{"title":"The de-professionalization of Chinese journalism","authors":"Haiyan Wang, Jing Meng","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2093237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2093237","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper content analyzed 1584 news samples from 10 newspapers in China in 2012 and 2018 with the aim of exploring how the style of news has changed concurrent with the rapid expansion of digital media. The results showed that newspaper journalism in China is currently undergoing de-professionalization. Among six conventional indicators of professional news, three (brevity, immediacy, plurality of sources) are in significant decline, and the other three (adherence to conventional news structure, objectivity, and public orientation) are in partial decline. Such a shift can be interpreted as a decline in news quality, or alternatively, the formation of new journalism.","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"18 1","pages":"1 - 18"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86638270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constructing patriotic networked publics: conservative YouTube influencers in Hong Kong","authors":"Hiu-Fung Chung, Edmund W. Cheng","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2093238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2093238","url":null,"abstract":"abstract After the anti-extradition bill movement from summer 2019 until spring 2020, an upsurge in pro-government YouTube channels dramatically transformed the Hong Kong digital sphere. Using social media data and qualitative textual analysis, this commentary article examines the formation of patriotic networked publics by analyzing their participants, environments, and discursive practices in post-crisis Hong Kong. While the digital space in Hong Kong remains largely heterogeneous, the emergence of pro-government YouTube influencers has not only reshaped but also arguably reinforced the fragmented and polarized media landscape in Hong Kong. These influencers often utilize a mixture of nationalistic, conservative, and populist orientations, allowing them to demonstrate regime allegiance, advocate law and order, and frame themselves as the voice of the people through the strategic use of journalistic language. Parallel to the content providers of the alternative media outlets of the pro-democracy camp, these newer voices identified a niche and capitalized on the opportunity for fame. Their intervention unsettles the existing dynamics of the mediated public sphere, which has long been dominated by professional journalism and liberal discourse.","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"64 1","pages":"415 - 430"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89788776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Telegram and the anti-ELAB movement in Hong Kong: reshaping networked social movements through symbolic participation and spontaneous interaction","authors":"C. Su, M. Chan, Sejin Paik","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2092167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2092167","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Networked social movements can create autonomous communication networks supported by digital media and are often viewed as leaderless and decentralized under the logic of connective action. Nevertheless, a certain level of leadership may exist and is informally distributed among movement participants. This essay examines protest activities in networked social movements and discusses how loosely connected protests can be collectively mobilized and organized utilizing social media affordances through two forms of participatory activity: symbolic participation and spontaneous interaction. Specifically, this essay investigates the messages and chats of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement (anti-ELAB) in Hong Kong on the public channels of the social media platform Telegram. An analysis of two million anti-ELAB messages revealed two important protest activities conducted to organize and mobilize social movements. First, Telegram users, although they varied in their usage of the platform’s technology, engaged with subscription models to navigate the symbolic and tactical repertoires of diverse user groups and to organize theme-oriented actions by creating informative, supportive/backup, and cooperative networks. Second, they employed hashtags to promote and organize spontaneous interactions to rally and sustain autonomous individuals. Furthermore, geolocation hashtags allowed for engagement with others by scaffolding real-time and spontaneous communications that transcended space and time. This essay provides insights into how participants in networked social movements use digital media to mobilize, organize, publicize, and participate in protests.","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"24 1","pages":"431 - 448"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83239189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Communication and community in the new media age","authors":"Yanhong Hu","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2093435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2093435","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"114 1","pages":"484 - 487"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89309015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anti-extradition law and beyond: the role of media and communication in the crisis of Hong Kong—introduction to the special issue","authors":"C. Chan","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2093428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2093428","url":null,"abstract":"The year 2019 witnessed an unprecedented paradigm shift to post-handover Hong Kong. On a political level, massive, enduring, and violent street conflicts surrounding the unpopular extradition law that enables transferring fugitives from Hong Kong to jurisdictions with no extradition agreements with the city, including mainland China, followed by the demand for political reforms and disbanding the Hong Kong police, triggered powerful responses from the state power of China. China introduced the National Security Law to Hong Kong in June 2020, which effectively keeps defiant voices out of the media and renders civil society silent. The election methods for the Chief Executive and Legislative Council were also modified to ensure that the government of Hong Kong would remain safely in the hands of “patriots.” Socially, Hong Kong has witnessed multiple waves of emigration since those eventful days in 2019. For those who remain, prosecutions of those arrested in the protests and related activities have slowly unfolded, capturing citywide and even global attention. Internationally, exchanges of unpleasant diplomatic rhetoric between China and other nations over