Abstract
While Western foreign correspondence is retreating, Chinese central media and correspondents, resourced by the government’s financial backing for media’s role in public diplomacy, are taking the opportunities to expand overseas bureaus, hire experienced local employees, enhance the quantity and quality of international news reporting, use digital technologies in newsgathering and dissemination, and receive Western-style trainings. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the identities, media cultures, and journalistic practices of Chinese foreign correspondents, as well as the international news output, and media–audience and media–foreign policy relationships. In doing so, we propose a new six-level theoretical model: (1) journalists’ identities; (2) cultures; (3) practices; (4) news output; (5) news dissemination, reception, and audiences’ interactions; and (6) the impacts of international news coverage. Based on semi-structured interviews with Chinese resident journalists over eight years, we argue that the media–audience and media–foreign policy relationships in China have become more interactive, dynamic, and complex.
Highlights
Foreign correspondence, as a profession closely linked to the unprecedented changes in modern journalism, deserves more attention from media scholars
A new framework to study foreign correspondents In building a framework to study the up-to-date status of foreign correspondents, we draw on Stephen Hess’s (2005) three questions essential in understanding journalists – who are the correspondents? How do they work? What do they report? As foreign correspondence is understood to influence the world public opinion and the foreign policy making process, we propose to add a fourth dimension: “What are their reports’ impacts?” On the basis of these four questions, a new framework is proposed below to study the contemporary foreign correspondents
At the level of identities, there are more male than female correspondents who are in their 20s and/or 30s
Summary
As a profession closely linked to the unprecedented changes in modern journalism, deserves more attention from media scholars. Many of the market-oriented media outlets in China have dispatched abroad reporters, the so-called “parachute correspondents”, to cover major international news events in order to sustain and enhance their competitiveness in the domestic market (Zhang 2013) These studies suffer from the lack of an inclusive model that has the power to explain the work and role perceptions which should work in today’s changing media environment marked by digitalization and globalization. Scholars commonly believe foreign news tends to be reported in divergent ways, reflecting the interests and identity of the home nation Such a statement is challenged by recent studies that argue for global conformity driven by forces such as dominance of a small number of international news agencies, the emergence of a transnational journalistic culture and the hegemony of market liberal thought (Curran et al 2015). This model will be applied to the case of China to answer the questions below: Q1: Who are the Chinese foreign correspondents today?
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