Digital Journalism in China 9781032162157, 9781032162171, 9781003247579

Table of contents :
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
1 Introduction: Chinese Digital Journalism: Disruptive or Sustainable?
2 Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era: Knowledge, Value, and Conceptual Framework
3 Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism in China: A Literature Review, 1961–2021
4 (Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China: A Qualitative Study of Xinhua News Agency’s Online Media Content
5 The Tabloidization of Party Media: How the People’s Daily and CCTV Adapt to Social Media
6 Socialization and Control in the Digital Newsroom in China
7 The Platformization of Chinese Official Media: The Case of Newspaper X
8 ‘Giving Up’ vs. ‘Holding On’: A Comparative Case Study of Chinese and Australian Newspaper Publishers’ Approaches to Their Print Editions in Their Digital Transition
9 Classroom vs. Newsroom: Journalism Education and Practice in the Digital Age
10 Conclusion: Retrospect and Prospect
Index

Citation preview

“Students and scholars of digital journalism will discover an array of perceptive insights into its evolution in China on these pages. Taken together, the chapters make an admirable contribution to theory-building, bringing to bear rich, evidence-led studies to extend fresh thinking about current challenges and future prospects. Familiar assumptions about Chinese journalism are certain to be disrupted to advantage.” Stuart Allan Professor of Journalism and Communication, Cardiff Universit , UK

Digital Journalism in China

This edited collection brings together journalism scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and Australia to address a variety of pressing issues and challenges facing digital journalism in China today. While China shares certain affinitie with the digital disruption of media in other settings, its experience and articulation of change is ultimately unique. This volume explores the implications of digital media technologies for journalists’ professional practice, news users’ consumption and engagement with news, as well as the shifting institutional, organizational, and financial structures of news media. Drawing on case studies and quantitative and qualitative approaches, contributors address questions concerning: whether China is witnessing ‘disruptive’ or ‘sustainable’ journalism; if, and in what ways, digital technologies may disrupt journalism; and whether Chinese digital journalism converges with or diverges from Western experiences of digital journalism. Digital Journalism in China is an important addition to the literature on digital journalism, comparative media analysis, the Chinese Communist Party’s social media strategies, tabloidization trends, and the conflict between newsroom and classroom in journalism education, and will be of interest to advanced students, scholars, and practitioners alike. Shixin Ivy Zhang is Associate Professor in Journalism Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo (China)

Disruptions: Studies in Digital Journalism Series editor: Bob Franklin

Disruptions refers to the radical changes provoked by the affordances of digital technologies that occur at a pace and on a scale that disrupts settled understandings and traditional ways of creating value, interacting and communicating both socially and professionally. The consequences for digital journalism involve far reaching changes to business models, professional practices, roles, ethics, products and even challenges to the accepted defin tions and understandings of journalism. For Digital Journalism Studies, the field of academic inquiry which explores and examines digital journalism, disruption results in paradigmatic and tectonic shifts in scholarly concerns. It prompts reconsideration of research methods, theoretical analyses and responses (oppositional and consensual) to such changes, which have been described as being akin to ‘a moment of mind-blowing uncertainty’. Routledge’s book series, Disruptions: Studies in Digital Journalism, seeks to capture, examine and analyse these moments of exciting and explosive professional and scholarly innovation which characterize developments in the day-to-day practice of journalism in an age of digital media, and which are articulated in the newly emerging academic discipline of Digital Journalism Studies. Journalism Between Disruption and Resilience Reflections on the Norwegian Experience Birgit Røe Mathisen Digital-Native News and the Remaking of Latin American Mainstream and Alternative Journalism Summer Harlow For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Disruptions/book-series/DISRUPTDIGJOUR

Digital Journalism in China Edited by Shixin Ivy Zhang

First published 2022 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Shixin Ivy Zhang; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Shixin Ivy Zhang to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-16215-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-16217-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-24757-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors 1 Introduction: Chinese Digital Journalism: Disruptive or Sustainable?

ix x xi

1

SHIXIN IVY ZHANG AND JING MENG

2 Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era: Knowledge, Value, and Conceptual Framework

8

JIANG CHANG AND RUNZE DING

3 Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism in China: A Literature Review, 1961–2021

23

HAIYAN WANG AND LIN WU

4 (Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China: A Qualitative Study of Xinhua News Agency’s Online Media Content

36

XIN XIN

5 The Tabloidization of Party Media: How the People’s Daily and CCTV Adapt to Social Media KECHENG FANG

48

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Contents

6 Socialization and Control in the Digital Newsroom in China

61

DAN WANG

 7  The Platformization of Chinese Official Media: The  Case of Newspaper X

74

LUMING ZHAO AND JIAXI PENG

8 ‘Giving Up’ vs. ‘Holding On’: A Comparative Case Study of Chinese and Australian Newspaper Publishers’ Approaches to Their Print Editions in Their Digital Transition

86

CHENGJU HUANG

9 Classroom vs. Newsroom: Journalism Education and Practice in the Digital Age

99

STEVE ZHONGSHI GUO AND DAN WANG

10 Conclusion: Retrospect and Prospect

113

SHIXIN IVY ZHANG AND JING MENG

Index

118

Figures

2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 7.1

A conceptual framework of digital journalism studies. Publication trends of Chinese literature. Distribution of research subjects. Top 15 keywords in Chinese literature. The platformization of Chinese official media A two-way effect. 9.1 A field view of journalism education and journalism practice. 10.1 Trajectory of disruptive journalism in China adapted from disruption theory.

20 24 25 26 83 104 114

Tables

2.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6

The Delphi Questionnaire Predictors of online content virality Hierarchical regression model predicting article popularity Editorial interventions on WeChat by source and topic, September 2018 to January 2019 Number of pages per issue Number of news reports (excluding business and sports news) Critical and in-depth/investigative reports in relation to domestic issues Commentaries (including editorials)/letters to the editor Other contents Advertisements and retail/subscription prices

12 51 53 68 90 90 91 92 93 93

Contributors

Jiang Chang is a distinguished professor of media and communication studies at Shenzhen University, China. He is one of the leading researchers in China’s journalism and media studies, having published widely in English, Chinese, and French. He’s currently focusing on the new media ecosystems cultivated by the digital media logic, and the relationship between digital media and countercultural movements in contemporary China. Runze Ding is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Media and Communication, Shenzhen University. Kecheng Fang, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Director of the MA in Journalism program at the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include journalism, political communication, and digital media. He received his PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining academia, he worked as a political journalist at the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly. His work has appeared in New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, China Quarterly, and Journal of Contemporary China, among others. Steve Zhongshi Guo is a professor in the Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests include news production, public opinion, and media effects. Chengju Huang, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia. His research interests include Asian/Chinese media studies, international communication, and comparative media systems. His work has appeared in Journal of Communication, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Journalism Studies, The International Communication Gazette, and Global Media Journal.

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Contributors

Jing Meng, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Media Studies with Peking University HSBC Business School. Her research interests reside in digital journalism, visual culture and cultural production under the circumstances of platformization and new digital technology. She has published with journals including Chinese Journal of Communication, Asian Journal of Communication, Media, Culture and Society, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a monograph entitled Fragmented Memories and Nostalgic Screening of the Cultural Revolution (2020) with Hong Kong University Press. Jiaxi Peng is Associate Professor, Distinguished Research Fellow at Chengdu University. His research interest areas are media psychology and occupational mental health. He has authored several books and peerreviewed journals articles. He also serves as Associate Editor for Psychological Reports, Frontiers in Psychology. Dan Wang, PhD, is a lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her doctoral dissertation was about how a Communist Party newspaper organization responded to the impact of digital media. Her main research interest lies in reconciling macro political economy with micro-sociological details. Haiyan Wang, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Macau. Her main research interests lie in journalism studies and women in media. Lin Wu is a graduate student in the School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, China. She is currently working on a study of nationalism in the digital era in China. Xin Xin, PhD, is a reader in international communications with a special focus on China. She was an RCUK Fellow (2006–2011) and a UK/ China Fellow for Excellence (2008–2009), studying China’s soft power project, media and social transformations, and politics. Her work has appeared in a number of peer-reviewed journals, such as Media, Culture and Society, Global Media and Communication, and TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, and several edited volumes. She is the author of the monograph How the Market Is Changing China’s News: The Case of Xinhua News Agency (2012). Her forthcoming book is about China’s soft power. Shixin Ivy Zhang, PhD, is Associate Professor in Journalism Studies at the School of International Communications, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China. She specializes in journalism studies, media and conflict, media globalization, and media management. She is the author of

Contributors

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three research monographs: Impact of Globalization on the Local Press in China (2014), Chinese War Correspondents: Covering Wars and Conflicts in the 21st Century (2016), and Media and Conflict in the Social Media Era in China (2020). Her articles have appeared in a number of international peer-reviewed journals, such as Journalism, Journalism Studies, Digital Journalism, Media, War and Conflic , Chinese Journal of Communication, Asian Journal of Communication, and Journal of Mass Media Ethics. Luming Zhao is a postgraduate student in the communication and media program of Peking University and lives in Shenzhen. His research interests are digital journalism and visual communication. He is also a data journalist in China. His works have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Convergence, Social Behavior, and Personality.

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Introduction Chinese Digital Journalism: Disruptive or Sustainable? Shixin Ivy Zhang and Jing Meng

We live in a world of ‘digital disruptions’. In the context of journalism, the word ‘disruption’ refers to the substantial changes that have occurred in journalistic values, trajectories, and practices across the domains of news production, distribution, consumption, and business models. In an age of social media and platforms, how to define ‘journalism’, ‘digital journalism’, and ‘digital journalist’ has been widely debated (see Chapters 2 and 3). In one sense at least, there has been little new here since distinguished commentator John Pavlik claimed that ‘Journalism has always been shaped by technology’ (Pavlik, 2000, p. 229, cited in Dörr, 2016). Disruptive technologies have triggered digital transformations in the field of journalism, featuring a ‘material turn’ (e.g., mobile social media, mobile news) (Sheller, 2015), a ‘quantitative turn’ (e.g., data, algorithms, ‘robot’ and automated journalism) (Dörr, 2016), a ‘hybrid turn’ (Chadwick, 2013; Witschge et al., 2019; Reese, 2021), and a ‘spatial turn’ (Reese, 2016). With the disruptive and innovative impact of digital networked journalism, news media around the world have engaged in digital adaptation (Pavlik, 2022). Digital journalism has offered an increasingly fertile terrain for academic research over the past decade, although initial uses of the term ‘digital journalism’ can be traced to the early 1960s (see Chapter 3). Since its launch in 2013, the journal Digital Journalism has provided a forum to engage and enrich critical discussion and analysis of the intersections of technology and journalism. But in the context of booming article- and book-length publications, the editors of Digital Journalism argue that, ‘Anglo-American scholarship continues its dominance because of its dominance’ (Tandoc et al., 2020). To counter this power imbalance, findings and approaches emerging from research conducted in non-Western contexts or the Global South are essential, and always welcome, to construct a journalism scholarship which is more inclusive, diverse, and intersectional (Rao, 2019; Tandoc et al., 2020). In China, while transitions in digital journalism share some similarities with Western developments, ‘contextual factors have contributed to DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-1

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a specific trajectory and practices that are particular to China’ (Wright & Nolan, 2021). Consequently, while China, like all independent nation states, shares certain affinitie with the digital disruption of media apparent in other settings, its experience and articulation of change is ultimately unique. In recent years there has been an increasing number of publications devoted to digital journalism in China, but existing literatures with their distinctive foci and perspectives are disparate and scattered in journals and books. Hence, one function of this collection is to show interconnections and commonalities alongside differences. Forming part of the Routledge series Disruptions: Studies in Digital Journalism, this collection of essays focuses on studying changes and developments within digital journalism in China. We bring together established and emerging scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and Australia to address an array of pressing issues and challenges. The different essays explore the implications of digital media technologies for journalists’ professional practice, news users’ consumption and engagement with news, as well as the shifting institutional, organizational, and financial structures of news media. The political, economic, professional, and technological forces underpinning the digital disruptions are examined within the particular context of mainland China. This edited volume also aims to facilitate coherence in current academic research about contemporary journalism studies in China. To this end, we draw on the theory of disruptive innovation and address questions concerning: (1) whether China is witnessing ‘disruptive’ or ‘sustainable’ journalism; (2) if, and in what ways, digital technologies may disrupt journalism; and (3) whether Chinese digital journalism converges with or diverges from Western experiences of digital journalism. To explain how industries adapt to disruptive technologies, including media industries and news organizations, the theory of disruptive innovation (abbreviated to disruption theory) was initially proposed by Bower and Christensen (1995) but revisited by Christensen and colleagues (2015). Disruption theory argues that: New entrants to a field establish a foothold at the low end and move up the value network – eating away at the customer base of incumbents – by using a scalable advantage and typically entering the market with a lower-margin profit formula. (Christensen et al. 2012) In 2013, Harvard professor Christensen discussed innovation and its impact on journalism at a forum hosted by the Nieman Foundation. He claimed that disruption theory would help to predict who will likely win these battles

Introduction 3 of industrial and technological innovation. If the innovation is disruptive, ‘entrants will win’; and this is happening in journalism (Kilat, 2013). Indeed, disruption is taking place in the news industry with new entrants – the socalled disruptors like HuffPost (previously titled Huffingto Post prior to April 2017), and BuzzFeed (2006) in the United States along with Toutiao (founded 2012) and WeChat (2011) in China, winning audiences, revenues, and market share from incumbents (legacy media). In consequence, journalism has shifted from being a ‘once integrated, closed workflow’ to ‘a disintegrated and open process’ (Christensen et al., 2012). In this regard, disruption theory offers an engaging and provocative model for a discussion of contemporary journalism. As Christensen and his colleagues observe: The incumbents [legacy media] stay the course on content, competing along the traditional definiti n of ‘quality’. Once established at the market’s low end, the disruptors – by producing low-cost, personalized and, increasingly, original content – move into the space previously held by the incumbents . . . It is not until the disruption is in its final stages that it truly erodes the position of the incumbents. (Christensen et al., 2012) Despite its limitations, disruption theory has been widely used in digital journalism studies because of its explanatory and predictive power. Ferrucci and Perreault (2021), for example, study how digital journalists perceive the impact of technological innovation on practice and conclude that journalists often understand innovation as market-driven and consequently resist these technological developments because of ‘quality’ concerns. They conclude that the disruption model provides a distinct window onto how the field of journalism treats innovation (2021). Similarly, Gynnild (2014) argues that robot eyewitnessing through drone technology exemplifies a disruptive journalism innovation, while Carlson (2015) focuses on ‘automated journalism’ and argues that ‘good enough’ news invokes the spectre of disruption in disruption theory. He notes that news automation commodifies news discourse, and automated journalism has the potential to alter news production and reception. Last but not least, while studying the source-reporter relationship in the United States, Wasserman (2017) doesn’t invoke disruption theory but coins the term ‘disruptive sources’ to refer to the alternative informants in the WikiLeaks era who often disclose information that undermines the credibility of authoritative informants, but receive less protection. In this book, we tend to use ‘disruption’ as a metaphor to study changes (or digital transformation) in digital journalism and digital journalism studies in China today. Drawing on distinctions of ‘disruptive’ and ‘sustaining’ innovations in disruption theory (Christensen et al., 2015),1 we adopt the

