Party Media Research Articles

Authoritarian Environmentalism as Reflected in the Journalistic Sourcing of Climate Change Reporting in China

ABSTRACT This study investigates how Chinese news media cover climate change through the lens of authoritarian environmentalism, China’s alternative model of environmental governance. Combining computational methods and manual coding, we analyzed the sourcing patterns of climate change articles across three news media types (party media, financial media, and metropolitan media) from 2013 to 2021. Results showed three features: First, state officials were predominant in all sourcing categories, drowning the voices of experts, non-governmental organizations, and citizens. Second, only a small percentage of sources concerned scientific knowledge, environmental problems, and collective action. Instead, most highlighted climate change campaigns as achievements of China’s leadership. Third, critical opinions were gradually muted over time. These findings indicate that the issue of climate change has been utilized by Chinese news media as a tool to serve the legitimacy of authoritarian governance and promote the image of top leadership, rather than encouraging citizens and stakeholders to participate in environmental actions.

Digital populism in an authoritarian context: A discourse analysis of the legitimization of the Belt and Road Initiative by China’s party media

ABSTRACT This study examines how the Chinese government has adopted authoritarian digital populism to justify its political programs through its official social media sub-accounts. Through discourse analysis, we investigate textual material concerning the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) posted on a representative WeChat account, Xiakedao. We find Xiakedao performing digital populism through stylistic-emotional manipulation to portray the benefits of the BRI to China, BRI countries, and the world, or, put succinctly, to legitimize the BRI. Specifically, in 2014–2016, through mixing informal and formal language, Xiakedao based its legitimization on stirring up a sense of hegemonic superiority by painting it as a strategy capable of significantly advancing China’s interests. Since 2017, Xiakedao has shifted to emphasizing its massive global contribution to stimulate nationalist pride and exploiting a trauma complex to bestow a counter-hegemonic aura on it. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, we argue that Xiakedao has utilized the terms “China” and “BRI” as an empty signifier and a floating signifier, respectively. We unravel its discursive strategies of fixing their meanings and (re)drawing antagonistic frontiers to legitimize the BRI during different periods. The study contributes to theoretically understanding how an authoritarian state legitimizes the same political programs from disparate stances.

The application of network agenda setting model during the COVID-19 pandemic based on latent dirichlet allocation topic modeling.

Based on Network Agenda Setting Model, this study collected 42,516 media reports from Party Media, commercial media, and We Media of China during the COVID-19 pandemic. We trained LDA models for topic clustering through unsupervised machine learning. Questionnaires (N = 470) and social network analysis methods were then applied to examine the correlation between media network agendas and public network agendas in terms of explicit and implicit topics. The study found that the media reports could be classified into 14 topics by the LDA topic modeling, and the three types of media presented homogeneity in the topics of their reports, yet had their own characteristics; there was a significant correlation between the media network agenda and the public network agenda, and the We Media reports had the most prominent effect on the public network agenda; the correlation between the media agenda and the implicit public agenda was higher than that of the explicit public agenda. Overall, findings showed a significant correlation between network agendas among different media.

Broadcasting as an Instrument of Public Diplomacy in the PRC in the Era of COVID-19 (on the Example of the Xinhua News Agency)

Over the past few years, the PRC has been actively striving for world leadership, but China's strengthening of its positions in the international arena is hindered by the fear of the «Chinese threat» and the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to establish itself as a peaceful and responsible participant in international relations, China has used the soft power of public diplomacy. The «soft power» of public diplomacy aims at dialogue with foreign public opinion, the establishment of trusting relationships that are the key to international cooperation, promotion of national interests and values that is best represented by international media. One of the instruments of public diplomacy and Chinese «soft» influence has become the Xinhua News Agency, which broadcasts to an international audience. Xinhua News Agency is today the leading provider of online news content in the PRC. In the course of the research, the author concluded that the activities of Xinhua are not able to improve significantly the positive image of the country. Positioning itself as a party media that performs the ideological and informational functions of a state news agency, Xinhua is not only promotes content about the achievements of the PRC in the political, social and cultural spheres, but also discredits those political forces in the West that China views as hostile. Under these conditions, public diplomacy will certainly turn into ordinary state propaganda, which negatively affects China's international image.

