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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]

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]

Introduction: Social media infuses modern relationships with vitality and brings a series of information dissemination with subjective consciousness. Studies have indicated that official Chinese media channels are transforming their communication style from didactic hard persuasion to softened emotional management in the digital era. However, previous studies have rarely provided valid empirical evidence for the communicational transformation. The study fills the gap by providing a longitudinal time-series analysis to reveal the pattern of communication of Chinese digital Chinese official media from 2019 to 2022. Method: The study crawler collected 43,259 posts from the People’s Daily’s Weibo account from 2019 to 2021. The study analyzed the textual data with using trained artificial intelligence models. Results: This study explored the practices of the People’s Daily’s Weibo account from 2019 to 2021, COVID-19 is hardly normalized as it is still used as the justification for extraordinary measures in China. This study confirmed that People’s Daily’s Weibo account posts are undergoing softenization transformation, with the use of soft news, positive energy promotion, and the embedding of sentiment. Although the outburst of COVID-19 temporarily increased the media’s use of hard news, it only occur at the initial stage of the pandemic. Emotional posts occupy a nonnegligible amount of the People’s Daily Weibo content. However, the majority of posts are emotionally neutral and contribute to shaping the authoritative image of the party press. Discussion: Overall, the People’s Daily has softened their communication style on digital platforms and used emotional mobilization, distraction, and timely information provision to balance the political logic of building an authoritative media agency and the media logic of constructing audience relevance. [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]

This study builds on the emergence of new gifting practices using e-hongbaos which are monetary gifts transferred between individuals made possible by digital communication platforms. This is an exploratory study on the impact of these innovations on intra-organizational relationships. Three types of intra-organizational relationships are considered: the employee's relationship with the organization, with the team, and with the manager. The findings of the study indicate positive impacts of e-hongbao at all organizational levels. The authors also identify the varying effects of e-hongbao on intra-organizational relationship outcomes depending on the occasion of gifting, as well as the mode, direction, and measure. Specifically, 'group' e-hongbao, a gamified group-gift enabled by the digitalization of gifting, has the strongest influence on intra-organizational relationships. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice in the workplace and also offer future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land transfer is an essential prerequisite for moderate-scale operation. Using the internet realizes the rational allocation of resources and promotes the development of agriculture and rural areas. Based on the data of 8198 farmers surveyed in the 2016 China Labor Dynamics Survey, the conditional mixed estimation method (CMP) was used to analyze how the internet use of rural households affects their land transfer-in. The results showed that: (1) There was a significant negative correlation between internet use and land transfer-in, and the marginal effect was 0.206. (2) Internet use can affect land transfer-in through social networks and the stability of off-farm employment. Among them, social networks have a positive mediating effect, which is 0.026%. The non-agricultural employment stability of the labor force has a negative mediating effect, which is 0.51%. (3) Internet use has no significant heterogeneity in land management scale, income, or suburb status, but there is heterogeneity in the way of surfing the internet. This research can deepen our understanding of the relationship between internet use and land transfer-in, and provide a reference for rural digital construction and land transfer-related policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the smartphone, the production and circulation of digital visual media have become as costless and accessible as audio and text-based communication. It would be challenging to be a contemporary ethnographer without engaging with digital practices which in Japan and China at least, tend towards being highly visual. Digital visual communication is recognised in literature as an effective and accessible form of communication, with an increasing number of studies in the field of digital anthropology, media studies and Internet studies exploring the consequences of digital images on social media. There is a pressing need to understand local forms of visual communication in the digital age, where the visual has become an essential part of daily communication. This article deals particularly with the rise of visual digital communication among older adults in China and Japan. Drawing on 16-month ethnographies conducted simultaneously between 2018 and 2019 in China and Japan, this article contributes to the discussion of visual communication in light of this semiotic shift happening online, which is then contextualised within people's offline lives. The ethnographies in both China and Japan find that, first of all, visual communication via digital media enables more effective and efficient phatic communication and emotion work. In addition, the ethnographies point to a question about 'authenticity' in interpersonal communication. The ethnographies show that in some cases, the deployment of visual communication via the smartphone is not so much about being able to express 'authentic' personal feelings but rather, in being able to effectively establish a digital public façade according to social norms. [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]