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term ‘disruptive journalism’ to refer to the scenario in which digital media technologies disrupt existing conceptions of journalism and contribute to the creation of new markets and value networks (Gynnild, 2014); while ‘sustainable journalism’ signals the legacy media outlets that adopt new technologies to produce (or make better) quality news content, to reach and engage a wider audience, to maintain their core competence (journalistic norms and values), thereby sustaining or increasing their value (credibility) and market share. Contributors also seek to make methodological and empirical contributions to digital journalism scholarship through the lens of China by drawing upon various quantitative and qualitative research approaches, including the (curiously neglected but fascinating) Delphic method, wide-ranging literature reviews, case studies, ethnography, comparative analysis, and semi-structured interviews. Thematic topics encompass definitions of digital journalism, Party media digital (social media) strategies and growing trends towards tabloidization, changing practices in digital newsrooms, platformization, business models, and the conflict between the newsroom and the classroom in journalism education. Selected, illustrative cases of particular trends include Xinhua, CCTV (China Central Television Station), People’s Daily, Pengpai (ThePaper.cn), as well as a comparative study of the West China City News, based in Chengdu, and The Age, based in Melbourne, Australia. Social media platforms and digital rivalries have brought new actors, as well as disruptions, to journalism. In China, Weibo (China’s version of Twitter), the WeChat account (another major social media platform in China), and newly rising, AI-driven news aggregators such as Toutiao (meaning ‘headlines’) and video-sharing platforms such as Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) have become major channels for news distribution and consumption, generating both legitimacy and financial crises for legacy media. Moreover, Chinese news media organizations are mostly state-owned, organized, and operated and can be broadly divided into Party media and marketoriented media. However, media and news organizations display a variety and range which cannot be captured by this broad division between a politically oriented Party press and a market-oriented commercial press (Wang et al., 2017). In the face of digital and technological disruptions, marketoriented media outlets, such as Caixin, have employed similar strategies as their counterparts in the West by implementing digital transformation and the paid subscription model to safeguard quality journalism and revenues. In 2021, Caixin’s paid subscribers exceeded 700,000 and were ranked 10th in the 2021 Global Digital Subscription Snapshot (Caixin, 2021). State-owned legacy media in China, on the other hand, have adopted different approaches to digital disruption. Media convergence, initiated by the

Introduction 5 state, has been a key theme of Chinese journalism in the face of digital disruptions, which implies that the state has been a driving force behind such digital transformation, or what scholars have neologized as a ‘state-preneurship’ model (Fang & Repnikova, 2021). Unlike its Western counterparts that face both economic and legitimacy crises, Chinese news media, Party media at the central level in particular, receive both economic subsidies and policy leverage to reconnect with their audience. Therefore, regaining and reasserting influence on online public opinion, in the face of competition from its digital native rivals, has been a major objective for traditional news media and journalism in China. Journalistic culture in China, of course, has been nurtured in different contexts to the West. ‘Revolution’ and ‘development’ have been the two key motifs throughout the history of modern China, and ‘newspapers by politicians’ and ‘newspapers by the mass’ have historically been widely adopted in Chinese journalism. The questioning of some of the traditional norms and values of Western journalism like ‘objectivity’ has given rise to alternative practices and ideas of journalism in China, such as the recently proposed term ‘constructive journalism’ that emphasizes positive and problem-oriented reporting (Tang, 2021). The rise of the market economy since 1992 has encouraged marketoriented media to conduct critical investigative news reporting and to adopt the Western ideals of professional journalism. However, in the digital age, Chinese journalists’ professional identity has been re-evaluated and rearticulated, as it oscillates between ‘idealism and realism’ (Wang & Guo, 2021). With the market threat and strengthened media control since the mid-2010s, critical or investigative journalism has been reduced. Moreover, ‘the capitalization of digital platforms has led to the pursuit of entertainment and capital in the media environment’, and Tong (2019) argues that ‘with neither the market nor digital media technologies being a liberalizing force, they have helped the state to wield political power and to consolidate media control’. This volume is organized into four broad areas of study. First, Chapters 2 and 3 provide theoretical discussions focused on scholarly understandings of the term ‘digital journalism’ from a global perspective and a review of linguistic uses of this term in China. Second, Chapters 4, 5, and 6 focus on the newsroom, news production, and news content, which delineate the trend of re-popularization and tabloidization of Party media. Third, Chapters 7 and 8 address the platformization of digital-only media along with the corporate strategies of Chinese local newspapers through comparative analysis. Finally, Chapter 9 examines the impact of digital technology on the significant area of journalism education.

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Note 1 Sustaining innovations means making good products better in the eyes of an incumbent’s existing customers, such as a clearer TV picture or better mobile phone reception. These improvements can be incremental advances or major breakthroughs, but they all enable firms to sell more products to their most profitable customers. Disruptive innovations, on the other hand, are initially considered inferior by most of an incumbent’s customers. Typically, customers are not willing to switch to the new offering merely because it is less expensive. Instead, they wait until its quality rises enough to satisfy them. Once that has happened, they adopt the new product and happily accept its lower price (Christensen et al., 2015).

References Bower, J. L., & Christensen, C. M. (1995). Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. Harvard Business Review, 1, 43–53 Caixin. (2021, December 10). Caixin’s Paid Subscribers Exceed 700,000 Among Top 10 in the Latest International Ranking. Retrieved from www.caixinglobal. com/2021-12-10/caixins-paid-subscribers-exceed-700000-among-top-10-in-thelatest-international-ranking-101816174.html Carlson, M. (2015). The Robotic Reporter. Digital Journalism, 3:3, 416–431 Chadwick, A. (2013). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. New York: Oxford University Press. Christensen, C. M., Raynor, M. E., McDonald, R. (2015). What Is Disruptive Innovation? Harvard Business Review, 44–53 Christensen, C. M., Skok, D., & Allworth, J. (2012). Breaking News: Mastering the Art of Disruptive Innovation in Journalism. Nieman Report, https://niemanreports.org/articles/breaking-news Dörr, K. N. (2016). Mapping the Field of Algorithmic Journalism. Digital Journalism, 4:6, 700–722 Fang, K. C., & Repnikova, M. (2021). The State-preneurship Model of Digital Journalism Innovation: Cases from China. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 1–21. Ferrucci, P., & Perreault, G. (2021). The Liability of Newness: Journalism, Innovation and the Issue of Core Competencies. Journalism Studies, 22:11, 1436–1449 Gynnild, A. (2014). The Robot Eye Witness. Digital Journalism, 2:3, 334–343 Kilat, L. (2013). Disruptive Innovation and Journalism. Leon Kilat: The Tech Experiments. Pavlik, J. (2000). The Impact of Technology on Journalism. Journalism Studies 1:2, 229–237. Pavlik, J. (2022). Disruption and Digital Journalism-Assessing News Media Innovation in a Time of Dramatic Change. Routledge Focus Reese, S. D. (2016). The New Geography of Journalism Research. Digital Journalism, 4:7, 816–826 Reese, S. D. (2021). The Institution of Journalism: Conceptualizing the Press in a Hybrid Media System. Digital Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.20 21.1977669

Introduction 7 Sheller, M. (2015). News Now. Journalism Studies, 16:1, 12–26 Tandoc, E., et al (2020). Diversifying Diversity in Digital Journalism Studies: Reflexive Research, Reviewing and Publishing. Digital Journalism, 8:3, 301–309 Tang, X. J. (2021). Constructiveness: The New Goal of Chinese Media in the New Era. Chinese Social Science Today. https://doi.org/10.28131/n.cnki.ncshk. 2021.003787 Tong, J. (2019). The Taming of Critical Journalism in China. Journalism Studies, 20:1, 79–96 Wang, D., & Guo, S. (2021). Native Advertising in the Chinese Press: Implications of State Subsidies for Journalist Professional Self-identification. Digital Journalism, 9:7, 974–990. Wang, H., Sparks, C., Lü, N., & Huang, Y. (2017). Differences within the Mainland Chinese Press: A Quantitative Analysis. Asian Journal of Communication, 27:2, 154–171. Wasserman, E. (2017). Safeguarding the News in the Era of Disruptive Sources. Journal of Media Ethics, 32:2, 72–85 Witschge, T., Anderson, C. W., Domingo, D., & Hermida, A. (2019). Dealing with the Mess (We Made): Unraveling Hybridity, Normativity, and Complexity in Journalism Studies. Journalism, 20:5, 651–659.

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Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era Knowledge, Value, and Conceptual Framework Jiang Chang and Runze Ding

Introduction: Digital Journalism Studies as Research Paradigm The digitization of global journalism has had a huge impact on the classical ideas and practices of journalism, while also bringing direct impetus to journalism studies to innovate its theoretical frameworks and research paradigms.1 Since around 2010, the field of digital journalism studies (DJS) has been rising as a new area of research, attracting intense discussions among journalism researchers about how we should theorize the changes that digitization has bought to the practice, culture, and mechanism of news production, circulation, and consumption. Researchers have generally agreed that ‘digital journalism [is] not merely a modified description of journalism, but a way of seeing journalism in fundamentally new ways’ (Eldridge et al., 2019, p. 388). The changing nature of journalism in a digital age requires scholars to ‘embrace the ambiguity, unease, and uncertainty of the field’ (Witschge et al., 2016, p. 1). One central issue that has caused the ongoing debate in studying digital journalism is the interplays between ‘digital’ and ‘journalism’, which is essentially the question about how we should ‘prioritize’ these two core concepts in defining and understanding digital journalism and digital journalism studies. Some researchers view ‘journalism’ over ‘digital’, emphasizing how journalism transforms along with the development of digital technology, rather than being reshaped by it. Robinson et al. (2019, p. 369) suggest considering ‘the digital’ as a description of ‘transformation’ – ‘that is, a continuous mode of change that must be theorized alongside the acknowledgement that the only certainty is uncertainty and constant metamorphosis, in ways applicable for journalism particularly and for humanity broadly’. Thus, studies of digital journalism should also follow the framework of the burgeoning field of journalism studies with its six core commitments: DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-2

Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era 9 contextual sensitivity, holistic relationality, comparative inclination, normative awareness, embedded communicative power, and methodological pluralism. However, other researchers argue for favouring a direction that prioritizes ‘digital’ over ‘journalism’. Robinson et al. (2019, p. 378) propose that rather than seeing it as a digital iteration of journalistic principles, as has been a persistent theme in academia to date, it would consider journalism as an embodiment of digital principles, one of the many domains of social life which is increasingly restructured around digital technologies. The question here is how digitization brings its own processes, norms, and rules into journalism within a larger socio-technical environment. The interplay between ‘digital’ and ‘journalism’ also creates complexities in defining DJS as a scholarly terrain. Steensen and Westlund (2021, p. 3), for example, note: Digital journalism studies is much more than the study of journalism produced, distributed, and consumed with the aid of digital technologies. Rather, the scholarly field of digital journalism studies is built on questions that disrupt much of what previously was taken for granted concerning media, journalism, and public spheres. This is to suggest that we should not just view digital journalism studies as a subfield of journalism studies; rather, we should move beyond journalism studies and be open to research from, and conversations with, related interdisciplinary fields. This interdisciplinary nature of DJS is a key characteristic of this emerging field (Eldridge et al., 2019). Given this nature, there are unavoidable difficulties i defining this field. Although we do not need to resolve this in order to develop DJS as a field of scholarship, the continuous reflection on what digital journalism and digital journalism studies ‘are’ actually drives the development of the field. Eldridge et al. (2019, p. 394) critically note: For a field which sees its object of study – digital journalism – defined in part by its technological shifts, and in part by its journalistic legacy, the push and pull between an emphasis on continuity and change, or between digital and journalism, provides a useful way for scholars to consider their work as they grapple with discrete aspects of digital journalism.

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However, despite the different and diverse positions and nuances embedded in the field of DJS, do researchers who work in this field share a certain understanding of what this field is or should be? To understand this question is not to ignore the complexity and diversity involved in the development of this field, but rather to try to map out a grounding that could be beneficial for students and researchers who are not familiar with academic discussions and also for more established scholars to reflect on themselves. This chapter explores common knowledge and understandings in making sense of the field of DJS. We approach this inquiry from a transnational perspective, as digital journalism, in part, is facilitated by the globalized digitization of communication infrastructures. Moreover, examining the field from a global perspective also appreciates a multitude of geographical contexts which shape the understanding of digital journalism and DJS. Even if we assume that researchers who work in the field of DJS have (roughly) achieved a certain shared understanding of the concept of digital journalism through ‘academic solidarity’, this does not necessarily grant legitimacy to the field. Social sciences are different from natural sciences in that the legitimacy of their existence is based not only on the description or explanation of objective social phenomena, but also, to some extent, on the contribution to the overall well-being of society and the solution of vital social problems. That is, researchers should put sociological knowledge at the service and disposal of society. The development of journalism studies as a social science is widely considered to be related to the establishment of a high-quality and healthy information society. Zelizer (2004, p. 103) points out that ‘journalism’s presumed legitimacy depends on its declared ability to provide an indexical and referential presentation of the world at hand’. Hartley (2008, p. 39) even calls for viewing journalism as a human right rather than professional practice. He claims that journalism research should never forget ‘journalism as part of the modern tradition of liberal freedoms’. Seeing news media as part of societal ecosystems in which all actions – and non-actions – have ramifications for other parts of the ecology, the core commitments of journalism studies are relatively straightforward. Carlson et al. (2018, p. 4) critically suggest that ‘journalism studies are, in essence, an empirically driven inquiry into understanding and explaining ways in which journalism reifies power structures, social identities, and hierarchies’. Driven by these commitments, scholars working in the field of journalism studies have established a relatively stable ‘structure of values’ (Schwartz, 1992), which is related to democratic empowerment. However, with the ongoing digital transformation within the news industry, how has this process (if at all) affected journalism scholars’ commitments? Has the emergence of a digital age changed their ‘structure of values’? In this chapter, we explore how DJS

Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era 11 researchers perceive the role of digital journalism studies and/or what the field ought to be as well.

Research Design: A Delphi Study with 45 Chinese and Overseas DJS Scholars In addressing the research questions proposed earlier, a Delphi study is designed to explore the ideas of DJS researchers on the definitions and commitments of digital journalism studies. Developed by the RAND Corporation in the 1950s, the Delphi method is a methodical and interactive research procedure for obtaining the opinion of a panel of independent experts concerning a specific subject, which is widely employed in social sciences. Powell (2003, p. 376) suggests that ‘the method . . . is exceptionally useful where the judgments of individuals are needed to address a lack of agreement or incomplete state of knowledge . . . the Delphi is particularly valued for its ability to structure and organize group communication’. The objective of a Delphi study is ‘to obtain the most reliable opinion consensus of a group of experts by subjecting them to a series of questionnaires in depth interspersed with controlled opinion feedback’ (Dalkey & Helmer, 1963, p. 458). This research project started in early February 2020 and was completed in mid-November 2020. Participants of the research were recruited in two ways: (a) based on our own understanding of the field 2 where we identified appropriate experts; and (b) through browsing conceptual articles published in journals that feature journalism studies,3 where we further identified experts that were not included in the initial list. Following this procedure, we selected 55 experts in the field and sent out our invitation of participation via email. After confirmation, a panel of 45 journalism researchers were fixed for this Delphi survey. Members of the panel were from China and seven other countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden), with an average age of over 40. They all identified journalism studies as their main research interest. Due to the exploratory nature of this study, we try to balance the closedness and openness in designing the Delphi questionnaire. On the one hand, we hope that the research participants can provide clear opinions on certain key issues in the development of DJS even if these judgments might be ‘predictive’; on the other hand, we hope to outline the complexity of the field, and consequently, we refrain from laying too many restraints on their answers. The questionnaire was formulated to reflect key academic debates that we identifi d from the relevant literature, as well as interviews with more than 10 journalism scholars in previous research. A draft questionnaire

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Table 2.1 The Delphi Questionnaire No.

