Native Advertising in the Chinese Press: Implications of State Subsidies for Journalist Professional Self-Identification

Abstract

This article reports a case study on how government-sponsored native advertising influences everyday practices of journalism and journalists’ role identification in China. The process is the result of the state attempt to centralize control in response to digitalization that is, changing the press landscape. Building on social identity theory, we undertook an ethnographic fieldwork in a local party newspaper to observe how news organization and journalists make sense of the changes. Analyses show that, in addition to gains in material resources, the politics of native advertising also symbolizes new salient values for journalists whose professional identity swings between idealism and realism. The complexity of the phenomena under study reveals a plurality of meanings of the interplay among native advertising, journalistic routines, and the ever-shifting state-media relationship in China.