically limit reporting space. Market and digital communication technologies are currently contributing to tightening media control by worsening the context for critical journalism. The threat of the market to critical journalism that began in the early twenty-first century has deepened. The capitalisation of digital platforms, outperforming the empowering potential of digital communication technologies, has led to the pursuit of entertainment and capital in the media environment where critical journalism is practised. A hostile political climate and the pursuit of profit have radically diminished the necessary conditions for sustaining critical journalism. With this institutional crisis, critical journalism has little capacity and foundation to struggle with the party-state over reporting space. In this case, therefore, with neither the market nor digital media technologies being a liberalising force, they have helped the state to wield political power and to consolidate media control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prolific rise of Chinese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for advancing social and political change has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Nonetheless, limited communication studies research has been conducted to further contemporary understanding of these emerging collectives, particularly beyond the popular hype of digital and social media-led “revolutions” in civic engagement or dystopian accounts of Chinese society. This paper reviews the key contours of communication scholarship on Chinese NGOs and highlights the major contributions of the articles in this special issue. We also propose three dialectical tensions to stimulate future research in mediated Chinese NGO organizing, and to help advance the communicative purposes, practices and prospects of Chinese NGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, the amount of research on digital inter-organizational networks among Chinese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has increased greatly. However, few studies have examined the offline networks of Chinese NGOs. To fill this gap, the present study investigates the size and spread of offline Chinese NGO networks. In particular, we examine two competing hypotheses: the influence of organizational capacity and the influence of board affiliations asguanxion the size and spread of the ego-centric networks of NGOs. To test our hypotheses, we conducted surveys among 119 Chinese NGOs. The results of the ordinary least squares regression supported ourguanxihypothesis: the number of organizational affiliations that the members of a board of directors have was positively related to the size of Chinese NGO networks, controlling for geographic region, social issue area, age, and revenue of the NGOs. In addition, asguanxi, board affiliations influenced the spread of NGO networks via the size of NGO networks. This study contributes to the research on Chinese inter-organizational communication networks in general and to Chinese NGO offline networks, NGO capacity, andguanxiculture in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although a considerable body of research has examined the use of digital media communication by Chinese NGOs, no attention has been paid to whether and how NGOs in China evaluate the results of their efforts in digital communication. This study explores the perceptions and practices of individuals who work for NGOs in China with specific regard to the evaluation of their digital media tools. The study also considers the influence of government and both foreign and domestic donors on the digital media use and evaluation capacity of NGOs. The analysis of data collected through interviews with NGO staff in Shanghai and Beijing demonstrated that Chinese NGOs, although they rely on digital media to publicize events, broadcast accomplishments, and deliver services, are less expert in and ascribe relatively less value to the evaluation of their digital communication. The findings of the study suggest that the attention to and organizational capacity for evaluation are influenced by relationships with foreign donors. Based on these findings, it is recommended that Chinese NGOs develop the capacity to measure the offline consequences of their online activity if they are to continue to develop their organizations and demonstrate outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The advent of online media, and particularly social media, has led to scholarly debates about their implications. Authoritarian countries are interesting in this respect because social media might facilitate open and critical debates that are not possible in traditional media. China is arguably the most relevant and interesting case in this respect, because it limits the influx of non-domestic social media communication, has established its own microcosm of social media and tries to closely monitor and control it and censor problematic content. While such censorship is very effective in some instances, however, it fails to shut down all open debates completely. We analyse the pre-eminent Chinese social media platform – Sina Weibo – and present a typology of different kinds of public spheres that exist on this platform in which open and critical debates can occur under specific circumstances: Thematic public spheres include phenomena of common concern, such as environmental pollution or food safety; short-term public spheres emerge after unexpected events; encoded public spheres are deliberate attempts of users to circumvent censorship; local public spheres focus on sub-national phenomena and problems; non-domestic political public spheres exist on political topics from other countries but are often referenced back to China; mobile public spheres exist because many people use Weibo on their smartphones and also have access to deleted content there and meta public spheres are debates about censorship itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Beijing Olympics made visible, through various media practices and events associated with them, a range of different component parts of the constantly and rapidly changing Chinese media landscape. By following the Chinese, and to some degree foreign, media coverage of the Olympics this paper presents a range of clear examples that draw our attention to some of the key ways in which Chinese media work and some of the important changes and developments that are currently taking place in this area of Chinese social life. The paper identifies the more important of these developments treating them under three broad interrelated headings. The first is the relationship of the media to the government and the paper argues that this relationship requires reconceptualisation in ways that avoid the stereotypical polarities of state control and resistance. The second area for discussion relates to the relationship between Chinese and foreign media. I will argue that coverage of Olympics-related events in both Chinese and foreign media reveal important transformations in this relationship. The third issue relates to the rapid growth of new media use in contemporary China. To understand contemporary developments in Chinese media it is impossible to ignore the emergence of new media and new technologies - the Internet, mobile phones, digital television and mobile television in particular. However, the emphasis will not only be on what is new. It is also important to consider how old media habits continue to shape new media agendas and transformations. The paper argues that these developments require us to reconceptualise the Chinese media landscape in ways that break with the established frames of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of a planning document for the 2008 Olympic Games regarding digital communication systems and information services jointly issued by the Beijing, China city government and the Beijing Games organizing committee and posted on the committee's Web site on October 22, 2002. Plans to expedite the installation of wireless and digital communication systems throughout the city are presented, as well as plans for information services at Games facilities.

Focuses on the rise of digital communication in China. Growth of Internet in China from 1997-2001; Average time spent on the Internet by Chinese Internet users; Spatial patterns of Internet development in China; Role played by the Chinese government in the growth of Internet community in the country.