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 cruise sector is one of the most characteristic examples of globalised business. This characteristic makes the cruise supply chain (CSC) likely to expose to a variety of risks, such as the geopolitical environment and inclement weather, which requires an urgent need for risk mitigation strategies. A review of the literature revealed that supply chain risk mitigation strategies often remain at a conceptual level, and they mainly focus on a specific risk or a perspective of a specific cruise sector; there is therefore a gap in the absence of practical risk mitigation strategies in the cruise industry from a supply chain perspective. To address the gap, this paper interviewed and analysed opinions of eight types of CSC players. Twenty risk mitigation strategies in the context of a CSC were identified and examined into control and detection, relationship-based strategies, marketing strategies, policy-based strategies, risk transfer and share, and flexibility strategies. A broad picture and a deep understanding of strategies to deal with risks in the CSC were provided. The findings contribute to the literature and practice by linking theoretical strategies to practical strategies and exploring the mitigation strategies with actual practice in the CSC that can be used directly by practitioners and researchers. • This paper identified and explored twenty risk mitigation strategies in the context of a cruise supply chain. • Twenty-two participants from eight types of CSC players were interviewed. • This study explored the mitigation strategies with actual practice in the CSC that can be used directly by practitioners and researchers. • The findings contribute to the literature and practice by linking theoretical strategies to practical strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

China's weibo community numbered more than 300 million users in 2013. This article assesses the rise and influence of microblogs from political, social, and commercial aspects. It examines ways the Chinese government has controlled microblogs, considers newer competing forms of communication, and assesses trends in Chinese digital discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines public discourse surrounding the development and deployment of digital television in China from 1999 to 2004. It analyzes print media constructions of this new media technology against the backdrop of controlled commodification and formation of trans-media groups that define media reform, development and management. The study reveals how these structural changes play a key role in restraining the development of a flexible business environment in which print media can support critical technological development. Inhibiting the media's ability to promote this technological development is a lack of market-oriented experience and knowledge and organizational integration under the current trans-media structure. Accordingly, considerable doubt is cast over the government's broad strategy of media reform, development and management to successfully support the deployment of digital television as the pre-eminent technology in China's drive towards modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Men who have sex with men (MSM) are an important HIV key population in China. However, HIV testing rates among MSM remain suboptimal. Digital crowdsourced media interventions may be a useful tool to reach this marginalized population. We define digital crowdsourced media as using social media, mobile phone applications, Internet, or other digital approaches to disseminate messages developed from crowdsourcing contests. The proposed cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) study aims to assess the effectiveness of a digital crowdsourced intervention to increase HIV testing uptake and decrease risky sexual behaviors among Chinese MSM.Methods: A two-arm, cluster-randomized controlled trial will be implemented in eleven cities (ten clusters) in Shandong Province, China. Targeted study participants will be 250 MSM per arm and 50 participants per cluster. MSM who are 18 years old or above, live in the study city, have not been tested for HIV in the past 3 months, are not living with HIV or have never been tested for HIV, and are willing to provide informed consent will be enrolled. Participants will be recruited through banner advertisements on Blued, the largest gay dating app in China, and in-person at community-based organizations (CBOs). The intervention includes a series of crowdsourced intervention materials (24 images and four short videos about HIV testing and safe sexual behaviors) and HIV self-test services provided by the study team. The intervention was developed through a series of participatory crowdsourcing contests before this study. The self-test kits will be sent to the participants in the intervention group at the 2nd and 3rd follow-ups. Participants will be followed up quarterly during the 12-month period. The primary outcome will be self-reported HIV testing uptake at 12 months. Secondary outcomes will include changes in condomless sex, self-test efficacy, social network engagement, HIV testing social norms, and testing stigma.Discussion: Innovative approaches to HIV testing among marginalized population are urgently needed. Through this cluster randomized controlled trial, we will evaluate the effectiveness of a digital crowdsourced intervention, improving HIV testing uptake among MSM and providing a resource in related public health fields.Trial Registration: ChiCTR1900024350 . Registered on 6 July 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]