Questions

1

For an accurate understanding of the concept ‘digital journalism’, should either ‘digital’ or ‘journalism’ be prioritized? Are the technological affordances of digital media a dominant force in the transformation of global journalism? Do you agree that digital journalism should be studied from an ecological perspective/framework? Is affect/emotion a fundamental concept in our understanding of digital news production and consumption? Should digital journalists inherit the norms/doctrines of traditional journalistic professionalism and why? To what extent do institutional news media still have practical and theoretical importance in the digital age? Should digital journalism strive to fulfil the social responsibilities enshrined in classical journalism theory? Must the practice of digital journalism point to information democracy?

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

of 10 questions was tested through a pilot study with six experts for suitability and effectiveness. After the pilot study, two questions were deleted from the questionnaire and a final version of eight questions was confirmed (see Table 2.1). The Delphi polling continued for three rounds until the responses showed stability, i.e., more than 50% of the participants had reached agreement regarding the eight questions. We conducted this process following the hierarchical stopping criteria proposed by Dajani, Sincoff, and Talley (1979). Our Delphi process was also guided by the research design of MacCarthy and Atthirawong (2003), which, according to the scope of this chapter, is omitted to avoid losing focus.

Findings: The Four Major Consensuses on DJS In general, the results of the Delphi survey are in line with our expectations before beginning the research: Participants’ disagreements are more focused on what DJS is rather than what DJS should be/do. The panel of experts have more diverse views on ‘DJS as a system of knowledge’ than on ‘DJS as a value system’. Despite these different views, the logic through which the experts articulated their opinions is very similar, indicating that the construction of theories of DJS calls for innovation in ‘new conceptual frameworks’ rather than new concepts per se. Based on this, the evaluation phase of the Delphi study went smoothly. When learning that their peers with different opinions actually followed rationales similar

Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era 13 to theirs, most of the participants tended to amend some of their own opinions and sought to reach a higher degree of consensus with others. A thematic analysis was also conducted of the qualitative data collected from the Delphic panel, after which four major points of consensus were distilled. Under the logic of the Delphi method, these four consensuses have great potential to ‘guide’ the directions of development of journalism studies in the digital age. 1 The Symbiotic Relationship Between ‘Digital’ and ‘Journalism’ In the concept of digital journalism, the relationship between ‘digital’ and ‘journalism’ holds the unquestionable central position (Singer, 2018), and the analysis of this relationship has largely facilitated the development of DJS. This matter is essentially an epistemological concern. Unexpectedly, the panellists agreed in the first round of the Delphi survey on the belief that the relationship between ‘digital’ and ‘journalism’ is symbiotic. Specificall , on the one hand, the technological affordances of digital media have ‘cultivated’ and ‘created’ new forms of news and even reshaped the mainstream understanding of journalism in society. On the other hand, traditional journalistic ideas and values still have a strong impact in people’s daily news experiences, ensuring that ‘digital journalism’ is still ‘journalism’ rather than one general information pattern. Of course, this consensus may be partly the researchers’ objective understanding of the status quo of digital journalism, and partly an ideal situation expected from their own value standpoint. Given our panellists’ mostly shared understanding of the symbiotic relationship between ‘digital’ and ‘journalism’, we can exact more details from their answers to the question related to digital media’s technical affo dances.4 Overall, participants reached a high level of agreement in the first round of the survey; 32 participants clearly affirme that the technological affordances of digital media play a leading role, or are at least ‘among of the most important forces’ in the transformation of journalism. This indirectly affirm the key role played by digital technology in the contemporary news industry, which is equivalent to affirmin that the development of journalism theory should be based on proper theorization of technological affordances. Two participants’ statements are representative of this view. A scholar from the Netherlands said: It is meaningless to emphasize whether digital or journalism should be prioritized. The key point is how to accept the fact that digital journalism has become a reality, and to develop theories based on this reality. Technology is, without doubt, the significant factor that we need t consider.

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A German scholar notes: We need to see that digitization is an overarching process, and journalism is also in this process . . . affordances analysis has been proven to be an accountable approach. Although scholars have been very careful to avoid terms and expressions that might insinuate a discourse of technological determinism, they nevertheless propose a certain central role for technology in the development of journalism studies. Experts’ cautious wording and argumentation in relation to the role of technology in digital journalism generally reflect their adherence to the normative and constructivist orientation of traditional journalism studies. This matter is more clearly revealed in participants’ answers to the questions regarding the commitment of DJS (i.e., what DJS ought to be), which we will discuss later. For now, we can conclude that mainstream DJS scholars take an ontological position between technological determinism and social determinism, which can be termed as a ‘techno-cultural symbiosis’. This conceptual approach that attempts to reconcile constructivism and determinism was once called ‘soft determinism’ by the philosopher William James, who criticized its metaphysical ‘inconsistency’. However, by the middle of the 20th century, the complexities of historical development and the changing social structure had rendered the pursuit of a ‘perfect logic’ in social epistemology both unrealistic and unnecessary. The inherent conflicts in many concepts have proven to work well in facilitating theoretical development (Shute, 1961). Therefore, prioritizing ‘problem-solving’ and suspending essentialist discussions, this somewhat ‘practical’ approach seems to be beneficial for the theoretical construction of journalism in this transitional period. 2 Building a New Paradigm for Journalism Studies The second consensus reached by most experts on the theoretical development of DJS is that we need to build a new research paradigm for journalism studies. Specificall , this view includes ‘rethinking functionalism and sociological traditions’, ‘breaking the boundary between news production and reception’, ‘establishing a user-centred research approach’, and ‘focusing more on culture than the effect’. This consensus suggests that the digitization of journalism is not only reconstructing the theories and concepts of (traditional) journalism, but also reshaping the research practices of journalism studies. This consensus is further explained in our participants’ answers to questions 3 and 4. When talking about ‘news ecosystem’,5 a popular term in

Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era 15 DJS, more than half of the respondents expressed the necessity of theorizing digital journalism via an ecological perspective, considering such work a breakthrough in the development of journalism research. For example, a Danish expert says: ‘The meaning of ecosystem . . . goes beyond its limits as a word. It means to understand today’s journalism in a new way . . . and that journalism has truly become a ubiquitous environment’. A British expert has a more radical view: ‘The explanatory power of news ecosystem . . . exceeds any of the classic theories. It accurately describes the basic characteristics of the information network in the digital environment, which is a theoretical perspective that journalism studies must deal with’. When talking about another hot concept in the field of digital journalism studies – affect/emotion – it was initially difficul for experts to reach a consensus. In the first-round survey, nearly 40% of the respondents believed that some researchers exaggerated the theoretical potential of emotion/affect in the studies of digital news production/reception and were reluctant to abandon the binary opposition of ‘emotion-rationality’ as an epistemology, or to consider seeing emotion/affect as a dimension of rationality. However, consensus started to emerge in the second and third rounds. In the end, more than 50% of participants believed that emotion is a very important concept, at least in the current reality of digital journalism, because it has become a major factor that influences or even dominates the behavioural logic of actors in news networks. On the issue of whether there is an ‘emotional turn’ in the field of journalism studies, of course, the opinions of experts remained diverse. They attached importance to the theorizing of emotion mostly for the purpose of improving journalism research. Since the behaviour of people in the digital news network differs significantly from that of the ‘pre-digital’ era, we need to go beyond the largely linear analytical framework that divides news experience into fragmented parts of production, circulation, and reception, and start to achieve an understanding of how digital journalism works through investigations of the (predominantly affective) logic of various ‘news actors’. Thus, proper and in-depth theorization of emotion/affect is the only entrance. From data collected in the Delphi survey, we can also identify two research categories formed in the research practices of digital journalism: (a) news ecosystem research; and (b) news actor research. It is true that such a two-category paradigm will continue to be refined in further developments of DJS, but the principles to plan such categories stand – that is, abandoning the traditional model of the 5W and 1H, and pursuing a new epistemology that generates knowledge from interpretation of the relationship between ‘ecosystem/environment’ and ‘actors’ behaviour’. A workable DJS research paradigm is holistic, network-centred, and relationship-based.

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Such a paradigm encourages researchers to undertake questions within the two categories and explore the interactive natures/mechanisms between them. Only through this route could we manage to properly theorize new phenomena and trends in journalism and to propose new hypotheses and theories. As a Swedish expert quoting Raymond Williams pointed out: ‘Emotion . . . is not only a dimension of news users’ behaviour, but also a general structure of feeling; the news ecosystem per se is affectiv , it has the same logic as the actions of the actors’. 3 A Platform-Oriented Professionalism To develop theories of digital journalism, scholars must adequately address the issue of professionalism, central to traditional journalistic epistemology. Journalistic professionalism is a series of shared ideas and norms that organizes practices of news production and endows news with ‘legitimate’ narrative and symbolic forms.6 Moreover, in contemporary journalism history, professionalism has established its status as a code of conduct with a strong normative and binding force, which strongly shapes the overall ecology and culture of the news industry. Steensen and Ahva (2015, p. 12) suggest that ‘aspects related to philosophical perspectives (e.g., ethics and objectivity) are becoming increasingly important for journalism studies’, which are often ‘analyzed in a sociologically oriented framework, such as professionalism’. Although the concepts of professionalism have different meanings and connotations in Western and Chinese contexts, they all aim to restrain the subjective judgement of journalists and produce public knowledge. Despite the acknowledgement of the relativity of professionalism as a concept and a norm, traditional journalism theories have still safeguarded the legitimacy of professionalism at the discursive level. This reflects the instinctive doubt of classic journalism theories towards the agency of human beings. In answering the fifth and sixth questions in the questionnaire, our participants were very vocal; their understanding of these two questions is also more complicated than that of other questions. On the one hand, journalism studies experts generally agree that even if the development of news production and journalism faces new historical, social, and technical conditions that have greatly shaken the once taken-for-granted connotation of basic concepts such as ‘news’ and ‘journalism’, journalistic professionalism is always essential to theories of journalism. The fact that our participants widely recognize and support journalists’ pursuit of news values reflects a clear intention towards a normative-style theorization in mainstream journalism studies academia. However, as for

Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era 17 the questions of ‘what’ and ‘what should be’ of ‘journalistic professionalism in the digital age’, participants have their own interpretations. For example, an expert from the United States believes that traditional journalistic professionalism with ‘objectivity’ at its core should be inherited, and that journalism nowadays needs a new form of ‘objectivity’ rather than new norms otherwise. A Swedish expert proposes that journalistic professionalism in the digital age relates more to the idea of ‘activism’ than quality of the news per se. And a Chinese expert proposes that we should understand digital journalistic professionalism from the perspective of how the production of news might create ‘new connections among people’. Although journalism researchers have quite diverse expectations for the evolving direction of journalistic professionalism, most of them share the premise that journalism studies should always maintain a normative theoretical intention. On the other hand, most of the experts surveyed also believe that institutional news outlets still play a crucial role in the formation of a strong/ healthy journalism in the digital age. In the first round, many experts consider the redefinition of ‘news organization’ an important task in developing DJS because the old definition, based on traditional media infrastructures/ models, is mostly out of date. In the second and third rounds, our panellists frequently mentioned the term ‘platform’. Many participants referred to national/global social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Weibo as ‘platform(s)’. Others considered the digital outlets/layouts of the New York Times and People’s Daily as ‘platform(s)’. Experts warn that the platformization of news institutions might bring serious damage to journalism as a profession. They also emphasize the importance of the concept of platform in building a proper theoretical framework for DJS. For instance, a British scholar claims that ‘we must be wary of the view of seeing digital platforms as only an economic issue . . . In fact, through cultivating a new journalism/ news industry, digital platforms have a crucial impact on the global society politically and culturally’. Regardless of how mainstream journalism researchers view journalistic professionalism and news organizations, or how they think these two concepts should be positioned in the theories of DJS, they nevertheless agree that the conceptualization of digital journalism should go beyond the classic understanding of professionalism and news institution. Almost all experts show their willingness to redefine the two concepts, showing enthusiasm for in-depth theoretical exploration into the world of digital journalism. They also agree that no matter how different future journalism practices and news formats are from the old days, journalism studies must take (digital) professionalism as a core concept around which new normative theories

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could be established. Generally, there is a strong consensus on restricting the practices of journalism that is platform based and likely subject to hightech capitalism and authoritarian political power. Such findings demonstrate a collective insistence on what the field of DJS should be as a new research paradigm. 4 Continued Pursuit of Information Democracy The ardent pursuit of information democracy has always been a fundamental commitment in the development of journalism theories. Despite disagreements on what accounts for ‘democracy’ among journalism scholars, no one openly denounces the value of a democratic information society in discourse. This shared understanding formed within the context of the traditional journalism industry has obviously been continued or even strengthened by researchers in the digital age. Our participants reached a higher consensus on questions 7 and 8 than on others. More than 80% of the experts in the panel gave affirmativ answers to these two questions: Journalism in the digital age needs to continue its traditional social responsibilities, and the development of journalism must be based on the pursuit of information democracy. Some respondents expressed criticisms of the resurgent partisanship in journalism that is highly digitized nowadays. For example, a British expert believes that mainstream information platforms have played a poor role in Brexit: ‘Their reports reveal almost undisguised partisanship and news produced in this way has no public value at all’. A US expert expressed his concerns about the accelerated polarization of the political stance of US journalism in the digital age, believing that ‘the degradation of news quality is always accompanied by the alienation of news organizations from public interests’. Some experts say they cannot just blame ‘digitization’ for all of journalism’s problems nowadays, but more people emphasize that, to a certain extent, the process of digitization has undoubtedly eroded journalism’s old ideals and ethics, and they call for more constructive effort. Although mainstream journalism researchers have reached a high level of agreement on the relationship between digital journalism and information democracy, many have different views on the definition of ‘information democracy’, as mentioned earlier. A considerable number of participants mainly understand information democracy from the perspective of ‘rights of information access’; that is, the development of digital journalism should pay attention to creating more channels to connect news content (products) with users and help create a transparent information environment. Others grasp this concept in a more abstract and general way, relating it to the

Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era 19 common good of the entire human society. For example, a British scholar emphasized that the realization of information democracy depends on how journalism uses advanced technology . . . we should change the power structure that is guiding the development of the industry step by step, as well as critically scrutinize the ownership and hegemony of the technology itself. This divergence of views reflects the interdisciplinary nature of DJS as a scholarly terrain, which could be quite helpful for us to develop its theories in a more relevant direction.

Conclusion: Definin  DJS and Its  Conceptual Framework This chapter explored the definition and commitments of DJS as an emerging scholarly field and an innovative research paradigm. The question of the nature of DJS contains two strands of inquiry: epistemology and the research agenda. In terms of the so-called epistemology of DJS, the core issue is to clarify the relationship between ‘digital’ and ‘journalism’. Although scholars generally emphasize the symbiotic relationship between the two at the discursive level, their emphasis on the crucial role played by technological affordances of digital media hits an epistemology of ‘soft determinism’, which deems technology as not decisive but nevertheless predominant in causing social change. In terms of the research agenda, it can be concluded that ‘news ecosystem’ and ‘news actors’ are the two major categories of DJS. Such an ecological approach that focuses on the dynamic relationship between the environment and actors’ behaviour could be seen as an outcome of the aforementioned epistemology. In terms of the commitment of DJS – that is, what the field should be – we may conclude from materials collected from the panel that ‘normative theory’ and ‘value system’ are its twin pillars. Exploration into the normative dimension of DJS should inherit the classic concept of journalistic professionalism, which advocates universal production codes and ethics, so as to prevent digital journalism practices from being overly subject to manipulation by large media platforms. Through the in-depth theorizing of various new patterns of journalism practices, the concept of digital journalistic professionalism would be more refined. The value system of digital journalism strongly adheres to the direction that classic journalism takes public interests and information democracy as its core theoretical commitments.

