The grey area in the practice of online journalism in China

Abstract

Abstract Considerable scholarly discussion, in broad terms at least, has focused on the disruptions that the Internet has delivered to journalistic norms and the changes to perceptions that journalists hold of their role. However, such discussion tends to emphasize the Internet as a globally used form of technology with a singular impact on journalism; it mentions only in passing that its understanding of this concept is mainly based on an Anglo-American model. This article explores Chinese journalists’ ideas about disruption in China. It finds that Chinese journalists use of the Internet falls within the margins of the censorship system, leading to a grey area surrounding the practice of online journalism within which certain specific constraints supposedly enforced by administration law and departmental policies can be broken without punishment. While working in this grey area signals a disruption of journalistic norms in China, the characteristics of this disruption differ from those found in western countries.