The Development of Data Journalism in China: Influences, Motivations and Practice

Using semi-structured interviews with Chinese data journalists across party and commercial media, this article assesses the structure and practice of data journalism in China. In doing this, it responds to calls for further studies of data journalism in non-western contexts. It finds that Chinese data journalists face some of the same pressures and challenges that have been documented in other countries, including limited access to data and the constraints imposed by the screen-size of smartphones. However, these were often exacerbated through a combination of social and systemic factors - to the point that their impact is qualitatively and quantitatively different. Simultaneously, however, we find that in some cases Chinese data journalists, at least amongst party media, were protected from pressures such as audience demand, and encouraged to focus on state-of-the-art work. We conclude that what has emerged is a form of ‘data journalism with Chinese characteristics’, and that these characteristics emerge from the interactions between systemic, newsroom and social factors.

The Construction and Performance Measurement of Government Wechat Content Under the Fusionmedia

As a party media who disseminating important positions of national ideology, national spirit and fundamental policy, in the face of marginalized WeChat official account, how to use WeChat public number to promote its influence and discourse power and build more accepted articles is the focus of this paper. This article compares and analyzes the contents of the three WeChat official account of "Guangzhou daily", "Qingdao daily" and "grand view news". Through combing the construction and performance of news content in WeChat's dissemination, this paper explores the changes of news media characteristics caused by social media's involvement in traditional media, with a view to exploring the content construction and influence factors of government WeChat's pushing articles.

Intelligence for Sale: The ‘Party–Public Sentiment, Inc.’ and Stability Maintenance in China

Chinese journalism became more professional during the reform era, escaping the old propaganda model under Party control. However, of late a new industry has emerged. Based on interviews, fieldwork, and other material, this article focuses on the Guangzhou provincial party media group and its affiliated “public sentiment” (yuqing) business sector, which arose to cope with the decline in print media by developing a clientelist relationship to Party institutions. The group takes preemptive measures to maintain regime stability by collecting information to help the Party manage crises and troubleshooting potential dangers to the state, representing an innovative paradigm for maintaining stability.

Does the Chinese government engage in online public debates? A case study of political communications around the building of an oil refinery in Kunming, China

This article discusses how the Chinese government engages in online political debates and whether it adjusts its policies to respond to public concerns raised in such debates. This research explores government actions and discourses by using debates between Chinese net-users and the government around the building of an oil refinery in Kunming as a case study. It finds that the government used traditional party newspapers and social media as platforms to express its opinions and to interact with net-users regarding the oil refinery. The reports published in party media and government social media posts acknowledged the government’s awareness of the public’s concerns, demonstrated their reaction to the concerns and reinforced the government’s agenda. However, although the government engaged with the debate, it did not change its decisions about the oil refinery to respond to the public concerns raised online.

The Chinese Media Framing of the 2015’s Tianjin Explosion

This study compares the framing’s patterns of the Chinese traditional media and social media in reporting the incident of Tianjin explosion in 2015. Applying frame-building and framesetting theory, this study explores the interplay between online opinions available on Weibo and the Chinese newspapers in different phases of the crisis event. Moreover, it examines the differences in framing the incident between the state-owned party media and the commercial media. The results reveal that various frames applied by different Chinese media in reporting the incident. A complex interplay between Weibo, the Communist-owned and the commercial happened, including framebuilding, frame-setting, and frame-interacting effects.