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Figure 2.1 A conceptual framework of digital journalism studies.

Critical inquiries into the partisanization and the polarization of digital journalism could become the empirical basis for the development of critical theories of digital journalism at a macro and structural level. This chapter therefore defines digital journalism studies within such a conceptual framework (Figure 2.1): DJS is an innovative research paradigm of journalism studies under new historical conditions mostly brought about by the process of digitization. The development of DJS theories should be based on the epistemology of techno-cultural symbiosis, contain the two major categories of news ecosystem studies and news actors studies, and include a normative theoretical dimension with platform-oriented professionalism as its core discourse and the fulfilment of information democracy as its value pursuit. This study has a strong exploratory nature. This chapter serves to lay the groundwork for continuous discussions about how DJS could make a greater contribution to both the discipline of media and communication studies, and the common good of human society. It is important to realize that answers to what digital journalism is and what DJS should be might never be fixed, which is partly why this field has attracted such strong scholarly attention. There might be no ‘right’ way to study digital journalism, but pursuing consensus among researchers surely will make DJS something more than just a topic.

Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era 21

Notes 1 Please see Robinson et al. (2019) and Chang (2021) for a detailed discussion on how digitalization has impacted journalistic practices and research. 2 Both authors work in the field of DJS and are familiar with the relevant academic literature. 3 Including Digital Journalism, Journalism – Theory, Practice & Criticism, Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, and Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. 4 See Huang and Luo (2021) for a more thorough discussion on the concept of affordance in relation to DJS. 5 For a comprehensive introduction on the concept of news ecosystem, see Anderson (2016) and Wang and Zhang (2021). 6 It is important to note that journalistic professionalism may have different connotations in the West and in China. See Simons et al. (2017) for a more detailed discussion in this regard.

References Anderson, C. W. (2016). News Ecosystems. In T. Witschge, C. W. Anderson, D. Domingo, & A. Hermida (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Digital Journalism (pp. 410–423). Sage. Carlson, M., Robinson, S., Lewis, S. C., & Berkowitz, D. A. (2018). Journalism Studies and its Core Commitments: The Making of a Communication Field. Journal of Communication, 68:1, 6–25. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqx006 Chang, J. (2021). Shuzixing yu Xinwenxue de Weilai [Digitality and the Future of Journalism Studies] Xinwen Jizhe, 10, 37–44. Dajani, J. S., Sincoff, M. Z., & Talley, W. K. (1979). Stability and Agreement Criteria for the Termination of Delphi Studies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 13:1, 83–90. Dalkey, N., & Helmer, O. (1963). An Experimental Application of the Delphi Method to the Use of Experts. Management Science, 9:3, 458–467. Eldridge, S. A., Hess, K., Tandoc, E. C., Jr, & Westlund, O. (2019). Navigating the Scholarly Terrain: Introducing the Digital Journalism Studies Compass. Digital Journalism, 7:3, 386–403. Hartley, J. (2008). Journalism as a Human Right: The Cultural Approach to Journalism. Global Journalism Research: Theories, Methods, Findings, Future, 39–51. Huang, Y., & Luo, Y. (2021). Kegongxin yu Renshilun: Shuzi Xinwenxue de Yanjiu Lujing Chuangxin [Affordance and Epistemology: The Innovative Approaches of Digital Journalism Studies] Xinwen Jie, 10, 13–20. MacCarthy, B. L., & Atthirawong, W. (2003). Factors Affecting Location Decisions in International Operations – A Delphi Study. International Journal of Operations & Production Management. Powell, C. (2003). The Delphi Technique: Myths and Realities. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 41:4, 376–382. Robinson, S., Lewis, S. C., & Carlson, M. (2019). Locating the ‘Digital’ in Digital Journalism Studies: Transformations in Research. Digital Journalism, 7:3, 368–377. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1557537

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Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 1–65): Elsevier. Shute, C. (1961). The Dilemma of Determinism after Seventy-Five Years. Mind, 70:279, 331–350. Simons, M., Nolan, D., & Wright, S. (2017). ‘We Are Not North Korea’: Propaganda and Professionalism in the People’s Republic of China. Media, Culture & Society, 39:2, 219–237. Singer, J. B. (2018). Transmission Creep. Journalism Studies, 19:2, 209–226. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1186498 Steensen, S., & Ahva, L. (2015). Theories of Journalism in a Digital Age: An Exploration and Introduction. Taylor & Francis. Steensen, S., & Westlund, O. (2021). What is Digital Journalism Studies? Taylor & Francis. Wang, B., & Zhang, X. (2021). Zuowei Yanjiu Lujing de Xinwen Shengtai: Jiben Neihan, Yunxing Jizhi yu Shijian Mianxiang [News Ecosystem as a Research Approach: Basic Connotation, Operating Mechanism and Practical Orientation]. Lanzhou Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban), 49:2, 103–109. Witschge, T., Anderson, C. W., Domingo, D., & Hermida, A. (2016). The SAGE Handbook of Digital Journalism. Sage. Zelizer, B. (2004). When Facts, Truth, and Reality are God‐terms: On Journalism’s Uneasy Place in Cultural Studies. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1:1, 100–119.

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Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism in China A Literature Review, 1961–2021 Haiyan Wang and Lin Wu

As one of the most important public goods in society, journalism has always been deeply influenced by the kinds of technology available in its time. In the past half century or so, one of the most important technological advancements has been the emergence and rapid development of digital technology. Its arrival has not only changed society profoundly, but also impacted on the way media and journalism is practiced. In particular, it has given rise to ‘digital journalism’, a practice that is said to be transformative of traditional forms of journalism. Accordingly, ‘digital journalism studies’ has become an emerging and popular research topic in academia (Steensen & Westlund, 2021). However, the meaning of ‘digital’ varies in different cultures and social contexts, and so does that of ‘digital journalism’. To fully understand what digital journalism is like in Chinese media practices, we need to know how digital journalism has come into being and in what contexts and along which paths it has evolved. In other words, we need to examine the formation and development of digital journalism in its historical and localized context so that its current practices can be properly apprehended and meaningful cross-cultural comparisons might be enabled. This chapter contributes to such understandings by analysing the development of digital journalism in the academic discourses in Chinese literature.

Overview of Chinese Digital Journalism Studies Our study is based on CNKI (China National knowledge Instructure or Zhongguo Zhiwang), a Chinese academic database. In order to compile a relatively complete dataset of Chinese literature on the topic of digital journalism, we used ‘digital’ (shuzi) and ‘journalism’ (xinwen) as keywords to search the ‘themes’ (zhuti) of ‘all’ ‘journal’ articles available in the database. As a result, our search yielded a total of 11,234 articles DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-3

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Figure 3.1 Publication trends of Chinese literature.

(as of September 2021), and these form the basis of analysis we present in this chapter. It should be noted that due to the terminology and instrument used in the search, unintended biases may be introduced in the analysis, and this should be taken as an inevitable limitation of this study, or any study of this kind. As can be seen from Figure 3.1, the earliest of work related to digital journalism appeared in 1961, and the latest was in 2021. This indicates that, contrary to the common understanding that digital journalism is a recent concept, the idea of it may have existed for some six decades. Closer examination, however, shows there were only sporadic appearances of relevant literature in the first 30 years or so. The total number of articles between 1961 and 1994 was less than a hundred, and significantl , during that period of time, ‘digital’ and ‘journalism’ were related to each other but were mostly separate terms. It was not until 1995 that the term ‘digital journalism’ began to appear as one. As a result, the volume of literature on the subject gradually increased, and a clear trend of rapid growth began. In 1999, the number of published articles about digital journalism reached triple digits for the first time (113 articles); by 2004, it had doubled; by 2007, it was four times the 1999 figure (459 articles); and in 2010, the number exceeded 500 (530 articles). In the latest decade, due to the rapid development of digital media technology and the boom of social and mobile media, there has been an explosion of academic literature focused on digital journalism. On average,

Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism 25

Figure 3.2 Distribution of research subjects.

nearly 700 articles have been published each year since 2011. From 2018 to 2021, the trend of publications declined slightly, but the overall volume of literature remained large, averaging over 500 articles per year. This shows that ‘digital journalism’ has established a fairly solid position in the Chinese academic community. In terms of ‘subject areas’ of the literature, most articles, unsurprisingly, belong to journalism and communication studies (5,478 articles, 48.76%). But at the same time, as we can see in Figure 3.2, digital journalism is also discussed from a variety of other perspectives, including book publishing (1,975 articles, 17.58%), economics (1,600 articles, 14.24%) and information technology (1,142 articles, 10.17%). Other subject areas such as art, education, linguistics, law, political science, and so on are also explored, albeit only marginally. At the same time, analysing the ‘keywords’ of the literature, we found that 15 keywords have been dominant over the years (Figure 3.3). They are, in rank order, digital publishing (663 articles), new media (373 articles), digital age (358 articles), digital journalism (262 articles), media convergence (213 articles), news editing (198 articles), photo journalism industry (179 articles), data journalism (155 articles), digital media (130 articles), digital transformation (109 articles), digital newspaper (99 articles), digital TV (91 articles), journalism (80 articles), traditional media (70 articles), and

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Figure 3.3 Top 15 keywords in Chinese literature.

the New York Times (66 articles). It is interesting that ‘digital journalism’ itself comes not in first, but fourth place. It can be said, of course, to be an effect of the bias introduced by the search instrument, but at the same time it also sheds light on the dispersive and evolving nature of digital journalism studies scholarship. In particular, it indicates a lack of consensus among the academic community and the diversified discourses scholars have attached to the subject. Nevertheless, after detailed reading of the literature, we found that although a great deal of complexity and diversity was involved, over the years three categories or types of discourse have dominated academic discussion: technological, industrial, and political discourses. In the next sections, we analyse the development of these discourses and highlight the shortcomings of current research.

Digital Journalism: Technological Discourse For journalism, ‘digital’ is first and foremost a technical attribute. This is true not only in the English-speaking world but also in the Chinese literature. As such, technology is naturally one of the dominant discourse domains of digital journalism. Reflecting the evolving nature of the kind of technology attached to digital journalism over the years, the technological connotation of ‘digital journalism’ has also been constantly changing. It has gone through a process of evolution, from meaning numbers in the

Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism 27 news contents, to being the electronic devices producing and transmitting news, and more recently the networked web technology that influences the production, distribution, and consumption of journalism. In the Chinese literature, ‘digital’ (shuzi) did not initially mean the electronic or networked ‘digital’ technology as we understand it today. Before the emergence of what we now call ‘digital technology’, ‘digital’ already appeared in discussions of journalism in the Chinese literature. In such cases, it largely implied ‘number’ or ‘numerical’, referring to the measuring technique which has existed for thousands of years. In the literature analysed, the first article linking ‘digital’ to ‘journalism’ was published in 1961, titled ‘Characteristics of Journalistic Materials in the Press’ (Zuo, 1961). Published in a trade journal called Craft of Journalism (Xinwen yewu), this article discussed the need of the press to ‘collect, manage, study and supply all possible information’ to ‘better serve the propaganda work’ of the ruling Party. It pointed out that the ‘information’ journalists should pay attention to include not only the textual materials but also the materials containing numerical facts, including dates, charts, and statistics. This emphasis on using ‘digital’ (numerical) facts in news reporting was intensified after the launch of the ‘reform and opening up’ policy in 1978. With the increasing weight of the market and economy in people’s everyday life, how to report news to reflect this change became a challenge. In this context, literature exploring the use of numbers in journalism frequently appeared. We can catch the flavour of what the discussions were like by just looking at the titles of the articles: ‘Ten Ways to Use Numbers in News’, ‘News and Numbers’, ‘How to Use Numbers in News’, or ‘How to Use Numbers in the Lead’. This numerical understanding of ‘digital’ has been consistent in Chinese literature over the years. Even today, many people still tend to understand ‘digital journalism’ as ‘journalism expressed by/in numbers’. It was not until the 1990s that the meaning of ‘digital’ gradually expanded from its original numerical connotations. Electronic connotations started to emerge with the invention of computational technologies that could transform various types of information into digits and process them with much greater efficien . ‘Digital journalism’ acquired the meaning of ‘journalism processed through digital-coding devices’ (Zhao & Wu, 2020). Introducing newly developed applications using digital-coding technology was a popular theme of the literature at this time. Scholars were fascinated by the Digital News Gathering (DNG) system (Zhang, 1995), the super video home system (S-VHS) (Zhu, 1995), the all-digital news broadcast system (Zhao, 2003), and so on. Their potential for transmitting high-quality images, allowing greater compatibility with different devices and reducing

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the cost of news production, was hailed as starting a ‘digital revolution’ in journalism. Nevertheless, the real ‘digital revolution’ came only after the arrival of internet-based technology. China was officiall connected to the World Wide Web in 1994, and subsequently, the internet developed rapidly. This gave ‘digital technology’ a new meaning. It is no longer a high-end engineering system to be mastered only by specially trained technicians or engineers, but a universally accessible technology that anyone with a computer or smartphone can use. Accordingly, in the academic literature, ‘digital journalism’ began to acquire connotations related to internet technology. Among the hot topics of research were ‘mobile newspapers’, ‘e-newspapers’, and news portals as well as search engine technologies, data mining technologies, visualization, short video, VR technologies, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. In discussions, digital technology began to be understood as an emerging method of news production that has the potential to transform journalism (Jin, 2014; Peng, 2012; Sun, 2016) as well as the change agent of media ecology, society, and even humanity (Chen & Shi, 2017; Peng, 2016, 2017). Altogether, the development of diversified new media technologies and their application in news and journalism has given a solid technological dimension to the term ‘digital journalism’. It has also led to an increasing and overwhelming focus on the discourse domain of technology in digital journalism studies in Chinese academia.