Hong Kong have become frequent. Overseas media commentaries have discussed the future of the city as its once well-known social freedoms are curbed (see, e.g., McLaughlin, 2021; Yip, 2021). State-society relations and the political economy of Hong Kong are unequivocally facing a highly unpredictable process of change. While it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the paradigm shift in post-handover Hong Kong, the anti-extradition law amendment bill (AntiELAB) protests in 2019 deserve a proper review. The most pressing question is also the most basic: what happened? Millions of people packed the streets, clashed with the police, used a wide range of social media channels","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"39 1","pages":"323 - 331"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90471300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Engaging Social Media in China","authors":"Jack Lipei Tang","doi":"10.14321/j.ctv1h9dg1n","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14321/j.ctv1h9dg1n","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"103 1","pages":"481 - 483"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88670424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fandom nationalism in China: the effects of idol adoration and online fan community engagement","authors":"Xining Liao, A. Koo, Hernando Rojas","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2088587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2088587","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While many fandom activism studies see fans as a potential force to challenge the existing political order, participants of fan groups in China have been transformed into nationalists and government supporters. Utilizing online survey data collected in 2020, we established an initial statistical model to test the mobilizing mechanisms underlying Chinese fandom nationalism. Our findings suggest that, among individuals who participate in online fan communities, stronger affection toward idols is associated with stronger nationalist sentiments and eventually leads to more frequent online pro-government expression. However, among individuals who do not engage with online fan communities, such indirect effects are non-significant. Our findings further show that online fan communities (饭圈) play a significant role in mobilizing fandom nationalism in China.","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"7 1","pages":"558 - 581"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84113825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legitimizing viewing publics through nostalgia: the mediated tropicality of Singapore’s ‘kampong spirit’","authors":"John Lowe, G. Wong","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2088586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2088586","url":null,"abstract":"abstract Using two recent films—Long Long Time Ago and Diam Diam Era—this article analyses how Jack Neo communicates a sanitized nostalgia for the “kampong spirit” through his films, which calibrates willing acceptance of the Singapore government’s authoritarian rule. In supporting the state’s presentist historiography, the films of Jack Neo induce a depoliticization of unpleasant memories arising from the ruling party’s unpopular housing and language policies of the past. The nostalgia mediated in both films is aligned towards an imaginary geography and mental map of a First World nation, which exhorts Singaporeans to disavow “the tropics” by nostalgizing the state’s modernization efforts. The cumulative thrust of an evidence-free and presentist nostalgia ostensible in both films, this work argues, satisfies the paternalistic state’s obsession with the public legitimation of its ruling mandate.","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"55 1","pages":"19 - 34"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89118038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The making of a livestreaming village: algorithmic practices and place-making in North Xiazhu","authors":"C. Lai","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2085126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2085126","url":null,"abstract":"abstract This case study of North Xiazhu Village in China examines how algorithmic practices and the construction of physical and symbolical places mutually shape and constitute one another in the context of a new phenomenon: livestreaming villages. Such villages have emerged as a result of the widespread popularity of social media featuring algorithmic recommendations. Algorithmic practices—defined as users’ individual or collective strategies and actions in response to the algorithmic mechanisms that distribute traffic—have become key variables in the place-making of livestreaming villages. By analyzing how algorithmic practices are formed, implemented, shared, organized, and interwoven with place-making, this paper seeks to examine how the traditional village of North Xiazhu has transformed into a livestreaming village. Meanwhile, this paper seeks to broaden our understanding of the social opportunities facilitated by new technologies, recognizing the constitutive role of algorithmic practices in the making of places and communities.","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"68 1","pages":"489 - 511"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85734032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When virtual makeovers become “real”: how SNS interactions drive selfie editing and cosmetic surgery","authors":"Fangcao Lu, Stella C. Chia","doi":"10.1080/17544750.2022.2085127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2022.2085127","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The behavior of posting edited selfies on social networking sites (SNSs) is becoming increasingly popular among young women. The current study takes the initiative to investigate the determinants of this behavior using Goffman’s self-presentation theory. A survey of 600 young women in China was conducted. The results indicate that young women’s behaviors of posting edited selfies on SNSs are affected by their perceptions of audience characteristics and social media metrics. The behavior is also found to be associated with the intention to undergo cosmetic surgery. These findings suggest that people translate their interactional behaviors from the virtual space into offline behaviors, despite the many associated risks. Theoretically, the present study extends the self-presentation theory to the context of SNSs, where audiences are physically absent and media affordances offer cues about social interactions.","PeriodicalId":46367,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Journal of Communication","volume":"10 1","pages":"73 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90828058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}