Thought Work Contested: Ideology and Journalism Education in China

AbstractThis article examines the dynamic evolution of China's ideology work through the prism of journalism education. Official sensitivity about both student activism and the media makes journalism education a critical sector for observing how the Party attempts to instil ideology. The article interrogates the process of negotiation of official ideology among authorities, educators and students at elite journalism schools. It demonstrates that alongside state-sanctioned media commercialization and globalization, official influence still looms large in journalism training. Ideological teachings continue to occupy a core place in the curricula, and the authorities deploy a mix of structural oversight, ad hoc surveillance and coercion to keep the educators in check. The effects of the official ideology work, however, are ambivalent, as educators and students engage in the active reinterpretation of the Party's media principles. While these practices do not directly undermine the Party's legitimacy, they demonstrate that official ideology has merely constructed what Yurchak terms a “hegemony of form,” highlighting a degree of vulnerability in China's mode of adaptive authoritarianism.

South Africa: how the ANC wins elections

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Note on contributorMartin Plaut is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. In this briefing, he draws on the two months he spent working at the headquarters of the Democratic Alliance in the party's media unit, in the run-up to the May 2014 election.

Framing Chinese civil actors: earthquake relief and unintended consequences for media coverage

In 2008, the participation of NGOs in disaster relief during and after a severe earthquake attracted public attention and extensive media coverage. This study analyzes how mainstream Chinese news media framed NGOs in 2008. The findings suggest that after the earthquake, not only did the amount of media coverage about Chinese NGOs increase but also the patterns of coverage changed. Furthermore, the Chinese party media and market-oriented media demonstrated different coverage patterns. The party media tended to frame the contributions of NGOs as dependent on governmental leadership and downplayed their role in disaster relief to one of support. The market-oriented media increasingly covered NGOs from multiple angles and depicted them as service providers, decision makers, and resource mobilizers.

Coverage of Governor Races Balanced While Senate Races Reflect Some Bias

A comparision of gubernatorial and U.S. Senate race coverage in eight states finds that gubernatorial races were reported in a more evenhanded manner, while coverage of U.S. Senate races reflected a Democratic Party media bias.

'Playing by the Book': Success and Failure in John Major's Approach to Prime Ministerial Media Management

Both the Thatcher and the Blair governments have been accused of politicising the Prime Ministerial press operation. This article asks whether it is possible to maintain a constitutionally clearer demarcation between the expressly political and the strictly governmental, and at the same time still pursue a successful communications strategy. Based on semi-structured interviews with both national journalists and government and party media managers, it uses the example of the Major governments to illustrate that it is not. But it also argues, using the same example, that, unless we insist on a simplistic and outmoded conception of 'prime ministerial power', there is no simple correlation between, on the one hand, success and professionalised political control and, on the other, failure and what is termed here a 'civil service' approach.

Orchestrating the Family-Nation Chorus: Chinese Media and Nationalism in the Hong Kong Handover

Media discourses on events of global significance tend to be seen through the ideological lenses of nationalism, especially in a country such as China in which Communist ideology has been losing its relevance. In this article we examine how China's party-state mobilized a host of political and market forces to orchestrate media coverage of the handover of Hong Kong as spectacular national festivities in a highly reductive and essentialized way. The party media constructed family-nation as a master frame to weave a "news net," centering on various themes of nationalism that transcend ethnic and geographical differences and that bolster the legitimation of the Communist party. Thus, the media link 2 different modes of interpretation by placing a "local" report of the handover in the macrocontext of modern Chinese history. Both the time dimension (historical script) and spatial dimension (social configurations) of this news net reinforce official ideology while accommodating the media's commercial interests. This case study has general implications for the state corporatist practice.

The Media & the Unmaking of a Prime Minister

Six weeks before the 1993 Canadian election the country seemed fairly infatuated with the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, Kim Campbell, who had inherited the prime ministership from Brian Mulroney. By the time the election was over, the party, which had commanded 153 seats in the 294-seat House of Commons, held only two, had lost its status as an official party and its leader had been trounced in her own electorate. This article considers the role the media played in the succession of events that led to Campbell's demise, and the failure of her party's media strategies to effectively manage the election campaign. It details the setting for the election, Campbell's meteoric rise in the party, her candidacy for the prime ministership, the election campaign, and her eventual fall.