Digital Journalism: Industrial Discourse The academic literature related to ‘digital journalism’ has experienced rocket-like growth since 2006. Partly, this is related to the rapid development of internet-based technologies which has led to increasing interest in technological discussions of digital journalism, as discussed in the previous section. But at the same time, it is also related to significant changes in the news media industry which have sparked growing concerns about the development of the media industries and, accordingly, led to the flowering of various industrial discourses on digital journalism. The rise of new media challenged the position of the traditional or legacy media as the dominant players in mass communication and caused them to encounter a sudden ‘the-wolves-are-coming’ situation. Although studies based on nationwide statistics tend to place the crisis of the Chinese press industry after about 2011 (Sparks et al., 2016), individual newspapers reported that they started to encounter economic difficultie much earlier, claiming that their advertising revenues started to drop in 2005 (Wu, 2006). In contrast, the advertising revenue of some internet-based media rose at a

Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism 29 rate of more than 120% (Dong & Su, 2007). Faced with this situation, many scholars began to articulate the view that digital technology had brought about the coming of the ‘ice age’ (binghe qi) or ‘cold winter’ (handong) for the traditional media industries (Liu, 2006; Shi, 2006; Xiao, 2005). In this context, there has been an explosive growth of literature on the impact of digitalization on traditional media from the perspective of industry. Analysing the literature we collected, we found that from 2005 to 2021, a total of 2,407 articles were published on the topic of ‘industry’ (chanye or hangye), accounting for nearly a quarter (24.4%) of all digital journalism literature across this period. These industrial discussions can be subdivided into two categories: The first is focused on crisis, the second on solutions. On the one hand, the fact that news and information could now be easily disseminated through digital new media threatened the legitimacy of traditional media. On the other hand, embracing digital media and making use of digital technology to enable the ‘digital transformation’ of traditional media was seen as a coping strategy of the traditional media. This is why a further analysis of relevant literature reveals that ‘digital era’ (shuzi shidai) and ‘media convergence’ (meiti roughe) are two prominent themes that went hand in hand in industrial discussions. The former is an expression of the ‘crisis’, and the latter speaks about the ‘solutions’. In terms of crisis, many researchers considered the encounter with the ‘digital wave’ (shuzihua langchao) a key event in the new millennium and stressed its disruptive effects on traditional media. As one scholar wrote, it [the digital wave] has completely broken through the barriers that traditional media have always guarded . . . it has dramatically rewritten the existing rules of the game of the media market, causing the old operational structure and profit model to fade away . . . Traditional media has come to an important crossroad, to the left is hell, to the right is heaven. (Yu, 2006, p. 3) In terms of solutions, how traditional media might cope with the challenge of online media is the focus of a separate literature. Some scholars suggested that digital technologies brought new forms and new business models to the traditional press, and these can be exploited as countermeasures to respond to the challenges of the digital media (Shi, 2009). Others talked about reshaping media with new organizational structures, new routines, and changes to journalistic’ roles. A number of strategies were proposed, including the organization of a ‘central kitchen’ (zhongyang chufang), the adoption of ‘paywalls’ (fufei qiang) and the construction of ‘omni-media’

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(quan meiti) (Liu, 2015; Shi & Jing, 2013; Yao, 2015). At the same time, learning from the experiences of international media has also become a hot topic. This is reflected in the fact that terms such as ‘the New York Times’, ‘the Huffingto Post’, ‘the United States’, and ‘the United Kingdom’ are among the top keywords in the collected literature analysed. By drawing examples of the pioneering media in the world, Chinese scholars aimed to provide references to help the media industry come up with effe tive measures to cope with the crisis. In general, most of these articles are administrative rather than critically oriented. And they were written in a rather abstract manner, in the form of one or two pages of short commentaries or essays. Instead of studying the empirical case, Chinese scholars seemed to prefer to speculate about the situation, articulate ideas, give suggestions, and make predictions.

Digital Journalism: Policy Discourses In the development of Chinese journalism, the government has always played an integral role, and policy has always been at the centre of academic discussions. Digital journalism studies is no exception. From the start of ‘digital’ being introduced to journalism, policy discourses have been in place. This is vividly reflected in the very first piece of literature linking ‘digital’ to ‘journalism’, in which the author opened the article by quoting: ‘Comrade Mao Zedong who wrote that, “only when the evidences are rich and conform to the reality can correct theories be created” ’ (Zuo, 1961, p. 45). In other words, the reason why the article was written and why journalism practice needed to be improved, according to the author, is that it is a response to the instruction and requirement of the top leader of the country. Similarly, the introduction of the Electronic News Gathering (ENG) system that dominated the literature of the 1990s was a response to the government policy of promoting the modernization of television news, which was written into the political report of the Party Congress. And from 2000 to 2005, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) further issued a series of policies to promote the development of ‘digital TV’ (shuzi dianshi). Accordingly, ‘digital TV’ became a prominent theme in the literature during the early 2000s. Since 2005, in response to the so-called ‘digital wave’, state interventions in the media have been more frequent, and governmental policies have been issued more intensively. Analysing the collected literature since then, we found that a series of top keywords are actually direct expressions of the policy, including ‘digital newspaper’, ‘digital publishing’, ‘media convergence’, ‘central kitchen’, ‘Internet+’, etc. The fact that these policy terms

Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism 31 have also become the focus of academic research highlighted the importance of the policy discussions in digital journalism studies in China. In addition, further analysing the literature, we find that articles including ‘state’, ‘policy’, ‘plans’, ‘guidelines’, and other policy-related terms in the titles and abstracts accounted for 16.2% of the collected literature from 2005. Scholars were busy interpreting the policy, analysing its background, and predicting the future of its development. They discussed topics such as the development and strategy of the digital newspaper industry, the national regulatory system (Fu, 2007), the business model (Fang, 2007), technological innovation (Qiu & Chen, 2018), and the possibilities of media transformation (Wu & Yao, 2007). However, few articles talked about what this meant to journalism, what impact it had on journalists, how it changed the news contents, and so on. The same applies to the analysis of literature related to ‘media convergence’. In 2014, media convergence was elevated to a ‘national strategy’ following President Xi Jinping’s talk on this particular topic. Just as the media organizations in the country raced to establish their ‘convergence’ projects, in the academy it suddenly seemed that everybody was researching ‘media convergence’. Many articles focused on the concept of ‘convergence’, exploring possible ways to organize relevant projects, examining the effect of current projects, or suggesting ways to improve them (G. Q. Chen, 2018; Z. R. Chen, 2015; Li et al., 2017). Effe tive use of internet technology was taken as the key to its success (Liu, 2015; Tang et al., 2014; Yuan, 2013). As a new player in the media world, ‘digital journalism’ is defined by various different forces, including media practitioners, business, society, and state power. In the case of China, the government holds the ultimate power over media, and because of that, it also plays a defining role in the development of digital journalism. Under this influence, policy discourses have become overwhelmingly prominent in the academic literature since the early 2010s. Together with the technological and industrial discourses we reviewed earlier, they dominated digital journalism studies in China, leaving little space for other aspects to be discussed and articulated.

Conclusion and Future Directions As one author expressed it, three factors are crucial to the development of Chinese journalism: The first is national policy – ‘every major adjustment in national policy brings a major opportunity for the development of the newspaper industry’. The second is communication technology – ‘every change in communication technology reshapes the operation of the newspaper industry and influences the path of its development’. The third is industry discourse – ‘every major discussion on the basic issues of the newspaper

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industry influences the decisions of the Party and the State on the direction of the newspaper industry and guides the business practices of the industry’ (Zhang, 2009, p. 33). This observation also applies to digital journalism studies in China. Policy, technology, and industry are the three dominant dimensions shaping the academic discourse of digital journalism over the past six decades. Based on the analysis of more than 10,000 relevant articles, we have presented the development and general outlook of the technical, industrial, and policy discourses. We argued that these three dimensions dominated the formation of the term ‘digital journalism’ and the development of its various connotations, influencing the way people understand and talk about digital journalism in China today. However, when looking back at the development of digital journalism, we need to see not only what has been discussed and debated, but also what has not been so closely examined. The neglected topics include, at the very least, the professional and social discussions of journalism. Examining the tens of thousands of literatures on digital journalism in China, we found only minimal presence of the keywords related to the professional practices of journalism. Among the 11,234 collected articles, only 75 are on ‘journalism practice’ (xinwen shijian, xinwen shiwu, or xinwen yewu), 164 on ‘journalists’ (xinwen gongzuozhe), 138 on ‘news reporters’ (xinwen jizhe), 284 on ‘news editors’ (xinwen bianji), 105 on ‘newsrooms’ (bianjibu or xinwenshi), 181 on ‘news interviewing and editing’ (xinwen caibian), and 155 on ‘news content’ (xinwen neirong). In other words, only 959 articles (after excluding the overlaps), or 8.5% of the literature, addressed issues related to the professional development of digital journalism. Similarly, a search using a range of keywords related to the social aspects of journalism revealed an almost negligible proportion of literature: 17 articles on ‘social development’ (shehui fazhan), 7 articles on ‘social change’ (shehui bianqia, or shehui biange), 2 articles on ‘social progression’ (shehui jinbu). Excluding the overlaps, only 24 articles addressed the social dimensions of digital journalism, accounting for 0.2% of the overall literature. This situation reveals several problems/shortcomings in digital journalism studies scholarship in China. On the one hand, most of the existing studies focus on the macro aspects and are keen to address substantive issues such as ‘institutions’, ‘systems’, ‘frameworks’, and ‘strategies’ but lack particular studies of specific issues, practices, or actors. On the other hand, most of the studies are politically driven with a clear tendency of administrative research, which only rarely moves to the ground level to examine empirically the relationship between digital journalism and social change. Moreover, existing research is overshadowed by techno-optimism, which tends to celebrate the idea of digital technology equalling modern while modern equals progress. There is hardly any critical voice addressing technology. This lack of research

Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism 33 has inevitably led to the shortcomings in the development of the connotations of digital journalism, limiting the social imagination of the term, and confi ing it to the topics related to policy, technology, and industry while giving little space for people to talk about and imagine its relevance and potential for social change. Future research should pay attention to these issues and flesh up digital journalism studies with more empirical evidence and critical thinking from the perspective of media and society.

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Peng, L. (2016). Smart Media: The Future Wave of the Media (Zhimeihua: weilai meiti langchao. Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication (Guoji Xinwenjie), 11, 6–24. Peng, L. (2017). Better Journalism, or Worse Journalism? New Challenges in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Genghao de xinwenye, haishi genghuai de xinwenye? Rengong zhineng shidai chuanmeiye de xintiaozhan). China Publishing Journal (Zhongguo Chuban), 24, 3–8. Qiu, Y. X., & Chen, C. F. (2018). Black Box: AI Technology and the Changing Landscape of News Production (Heixiang: rengong zhineng jishu yu xinwen shengchan geju shanbian). Press Circles (Xinwenjie), 1, 28–30. Shi, C. S., & Jing, Y. X. (2013). The Conceptual Construction and Historical Evolution of Omni-Media (Quanmeiti de gainian goujia yu lishi yanjin). Editor’s Friend (Bianji Zhiyou), 5, 51–54 + 76. Shi, L. (2006). Media Convergence: A New Fulcrum for Newspaper Development: Start from the Death of Newspaper (Meijie ronghe, baoye fazhan xinzhidian). Journal of Southwest Minzu University (Xinan Minzu daxue xuebao), 7, 130–133. Shi, L. (2009). The Convergence of Content and Channel of Digital Newspapers: The Strategies of Press Industry in the Age of Media Convergence (Shuzi baoye de neirong ronghe yu qudao ronghe: meijie ronghe shidai de baoye fazhan zhanlue). Press Circles (Xinwenjie), 2, 14–16. Sparks, C., Wang, H., Huang, Y., Zhao, Y., Lu, N., & Wang, D. (2016). The Impact of Digital Media on Newspapers: Comparing Responses in China and the United States. Global Media and China, 1:3, 186–207. Steensen, S., & Westlund, O. (2021). What Is Digital Journalism Studies. Routledge. Sun, Y. (2016). Robot Journalism: A Big Data-Based News Production Model (Jiqiren xinwen: yizhong jiyu dashuju de xinwen shengchan moshi). Editor’s Friend (Bianji Zhiyou), 3, 93–96. Tang, X. J., Huang, C. X., & Wang, D. (2014). The Transformation and Trends of Global Newsrooms in the Internet Age (Hulianwang siwei xia quanqiu xinwen bianjibu zhuanxing yu qushi). News and Writing (Xinwen yu Xiezuo), 11, 5–9. Wu, F., & Yao, X. Y. (2007). Digital Newspaper: The Future Direction of the Development of Traditional Press (Shuzi baoye: chuantong baoye fazhan de fangxiang). Contemporary Communication (Dangdai Chuanbo), 2, 30–32. Wu, H. M. (2006). A Winter Not Only for Metros but Also for the Whole Newspaper Industry (Bujin shi dushibao de dongtian, yehsi zhengge baoye de dongtian). Youth Journalist (Qingnian jizhe), 3, 9–10. Xiao, J. H. (2005). Chinese Newspapers Wandering and Anticipation in the Cold Winds (Zhongguo baoye hanfeng zhong de paihuai yu qidai). Media (Chuanmei), 12, 7–10. Yao, L. Y. (2015). Innovation in News Production Based on the Model of ‘Central Kitchen’ (Jiyu ‘zhongyang chufang’ moshi de xinwen shengchan linian chuangxin). Press Circles (Xinwenjie), 14, 63–67. Yu, G. M. (2006). Interpreting the Keywords in the Current Development of Chinese Media (Jiedu dangqian zhongguo chuanmei fazhan guanjianci). News and Writing (Xinwen yu Xiezuo), 9, 3–6.

Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism 35 Yuan, Z. J. (2013). The Marketing Strategies of Internet-based Media: Designing a Path for Newspaper Industry’s Omni-Media Transformation (Hulinanwanghua de meiti yu yingxiao fuhe jingying: baoye quanmeiti zhuanxing de lujing sheji). News Research (Xinwen Daxue), 6, 131–138 + 82. Zhang, B. A. (1995). The AVID Digital News Gathering System of’95NAB (’95NAB de AVID DNG shuzi xinwen caifang xitong). Modern Television Technology (Xiandai Dianshi Jishu), 2, 1–6. Zhang, S. H. (2009). A Look Back at Three Decades of Newspaper Research in China (Woguo baoye 30 nian huimou). China Newspaper Industry (Zhongguo Baoye), 2, 33–38. Zhao, K. W. (2003). The Design and Implementation of All-digital News Broadcast System (Quanshuzi xinwen yanbo xitong de sheji yu shixian). Radio and Television Technology (Guangbodianshi Jishu), 7, 54–57. Zhao, R., & Wu, X. (2020). A Historical Examination of Digital Journalism Research and Its Changing Discourse. (Woguo shuzi xinwen yanjiu de lishi kaocha yu huayu bianqian). News and Writing (Xinwen yu xiezuo), 6, 45–53. Zhu, P. Y. (1995). On the Advantages of the S-VHS TV News Gathering System (Shilun S-VHS dianshi xinwen caibian xitong de fazhan youshi). Western Radio and Television (Xibu Guangbodianshi), 2, 8–10. Zuo, Y. (1961). Characteristics of Journalistic Materials in the Press (Baoshe ziliao, gongzuo de tedian). Craft of Journalism (Xinwen Yewu), 6, 45–47.

4

(Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China A Qualitative Study of Xinhua News Agency’s Online Media Content Xin Xin

Introduction Chinese internet users are increasingly turning to sources other than Xinhua and similar state-owned media outlets for news and information. This is worrying not only for Xinhua and its equivalents, but also for the Communist Party of China (CPC), the country’s ruling party since 1949 (Xin, 2018; Zhao, 2013). It is worth noting that the CPC’s revolutionary ideology used to be rather effective in motivating journalists and cultural workers to make their symbolic work well-liked by the masses when the Party was based in Yan’an and other rural areas which it controlled in the 1940s (Liu, 1997; Xin, 2012; Zhao, 1998). Nowadays, however, it is becoming increasingly difficul for Xinhua and other central media to gain the same degree of popularity that they once enjoyed because of the rise of the internet, especially social media (Xin, 2018). Therefore, Xinhua has been under increasing pressure to modify its online provision in order to appeal to younger generations. Against this background, this chapter explores to what extent Xinhua has managed to popularize its core party journalism content, especially in terms of handling topics concerning the Party. This issue is also closely linked with a broader debate around the transformations undergone by Chinese journalism since the early 1980s: To what extent is popular journalism compatible with traditional party journalism? Some scholars suggest that market-oriented popular journalism aiming to meet audience needs is inevitably in tension with Party-oriented officia journalism’s propaganda function (Goldman, 1994; Hsiao & Yang, 1990; Lee, 2000). However, research on the transformations of the Chinese press since the 1980s, including a more recent study focusing specifically on China Youth Daily, illustrates that traditional Party organs have tried to combine both roles, and their news portfolios are now leaning towards the more popular end of journalism in order to be able to survive (Lee et al., 2006; Li, 1998; Wang et al., 2018; Zhao, 1998). It is also worth noting that DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-4

(Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China 37 the rise of popular journalism is not unique to China; it has become a global phenomenon (Thussu, 2008). Its wider social impact has been debated in liberal societies since at least the mid-1990s (Thussu, 2008). The studies carried out in the Chinese context have focused mainly on newspapers (Lee et al., 2006; Li, 1998; Wang et al., 2018; Zhao, 1998). Hence, this chapter draws on the relatively understudied case of Xinhua, the pioneer as well as a representative case of China’s party journalism (Xin, 2012). The origin of Xinhua can be traced back to the early 1930s. As one of the most influential news organizations in mainland China, Xinhua has played a key role in setting the general tone for other media in covering politically sensitive issues ever since (Xin, 2012). This makes Xinhua a suitable case for this study. The first two sections of this chapter set up the theoretical framework within which this study is situated. The third section explains the method employed for collecting primary data. The fourth section presents the main research findings generated from a contextual analysis of an example selected from Xinhua’s recent online media productions. The final section draws some conclusions.

What Makes Journalism Popular in the Western Context? In the Western context, defined in a broad sense, the notion of popular in relation to culture and mass communications has been variously defined. Raymond Williams (1983, p. 237) argues, based on a study of the history of the British press, that the ‘popular’ entails four different meanings: In an older sense, popular means ‘inferior kinds of work’ and ‘work deliberately setting out to win favour’; in a more modern sense, popular refers to work being ‘well-liked by many people’ or to ‘culture actually made by the people for themselves’. The main problem with the existing definitions of the popular, as John Storey (2015) suggests, lies not so much in the lack of theoretical agreement on the concept of ‘popular’ itself, but mostly in the seemingly taken-for-granted quantitative approach to its operationalization. On the one hand, the ‘popular’ of popular culture/journalism needs to be justified by including a quantitative dimension of the conceptualization. On the other, relying too much on a quantitative methodology offers little clarification about the nature of popular culture but instead generates meaningless figures (Storey, 2015). Bearing Storey’s methodological concerns in mind, this study adopts a more nuanced approach to understanding popular journalism in general and its contemporary practice in China specificall . Historically, the term ‘popular’ emerged in early discussions about European elites’ concerns over the masses, who were also referred to as ‘ordinary people’ or ‘craftsmen and peasants’ (Burke, 2009, p. xiii). The ‘popular’

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was later put forward by the left in opposition to the term ‘the working class’ (Sparks, 1992, p. 25). In both cases, it seems natural to argue that popular culture and journalism must necessarily contradict each other. For Stuart Hall (1981, p. 238), such a contradiction is not class-based but exists between ‘the people’ and ‘the power-bloc’. Hall refers to the power-bloc as an alliance of the dominating forces, including the media (Fiske, 1992; Hall, 1981). The contradiction between the people and the power-bloc, as suggested by Hall, serves as an importance source of popular culture/ media, which in turn neutralizes the conflict caused by the contradiction (Hall, 1981). When it comes to the question of what constitutes popular journalism in a liberal democracy, the discussion often takes a different direction. Popular journalism is generally ‘defined in contrast to what is seen as “quality journalism” ’ (Sparks, 1992, pp. 38–39). In general, popular journalism concentrates on the ‘immediate issues of daily life’ over ‘those concerns traditionally ascribed to the “public sphere” ’ (Sparks, 1992, p. 39). By asking what happened to certain groups of people instead of the general question of what happened, the main subject of a popular news story has been effectively personalized (Sparks, 1992). Hall (1981, p. 227) defines the approach to personalizing news subjects by creating documentary effects as ‘popular naturalism’. For Hall (1981), it is particularly problematic when popular naturalism and documentary effects are employed together to form ‘an easier passage into the mind of an audience’ (p. 228). In contrast to Hall’s concerns with the negative effects of popular journalism, John Fiske is more positive about the encroachment of popular culture into journalism. Fiske (1989a, p. 21) argues that popular culture is ‘potentially, and often actually, progressive (though not radical)’. It should be seen as ‘a productive process’, during which the people or ‘popular readers’ tend to select certain texts only and turn them into popular texts, which can be sensational and/or excessive (Fiske, 1989a, pp. 142–143). To make a text popular, it ‘must have points of relevance’ to various readers in various contexts (Fiske, 1989a, p. 141). Fiske’s approach to popular journalism emphasizes readers’ engagement with the process of manufacturing popular cultural products, such as soap opera and popular news (Fiske, 1989a, 1989b). In order to make news popular, Fiske suggests that it should borrow from soaps (Fiske, 1992). This means that rather than promoting ‘a final truth’, popular news should ‘provoke discussion (like soap opera) or disagreement (like sport-casting)’ (Fiske, 1989b, p. 195). In addition, popular news in general and TV news in particular ‘must meet the key criteria of popular taste, those of relevance and pleasurable productivity’ (Fiske, 1989b, p. 185).

(Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China 39 In terms of relevance, it is mostly ‘a matter of content’ (Fiske, 1989b, p. 186). There are different levels of cultural relevance in operation, which can be roughly divided into the macro, the middle, and the micro levels. Of the three, the micro level of relevance, which makes connections between the text and the readers’ everyday lives, is the most important one for motivating people to watch TV news or read a newspaper story (Fiske, 1989b). In some respects, Fiske’s notion of ‘popular relevance’ is similar to Hall’s concept of popular naturalism, though Fiske considers the relationship between popular culture and journalism much more positively. Fiske sees ‘popular productivity’ as ‘more a matter of form’ (Fiske, 1989b, p. 190). In order to enhance the relevance of news content as well as to make the form of news pleasurable to watch, oralization of news is essential. In other words, popular news should be essentially oral and easy to bring up in everyday conversations. For the purposes of analysing Xinhua’s online content, the following three aspects are particularly relevant to this study: Fiske’s relevance or Sparks’s personalisation of news, Fiske’s popular productivity, and the oralization realized by using less formal/oral expressions. Before applying these criteria to the case of Xinhua, the following section will briefly discuss the rise of popular journalism in the Chinese context.

The Rise of Popular Journalism in China Popular journalism in the Western sense emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s in mainland China as a result of media marketization (Zhao, 1998). The divide between quality and popular journalism in mainland China has never been as clear-cut as it has, for example, in the United Kingdom or Germany (Wang et al., 2018). A distinction can be made between China’s traditional party journalism/Party-oriented media and market-oriented media (Xin, 2006; Zhao, 1998). However, such a dichotomy has been questioned recently since, the argument goes, it no longer accurately reflects the greater variety of Chinese news media outlets brought about by media marketization, globalization, and digitalization over the past decades (Wang et al., 2018). Thus, a more nuanced classification seems necessar . Strictly speaking, as the only ruling party, the CPC currently owns all news media in mainland China, though the vast majority of them are no longer fully funded by the Party-state’s subsidies (Zhao, 2008). In this sense, the type of journalism that China’s news media as a whole practises on a daily basis remains formally ‘party journalism’. All of China’s news media outlets, both Party-oriented and market-oriented, have to follow the Party’s ideological directions, no matter what formats and styles they adopt. Meanwhile, the political, economic, and social costs for not obeying the

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‘Party line’ remain high (Zhao, 1998, 2008). However, this does not mean that there are no differences in content and style among China’s news media outlets. In fact, there has been a diversification of news media outlets across all media platforms since the early 1980s, especially since 1992, as an outcome of the ongoing media transformations in China (Xin, 2012; Zhao, 1998, 2008). A less formal type of party journalism, focusing on humaninterest stories as well as various forms of entertainment has emerged in the Chinese press, on television, in radio, as well as online. This ‘popularized’ genre of Chinese journalism has been described as either ‘popular journalism with Chinese characteristics’ (Li, 1998, p. 307) or ‘popular officia media’ (Wang et al., 2018, p. 1). According to Wang, Sparks, and Huang, ‘popular officia media’, namely central state media such as China Youth Daily, tend to present ‘the party and business elite in a human light and thus constitutes a renewal of the repertoire of hegemonic devices at the party’s disposal’ (Wang et al., 2018, p. 1). Fundamentally, however, the ‘popularized’ genre of Chinese journalism is still a type of party journalism. More accurately, it is a popularized version of party journalism. Along with other Party-owned news organizations, Xinhua historically aimed to simultaneously serve the Party and ‘the people’, even though the notion of ‘the people’ in the Chinese context has constantly changed (Xin, 2006, 2012). Treating ‘the people’ as news consumers is a recent development in Chinese media marketization (Xin, 2006). As a traditional news agency, Xinhua experienced difficult in reaching readers directly, especially in the pre-internet age, as the majority of its news subscribers/clients were media outlets and institutions (Xin, 2012). In the new digital environment, individual users are able to access Xinhua’s news directly online, mostly via mobile devices. In theory, this has created a new opportunity for Xinhua to serve ‘the people’. In this context, Xinhua has in recent years expanded its online news and information services, which can now be accessed via Xinhuanet.com, along with various mobile news apps (Song, 2013). In addition, in late 2012 Xinhua set up a new division producing and marketing online-only content (Song, 2013). It aims to target nearly 1 billion internet users in the country, the vast majority of whom are under 39 and often go online via smartphones (CNNIC, 2021). Xinhua’s online output tends to be more market-oriented, especially in comparison with Xinhua’s traditional wire news (Lv & Chen, 2015). The introduction of a direct-to-people online news service is part of Xinhua’s efforts to adapt to the rapidly changing news environment in China, where the internet and social media platforms play an increasingly important role in audiences’ media consumption. For a leading central news organization like Xinhua, the effort to make news coverage more popular online is not only a response to business and journalistic incentives but also a political task, in the context of China’s hegemonic battle to win ‘hearts

(Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China 41 and minds’ both at home and abroad (Xin, 2018; Zhao, 2013). In particular, the CPC is concerned that it may lose the attention of younger generations in the new digital environment unless messages about the Party and from the Party are delivered in styles that are more appealing to them (Xin, 2018). There is thus a sense of urgency and necessity behind the adoption of more popular styles and forms by outlets practising China’s traditional party journalism. In this sense, the modification of China’s party journalism towards popularization should be seen as ‘progressive’ or evolutionary rather than as a ‘radical’ change, similar to the ways in which Fiske (1989a, pp. 160–161) has described the nature of popular culture.

The Research Design In order to address the aforementioned research aims, a qualitative contextual analysis of Xinhua’s online media content was employed as the main method of data analysis. Fiske’s approach (1989a, p. 108) to reading popular texts emphasizes ‘contextuality’, which derives from ‘the unique relations of this particular linguistic use to this particular contextual moment’. The contextual reading is useful in handling the ‘transient and impermanent’ type of subtle changes made to media content and presentation (Fiske, 1989a, p. 108). For this contextual analysis, a well-known example of Xinhua’s online media output was chosen. It is a video clip, known as ‘Xinhua’s “Divine Tune” ’. It covers one of the most popular topics of party-oriented journalism: The Party’s policy, specifically the top Party leader Xi Jinping’s ‘Four Comprehensives’ policy. It is analysed by reference to the criteria of popular journalism discussed earlier, namely: (1) the criterion of relevance/ personalisation of news; (2) the criterion of popular productivity; and (3) the criterion of oralization. In order to understand the main considerations behind Xinhua’s production of the video, the producers’ notes were also analysed. Partial notes were published in Xinhua’s internal journal Journalism Practice Weekly. Additional information was accessed through publicly available interviews with the Xinhua journalists involved in the production of the piece. The producers’ notes provide contextual information about how the original ideas about the piece were pitched, developed, and realized.

A Contextual Analysis of ‘Four Comprehensives’1 This three-minute video recites Xi Jinping’s political slogans, first proclaimed in a speech given during an officia visit to Jiangsu Province in December 2014 (Guo, 2014). The slogans are derived from Xi’s famous

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political philosophy – the so-called ‘Four Comprehensives’ (4Cs). The 4Cs refer to Xi’s calls on all Party members to: Comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society; Comprehensively deepen reform; Comprehensively govern the nation according to law; Comprehensively strictly govern the Party. This video aims to promote Xi’s policy among the younger generation of Chinese audiences online. It seeks to do so by adopting a new strategy, described by a senior editor sarcastically but effectively as ‘brainwashing + acting cute’ (Qian & Li, 2016). In many ways, this strategy concerns the personalization and oralization of media content. It has arguably worked effectively in recent years in the realms of advertising, public relations, and political communication in China (Qian & Li, 2016). The choice of a suitable format for the video was a paramount consideration for Xinhua’s editorial team (Qian & Li, 2016). They believed that a more popular format would make a difference in attracting younger viewers when it came to covering a traditional ‘party journalism’ topic like Xi’s policy. An animated cartoon immediately became their favourite choice: Animation is considered one of the most popular formats for Chinese journalism in the age of social media, especially among younger viewers (Qian & Li, 2016). There are well-known examples of animated cartoons designed to promote the government’s policies, most notably a cartoon on China’s 13th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development (Qian & Li, 2016). They provided a model for the Xinhua editorial team behind the 4Cs video. The next important issue for Xinhua producers to tackle was how to give the topic a personal angle in order to make it more relevant to younger audiences’ everyday lives. Personalization is an important component in the wider strategy to popularize party journalism in China. For this purpose, Xinhua’s cartoon portrays two main characters – an unidentified young female figure in a red dress and an anonymous adult male figure wearing a pair of black-framed glasses. Both characters are given clear gender and social roles: The girl is curious about Xi’s policy but not shy in spite of her ignorance; the man, who seems more knowledgeable, offers to help her and patiently explains in vernacular what the 4Cs stand for. The video also employs one of the common ‘brainwashing’ strategies in advertising – the repetitive use of key words taken from Xi’s policy directly in the lyrics of a rap song (Qian & Li, 2016). The interactions between the two main characters are depicted as their ‘having fun together’ in spite of their differences in gender, age, education, and social background. This can be seen as a reversal of the way in which Xinhua used to send out the formal top-down messages from and about the Party.

(Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China 43 The video is intentionally constructed to attract younger viewers. It opens with the male figure singing a rap song, turning the short phrase ‘Four comprehensives’ into a counting rhyme in rap music. This makes the female character curious about what he is singing. Her question is not answered directly. When the man responds, ‘Have you heard of the 4Cs?’, the girl hesitantly replies: ‘[Are they] about the Chinese dream or something like that?’ In this way, the opening scene manages to create an informal tone for the video, carefully avoiding sounding like the male figure is talking on behalf of the Party. This approach is also quite different from Xinhua’s traditional party journalism, which is often perceived as dull preaching delivered on behalf of the Party (Lv & Chen, 2015). The opening scene is also an implicit recognition that young people know little about the 4Cs and might find it difficul to relate them to Xi’s ‘Chinese dream’. In order to ensure that the video resonated with younger audiences, Xinhua’s production team included the target audience’s peers, young producers born in the 1980s and 1990s (Li, 2016). Their comments and suggestions were taken seriously in the planning and production of the video (Li, 2016). This ‘referring down’ effort was often highlighted by Xinhua’s producers in their reflections on the reasons for the success of the video. Arguably, the source of the video’s ‘popular productivity’ derives mainly from letting the two cartoon characters ‘act cute’ in speech and action, which might look a bit excessive and unnatural to a non-Chinese audience. In China, however, ‘acting cute’ has become not only socially acceptable in recent years, but also highly regarded in public and media discourses, and it does not carry negative connotations. As a news strategy, the ‘acting cute’ method works particularly well in circumstances in which the news topic is serious, mostly concerning politics. In this sense, the ‘acting cute’ method intends to create an effect similar to the personalization of news brought about by popular journalism in the Anglo-American context. In order to be able to act cute, both cartoon characters are singing and dancing together to rap music, only briefly towards the end of the video joining a crowd to sing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy together. The combined use of rap and classical music in the video results in a certain degree of contradiction, which, according to Fiske’s reading, is also a typical feature of popular culture (Fiske, 1989b). Yet, the main objective of the cartoon is, of course, not to provoke its audiences or make them feel uncomfortable about Xi’s policy. Rather, the cartoon aims to promote Xi’s policy as well as inform young people about it. However, the use of the fictional cartoon characters somehow fails to generate the type of popular productivity created in a documentary. The kind of popular productivity produced by documentaries, according to Hall (1981, p. 227), is closer to popular naturalism than fictional content.

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Documentaries tend to be more effective in shaping and reshaping audiences’ perception of social reality. Conversely, this implies that the choice of animated cartoons, while succeeding in appealing to young audiences, was not as effective as the choice of a non-fictional format of popular journalism in generating an effect of trustworthiness in the target audience. For Xinhua’s producers, however, the trade-off between the two formats and their differential impact on a target audience’s perceptions were not a major concern. They were more concerned with finding a way of creating a message that could appeal to younger audiences in order to win their support for Xi’s policy. In such circumstances, oralizing the text in order to make it more accessible for its younger audiences was equally crucial for the purpose of personalization. In explaining what ‘Comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society’ means in the Chinese context, the rap song in the video firstly proposes a conceptual connection between the ‘moderately prosperous society’ and everybody’s dream. Since the concept of dream remains vague, the video then makes a more relatable connection between the ‘moderately prosperous society’ and people’s everyday lives. Vernacular expressions, instead of the written text of traditional Xinhua style, are used to illustrate what daily life for ordinary people should look like in this society. Life there is described in the video as: ‘We will not feel stressed [by the money issue] as we have [enough] money in our hands’. The use of ‘We’ is intended to denote an inclusive society. Meanwhile, the cartoon subtly divides Us from an unspecified Them, implying that building a ‘moderately prosperous society’ remains a national project in China. In addition, the video envisages that in such a society, environmental concerns, especially the worrisome air pollution, will be resolved eventually. Environmental problems, corruption, and other social problems are framed not as open criticism of the government, but as urgent issues that the country is tackling under Xi’s leadership. As such, the video has inherited from traditional party journalism the ‘positive’ approach to reporting social problems plaguing contemporary Chinese society.

Discussion and Conclusion This analysis has shown that in order to appeal to a particular part of the audience – the younger generations of Chinese – the cartoon on Xi’s 4Cs has employed forms of contemporary popular culture suitable for online circulation via social media. In comparison with Xinhua’s traditional news style, this example is clearly different in terms of news strategies and the journalistic style it adopts.

(Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China 45 Using the key criteria of popular journalism, namely personalization, popular productivity and oralization, this case shows how Xinhua, the pioneer as well as the most representative case of China’s traditional party journalism, is trying to popularize its online media output about the Party in the new media environment. Meanwhile, Xinhua’s efforts to popularize its online output have not changed the nature of the journalism that is practiced by Xinhua on a daily basis. It is worth noting that Xinhua’s editorial modifications, such as taking younger journalists’ opinions more seriously, have indeed created a valuable space for further editorial negotiations and new experiments. However, how big this space can become still depends largely on the Party’s guidelines. The goals informing Xinhua’s online media practice are consistent with the state news agency’s traditional role as a Party organ. They are also in keeping with its ideological function, which, of course, predates the internet and social media. The case of Xinhua shows that popular journalism is compatible with traditional party journalism in China and that the latter can be easily adapted to a more popular form of journalism, borrowing from the conventions and genres of Western popular culture, such as rap music (originating in the United States). In this sense, the journalism practised by Xinhua is indicative of the extent to which it is possible to combine the status of traditional Party organ with a new journalistic orientation that seeks to make the messages from and about the Party more appealing to younger Chinese audiences. Since this study is exploratory in nature, its findings are only suggestive of the current trends in Chinese journalism generally and Xinhua’s online production specificall . Future research could include more cases, comparing the popularization strategies of Xinhua with other state-owned central media in order to identify similarities and differences.

Note 1

The video clip is available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHUqJfvX56M.

References Burke, P. (2009). Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (3rd ed.). Ashgate. China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC). (2021). Statistical Report on Internet Development in China. Retrieved from www.cnnic.com.cn/IDR/ReportDownloads/202104/P020210420557302172744.pdf Fiske, J. (1989a). Understanding Popular Culture. Unwin Hyman. Fiske, J. (1989b). Reading the Popular. Routledge. Fiske, J. (1992). Popularity and the Politics of Information. In P. Dahlgren & C. Sparks (Eds.), Journalism and Popular Culture (pp. 45–63). Sage.

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Goldman, M. (1994). The Role of the Press in Post-Mao Political Struggles. In C. C. Lee (Ed.), China’s Media, Media’s China (pp. 23–35). Westview. Guo, J. K. (2014). Xi Jinping shouti ‘Sige quanmian’ cuixiang zhiguo lizheng ‘Jijiehao’ (Xi Jinping addressed about ‘Four Comprehensives’ for the first time) (in Chinese). Retrieved from http://opinion.people.com.cn/n/2014/1217/c100326224297.html Hall, S. (1981). Notes on deconstructing ‘the popular’. In R. Samuel (Ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory (pp. 227–240). Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hsiao, C. C., & Yang M. R. (1990). ‘Don’t Force Us to Lie’: The Case of the World Economic Herald (pp. 111–121). In C. C. Lee (Ed.), Voices of China: The Interplay of Politics and Journalism. Guilford. Lee, C. C. (2000). Chinese Communication: Prism, Trajectories, and Modes of Understanding. In C. C. Lee (Ed.), Power, Money, and Media: Communication Patterns and Bureaucratic Control in Cultural China (pp. 3–44). Northwestern University Press. Lee, C. C., He, Z., & Huang, Y. (2006). ‘Chinese Party Publicity Inc.’ Conglomerated: The Case of the Shenzhen Press Group. Media, Culture & Society, 28, 581–602. Li, K., & Yizhi, Y. (2016). ‘Shenqu’ chuangxin zhongda zhuti chuanbo (The ‘Divine Tune’ has created an innovative communication approach to important themes). Journalism Practice Weekly (electronic version), 19, 25–26 (in Chinese). Li, Z. R. (1998). Popular Journalism with Chinese Characteristics: From Revolutionary Modernity to Popular Modernity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 1:3, 307–328. Liu, K. (1997). Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China. Boundary 2, 24:3, 99–122. Lv, Y., & Chen, Y. R. (2015). Cong ‘Xinhuati’ dao ‘xin xinhuati’ (From ‘Xinhua style’ to ‘new Xinhua style’). Chinese Journalist, 10 (in Chinese). Retrieved from http://news.xinhuanet.com/newmedia/2015-11/18/c_134829421.htm Qian, T., & Li, H. Z. (2016). ‘Lianheguo ban Shenqu’ shi ruhe liancheng de? (How was the UN version of [Xinhua’s] ‘Divine Tune’ made?). Journalism Practice Weekly (electronic version), 10, 10–12 (in Chinese). Song, N. (2013). Xinhuashe shouci fabu ‘zhongguo xinxing meiti fazhan baogao 2016’ (Xinhua News Agency Firstly Released the Report on the Development of China’s New Media 2016). Retrieved from http://media.people.com. cn/n/2013/0515/c14677-21495799.html Sparks, C. (1992). Popular Journalism: Theories and Practices. In P. Dahlgren & C. Sparks (Eds.). Journalism and Popular Culture (pp. 24–44). Sage. Storey, J. (2015). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (7th ed.). Routledge. Thussu, D. (2008). News as Entertainment: The Rise of Global Infotainment. Sage. Wang, H., Sparks, C., & Yu, H. (2018). Popular Journalism in China: A Study of China Youth Daily. Journalism, 19:9–10, 1203–1219. Williams, R. (1983). Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Flamingo. Xin, X. (2006). A Developing Market in News: Xinhua News Agency and Chinese Newspapers. Media, Culture & Society 28:1, 45–66, 2006.

(Re-)Popularizing Party Journalism in China 47 Xin, X. (2012). How the Market is Changing China’s News: The Case of Xinhua News Agency. Lexington Books. Xin, X. (2018). Financialisation of News in China in the Age of the Internet: The Case of Xinhuanet. Media, Culture & Society, 40:7, 1039–1054. Zhao, Y. Z. (1998). Media, Market and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line. University of Illinois Press. Zhao, Y. Z. (2008). Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflic . Rowman & Littlefield. Zhao, Y. Z. (2013). China’s Quest for ‘Soft Power’: Imperatives, Impediments and Irreconcilable Tensions? Javnost: The Public (Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture) 20:4, 17–30.

5

The Tabloidization of Party Media How the People’s Daily and CCTV Adapt to Social Media Kecheng Fang

Since the late 1970s, China’s media landscape has been roughly divided into two camps: the mouthpieces of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that serve as propaganda tools to guide and shape public opinion, and the commercial media outlets that publish more diversified and mass-appeal content in order to survive and thrive in the market (Chan, 1993; Huang, 2001). The latter are still state-owned, but they have greatly challenged the Party mouthpieces, which used to be the dominant voice in China. As various scholars have argued, with press commercialization and the emergence of the internet, the circulation and impact of the Party’s old propaganda machine had been diminishing (Lee, 2000; Pei, 1994). To many observers’ surprise, however, the Party media have been regaining their influence since 2012, the year when The People’s Daily, the Central Party Committee’s newspaper, launched its officia Weibo account. CCTV News, the news channel of the state-run China Central Television, joined at around the same time. Soon, they were among the most followed, shared, and liked social media accounts on Weibo and WeChat, China’s two dominant social media platforms. Many of their posts have gone viral. In addition, a number of Party media have more than one ‘sub-account’ specializing in niche areas. The People’s Daily’s sub-accounts ‘Xuexi Xiaozu’ (literally meaning ‘The Group to Study Xi Jinping’) and ‘Xiake Dao’ (literally meaning ‘Knight’s Island’) are the most popular and influential ones (Wong, 2015). It should be noted that the print versions of the Party newspapers and magazines rely largely on mandatory subscription, but following their social media accounts is purely on a voluntary basis. Considering this difference, the popularity of their Weibo and WeChat accounts becomes even more striking. The propaganda machine’s adaptation to social media platforms poses important questions to students of Chinese media. It has drastically changed the power balance between Party mouthpieces and commercial media, and it has also altered China’s social media landscape. In this chapter, based on content analysis of Party media’s social media posts and in-depth interviews DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-5

The Tabloidization of Party Media 49 with editors, I argue that officia media in China have been going through a process of tabloidization, which has been the most significant development of China’s Party media during recent decade.

Party Media in China: Decline and Resurgence The CPC considers propaganda as a key to its success in gaining and maintaining power – ‘the shaft of the pen’ is no less important than ‘the barrel of the gun’ (Brady, 2009). In the Mao era, Party media monopolized the information channel of the Chinese people and had great impact on them (Sukosd & Wang, 2013; Winfield & Peng, 2005). Since the start of economic reforms in the late 1970s, however, Party media lost their influence to a newly emerged group of media outlets – the commercial media, most of which were known as evening papers, metropolitan papers, or city papers (Chan, 1993; Huang, 2001; Zhao, 2000). They are still state-owned, but they enjoy relatively greater autonomy and publish more diversified, massappeal content to attract readers and advertising. Studies have found that Party media performed much worse than their commercial counterparts in market competition, especially in the 1990s and 2000s (Huang, 2001). The gap between their advertising revenues were ‘common across different regions, consistent in timing, and invariant in scale’ (Chen & Guo, 1998, p. 70). The contrast is not surprising – after all, commercial outlets are meant to seek success in the market, while Party organs are more tightly controlled and have to invest most effort in disseminating officia information and serving as propaganda instruments in a top-down manner. To many Chinese, while officia media might be better for understanding the policies and goals of the government, it was the commercial media that addressed ordinary people’s concerns and provided more unbiased information (Stockmann, 2013, pp. 163–168). As a result, commercial newspapers were mostly sold at newsstands and subscribed by private households, while Party newspapers largely relied on publicly subsidized, mandatory subscriptions. With the popularization of the internet and social media, however, the trend has stopped and even reversed. It turns out that digital technology has been a curse rather than a blessing for commercial media. Consistent with the global journalism crisis resulting from the collapse of the business model, commercial media in China also experienced a sharp decline in readership and advertising revenues. A number of them, including some famous titles such as The Beijing Times, were forced to close (Wang & Sparks, 2019). The remaining news organizations have been struggling with the loss of revenue and talents and the decline in quality (Repnikova & Fang, 2015). Meanwhile, the Party-state has been constantly adapting to digital media. In addition to censorship and the filtering of information, which have

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been used since the early days of the internet in China (Roberts, 2018), the authorities have also gone from defensive to offensive and have been ‘actively shaping cyberspace to their own strategic advantage’ (Deibert, 2015, p. 64). They hire online commentators, or the so-called ‘Fifty-Cent Party’ (Han, 2015), to post pro-regime content and use ‘positive energy’ as an ideological tool to discipline people’s subjectivities (Chen & Wang, 2019). The officia propaganda is found to be increasingly engaging and participatory (Repnikova & Fang, 2018). The government has also launched digital initiatives to ‘occupy the online public opinion field’and disseminate soft propaganda content (Fang & Repnikova, 2021). Party media have also been actively upgrading their propaganda, especially on social media platforms. As of late September 2021, The People’s Daily had more than 140 million followers on Weibo, and CCTV News had more than 120 million, far more than any of their commercial counterparts. Their WeChat public accounts are also hugely popular – almost every article they publish has been viewed more than 100,000 times. The huge amounts of followers, views, shares, and likes Party media have received on social media indicate that they are regaining popularity and credibility they once enjoyed during the Mao era. In this chapter, I attempt to investigate this intriguing phenomenon and answer the following research questions: What kinds of content published by Party media’s social media accounts have gone viral? What factors and promotion strategies have contributed to the virality? How does the political system contribute to the virality of Party media’s social media accounts?

Data and Methods To explore the factors that drive Party mouthpieces’ social media accounts viral, I focus on the WeChat public platform. With the help of newrank.cn, a leading social media analytics company in China, I collected all the articles published by the two most influential Party media accounts (The People’s Daily and CCTV News) during the first six months of 2018 (N = 4,553), as well as the amount of views and likes for each article. I adjusted the views and likes according to the follower growth rate for each account, so that articles published in June didn’t gain advantage over those published in January. Because the distributions of pageviews and likes were highly skewed and had very wide ranges, I log-transformed them. The overall correlation between these two log-transformed, adjusted variables was as high as .87, so I combined them to create a new index for the popularity of each article. This index was used in the following analysis. Besides the popularity of each article, I am also interested in article characteristics and their relations with pageviews and likes. I randomly selected

The Tabloidization of Party Media 51 Table 5.1 Predictors of online content virality Category

Previous literature

Examples from Party media’s social media accounts

‘Zhong Nanshan’s regimen: Cappella et al. surprisingly, the most crucial (2015); Hart et al. thing is not exercise; it’s . . .’ (2009); Thorson (2008) Emotional Novelty Wu and Huberman ‘The 7 things you should clean appeals (2007) in your room, you will never guess’ Guadagno et al. Anger ‘Shame on you, Western media (2013) which produce fake news about China!]’ Sexual appeal Porter and Golan ‘Beautiful girl molested in the (2006) elevator . . .’ Pride Nikolinakou and ‘We always feel proud of being King (2018) a Chinese’ Social influence, Fu and Sim (2011); ‘The whole world is watching popularity cues Garrett (2011) this small city’; ‘Many people are reading this recently’ Multimedia material Veale et al. (2015) Posting photos, infographics, and videos Targeting and tailoring Rimer and Kreuter ‘Those born in the 1980s should (2006) change your ID cards now’ Information utility

20% of all the articles, resulting in a sample of 452 articles published by The People’s Daily and 445 by CCTV News. Two research assistants handcoded a set of content characteristics for each article, which were borrowed and adapted from previous studies on content virality (see Table 5.1 for a summary of predictors of virality). The inter-coder reliability (Krippendorff s α) ranged from 1 on objective items (e.g., whether the article included a sentence explicitly requesting readers to share it) to .85 on more subjective items (e.g., whether the title elicited horror). A closer look at the coded items and their correlations with the popularity index revealed no significant difference between The People’s Daily and CCTV News samples. Therefore, I combined the samples (N = 897) in the statistical analysis. Numbers could describe the popularity and characteristics of media content, and reveal their relations, but they could not tell us about the production process behind the scenes. To get a more comprehensive picture, I conducted semistructured, in-depth interviews with 12 social media editors who managed the

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officia Weibo and WeChat accounts of The People’s Daily and CCTV News. The interviews were all face-to-face and were conducted between June and August 2015, with follow-up interviews in the summer of 2019. The average length for the interviews was between 1 and 1.5 hours. The major questions covered topics such as how they do their daily jobs, the methods and strategies used to promote the social media accounts, how they decide the content and the format, how they compete with other accounts, and how they interact with followers. Considering the sensitive nature of the topic in China, the interviewees were promised anonymity before they were interviewed.

Appealing to the Mass Through Tabloidization How do Party media manage to go viral on social media platforms? The first thing to note is that their social media content is vastly different from what they publish in traditional media (newspapers and TV programs). ‘We only occasionally use the articles published in the paper – with titles changed and introductory paragraphs rewritten. More than 90% of the articles we publish on Weibo and WeChat are not seen in the paper’, confided a social media editor at The People’s Daily during an interview. Then, what do these social media posts look like, and which ones are more likely to go viral? To identify the determinants of an article’s virality, I ran a hierarchical multiple regression analysis predicting the popularity index. The regression model explained 30.5% of the variance in article popularity (see Table 5.2). Several content strategies could be summarized from both the regression analysis and the interviews. First, information utility contributed to virality. For instance, both accounts publish articles on how the NPC (National People’s Congress) and CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference), the most important annual political meetings in China, would influence ordinary people’s lives. Meanwhile, the print version of The People’s Daily focused on how political leaders delivered remarks during the meetings. It was a clear comparison between Party media’s traditional version and the social media appearance. Other viral informational articles include how to avoiding danger in daily life, health advice from a famous and widely trusted doctor, and so on. According to my interviews, useful information was indeed a major category of content on Party media’s social media accounts. One of the editors shared the following story: One day another editor and I were stuck in an elevator. We complained in the WeChat group chat of our editorial team. Soon, they sent us the

The Tabloidization of Party Media 53 Table 5.2 Hierarchical regression model predicting article popularity DV: Article popularity index Topic characteristics Topic – Politics Topic – Economy and business Topic – International news Topic – National interest Topic – Education Topic – Culture, sports, and entertainment Topic – Science and technology Topic – Health Topic – Practical information Topic – Self-help, chicken soup stories Topic – Other domestic news Targeting specific geographic area Targeting specific age range Title characteristics Title length Number of exclamation marks in title Number of question marks in title ‘Recommended’ in title Negation in title Popularity cues in title ‘You’ in title Xi Jinping in title Main body characteristics Originality Amount of pictures (log transformed) Amount of videos Emotions and appeals Novelty Anger Sexual appeal Pride Request sharing and liking Request sharing in title Request liking in main body Request sharing in main body Constant Observations R2 Adjusted R2

−0.666*** (0.142) −0.334 (0.175) −0.874*** (0.205) 0.858** (0.294) 0.115 (0.263) 0.207 (0.166) −0.445 (0.241) 0.090 (0.171) 0.694** (0.165) 1.371*** (0.182) Reference group 0.356 (0.269) 0.100 (0.257) −0.030** (0.011) 0.329** (0.111) −0.098 (0.112) 0.040 (0.195) 0.098 (0.195) −0.548 (0.545) 0.158 (0.138) 0.666* (0.320) −0.161 (0.115) 0.170* (0.066) −0.021 (0.091) −0.015 (0.172) 0.851*** (0.167) −1.518 (0.879) 0.733** (0.206) −0.649 (0.373) 2.090*** (0.267) −0.327 (0.319) 16.174*** (0.559) 897 0.331 0.305

Note: Entries are standardized regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

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Kecheng Fang link to a Weibo post ‘What to do when you are stuck in an elevator’ – and it was published by us! [Laughter] We suddenly realized that we had collected all kinds of life tips that could be applied in every scenario of our lives, such as how to make coffee, how to select wine, how to cook celery, how to do laundry, what to do in a fire emergency, and so on and so on.

Second, emotional appeals were widely used. Words like ‘surprise’, ‘warning’, and ‘heartbreaking’ that could elicit emotional arousal were seen in the titles of viral articles. Table 5.2 shows that including exclamation marks in titles could significantly increase the popularity of an article. Anger and pride were also powerful in driving user engagement. Interestingly – and absent from previous literature – emotions related to family values were especially effective in the Chinese context. For example, articles published during the Chinese New Year emphasized the importance of family reunion. Those published on Mother’s Day about thanking our mothers were also very popular. On the anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake, China’s most severe natural disaster in decades, both of the accounts also published memorial pieces that went viral. Third, self-help and ‘chicken soup for the soul’ type of stories were very effective in attracting readers. Regression analysis shows that chicken soup stories were significantly more popular than other types of content. ‘We publish a piece of chicken soup story every day at 10 pm’, shared a WeChat editor at The People’s Daily: It’s perfect reading before going to bed. Sometimes we encountered some technical problems and the story was delayed for like 30 minutes. In such cases, we would get hundreds of messages from our readers: ‘Where is today’s night reading? I can’t fall asleep without it!’ We are even called by some people as ‘the best chicken soup account’. Fourth, as demonstrated in Table 5.2, readers also showed great interest in national interest articles, which could elicit nationalistic feelings. For example, one viral article claimed that China’s political system was superior to Western democracy. They also use sentimental expressions to criticize US politicians who were involved in the trade war. These articles tried to cultivate support for the regime, while at the same time they went viral among the public. Sometimes the Party media also held promotional events to harvest followers, shares, and likes. For example, they send cash in ‘red envelops’ to lucky users during the Chinese New Year. In summary, it is clear that the viral content on Party media’s social media accounts appeals to the masses and bears similarities with articles in

The Tabloidization of Party Media 55 tabloids. Interestingly, almost all the editors I interviewed denied that it was their intention to publish a lot of articles comforting hurt souls and explaining how to cook celery. As a group of intellectuals who graduated from the top universities in China, most of the editors are not consumers of the content they produce, and they clearly know that such content is of low taste. ‘But after dozens of rounds of trials and errors, we found that these articles could produce the largest numbers of pageviews, shares, and likes’, said an editor. ‘We recently learned from a report that the majority of Weibo users are “three lows” – low education level, low (young) age, and low income. So it’s natural that we publish these articles’. Here comes the interesting contrast: The Party mouthpieces have become more mass-appeal than mass-appeal (commercial) media on social media platforms. ‘We care about numbers very much’, an editor put it bluntly. In order to get more views, sometimes they have to use sensational titles. Although many editors think it is ‘unethical’ or ‘unprincipled’ to do so, they still choose to do it. An editor said: We don’t use the phrase ‘If you don’t share this, you are not eligible to be a Chinese’ (bu zhuan bushi zhongguoren), but we actually have used similar expressions – ‘every Chinese should remember this’, ‘share this for your fellow citizens’, etc. I regard the changes as a form of tabloidization, which refers to how ‘quality’ media adopt the characteristic of tabloid newspapers including sensationalism, oversimplification, and populist tendencies (Lefkowitz, 2016; Örnebring & Jönsson, 2007). Rather than engaging with the debate on tabloidization and public interest, which is central to scholarly discussions on tabloidization in Western contexts, here I use this concept only in terms of its certain styles and the motivation to seek mass audiences. It should also be noted that although the officia media’s posts are sensational and appeal to the masses, they strictly stay within the Party line. Therefore, they frequently post nationalistic and ‘positive energy’ (Chen & Wang, 2019) content but never use content such as sex scandals and celebrity gossip to attract audiences.

Top-Down Guidance, Bottom-Up Innovation, and Peer Competition What motivated Party media to pursue changes and actively adopt various strategies for achieving virality? Historical explanations could be provided. For example, the mass-appeal approach might be a result of the returning of Chairman Mao’s mass line (Hammond, 1978). Individual-level

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psychological explanations are also possible – more than one editor expressed in the interviews that ‘seeing my articles going viral is a huge encouragement for continuing to produce more viral content’. But such explanation could be applied to other media organizations as well. What is special about Party media? In China’s centralized political system, top-down guidance and encouragement remains a key factor in leading to changes in the officia organs. The same is true for Party media’s adaptation to social media. As an editor suggested, the first and most important factor is that the central Party committee wants to see the changes. Several years ago, everyone knew that the influence of the so-called mainstream media (i.e., Party mouthpieces) was almost gone. We were disconnected from the latest development in the media landscape. So the Party felt the urgency in catching up with the changes and being a crucial part of the game. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, there are multiple policy formulation and implementation bodies, government agencies, Party documents, and government regulations centred on guiding online public opinion. For example, the Central Leading Group for Internet Security and Informatization, launched in early 2014 and led by Xi himself, describes part of its mission as using ‘innovative methods to spread mainstream values and stimulate positive energy while maintaining proper guidance of public opinion in terms of timing, intensity and impact’ (Xinhua News Agency, 2014). The new State Internet Information Offic also partly aims at strengthening the Party’s ability to shape online opinion. In recent years, officia discourse repeatedly highlights the importance of renewing Party media in the digital environment. With the encouragement from the top leaders, Party media enjoy privileges over commercial outlets. As informed by an interviewee, the Cyberspace Administration deliberately picked several Party media and granted them permission to publish multiple times in a day on WeChat. By default, a media account could publish only once a day. But The People’s Daily and CCTV News’s accounts could publish more than ten times in one day – by publishing more, they become more visible, and more likely to go viral. In addition, Party media tend to get more human resource input in social media departments. Both The People’s Daily and CCTV News have more than ten full-time staff and several interns working for their Weibo and WeChat accounts, which is unimaginable for many commercial media that usually have fewer than five social media editors.

The Tabloidization of Party Media 57 But for successful changes, top-down encouragement has to be accompanied by bottom-up innovations. The various content strategies discussed previously were not designed by top leaders, but proposed by editors and tested through trial and error. ‘You could easily tell our director’s personal input from our Weibo content’, an editor said during the interview. ‘Many followers guess that our Weibo’s chief editor is a woman, because the language is rather feminine. In fact, he is a man who used to be [a] poet when he was young’. Besides top-down and bottom-up, peer competition is also a driving factor of Party media’s virality on social media. During the interviews, editors at The People’s Daily and CCTV News frequently mentioned the pressure to compete with each other. ‘At first, we posted on Weibo every 40 minutes’, said an editor at The People’s Daily, ‘then CCTV News sped up the posting process to every 20 minutes, thus doubling the content and raising the visibility. We had no choice but to follow, otherwise we would be lagged behind’. The Party mouthpieces also imitate each other in promotion strategies. Said an editor, When we found CCTV News’s articles went viral because they often featured sanitation workers and added ‘will you share it for the workers?’ in the title, we quickly learned this tactic and posted similar articles and called readers to share for other types of workers.

Conclusion In this chapter, I explored a recent phenomenon that is central to China’s media landscape – the popularity of Communist Party mouthpieces on China’s social media platforms. I collected both quantitative and qualitative data to answer questions on multiple levels. In summary, driven by top-down guidance, bottom-up innovation, and peer competition, Party media adopt a results-oriented approach and produce tabloidized content for social media platforms. The resurgence of Party media in the era of social media is an important change for the press-politics relation in China. It has reversed the trend during the last three to four decades when Party mouthpieces were losing ground to commercial outlets. It has also changed the perception that Party media are incompatible with and opposite to mass-appeal media. The original ‘division of labour’, where Party organs are supposed to air officia information in a top-down way, and the commercial media are close to ordinary people and voice their experiences and feelings from below (Huang, 2001), no longer holds true in the current social media environment. By providing chicken soup stories and useful life advice, the Party mouthpieces are closer to ordinary people than perhaps ever before.

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Of course, there are also potential problems and challenges for Party mouthpieces’ social media presence. First, the propagandist role of Party media seems to give way to the entertaining role in the process of tabloidization, posing questions about the effects of such a strategy. Second, there are still tensions between mass appeal and political safety. As an editor suggested, ‘we have to be cautious not to make top leaders angry, but if we are always mediocre, we will lose audience’. Third, while these accounts are influential among grassroots, it’s much more challenging for them to reach and persuade elites by posting chicken soup stories and sensational titles. Fourth, a number of editors said that they felt tired and bored by the work. As the daily content gets increasingly schematized and repetitive, the editors tend to lose a sense of accomplishment and are less motivated in work. Nevertheless, the Party media have been very successful so far in terms of going viral on social media and regaining influence among the Chinese public from commercial media. It shows that Party media could be increasingly sophisticated in adapting to and taking advantage of digital technology.

Acknowledgement Some parts of this chapter were previously used in an article published in the Chinese journal Journalism Research.

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Socialization and Control in the Digital Newsroom in China Dan Wang

Introduction Socialization plays a significant role in a profession, especially for the newly recruited. The socialization process is not only necessary for an organization to function (Hart et al., 2003), but also essential for staff within the organization to build individual identity (Tajfel, 1978). Studies of news production have adopted the socialization literature to explain how new journalists internalize the values, rules, and norms of the profession (Breed, 1955; Tuchman, 1978). Recently, scholars have shifted their attention to traditional journalists’ resocialization in a digital news environment (e.g., Ryfe, 2012). Apart from assimilating norms and rules, a major goal of socialization is coping with the unfamiliar, be it new staff striving to make sense of a new workplace or a senior journalist struggling to adapt to a new environment. The bulk of existing research on the socialization of journalists sees economic sustainability as the central motivation for news organizations and journalists to decide what and how to change (Tong, 2018). The issue becomes much more complicated, however, in places like China, where the media environment is heavily controlled by the Party, and largely infl enced by both market and digital forces H. Wang & Sparks (2019). The traditional press in China has warmed up to digitalization as a response to the economic and cultural challenges generated by technologies, a move led and favourably funded by the Chinese government (Xi, 2014). This chapter analyses how a local press organization responds to digital transformation in China. On the assumption that tensions exist between senior and junior staffers and between traditional and digital journalism, this research focuses on the editorial and organizational interventions in the newsroom. Specificall , errors made by newly recruited digital journalists and acts of interventions from senior traditional staffs are logged and analysed. Guided by the sociology of media literature, we argue that news DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-6

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production is both the process and outcome of newsroom socialization. Whether the end product is or is not pro-establishment and existing social order is a function of the ideology of the newsroom (see Schudson, 1989).

Literature Review Newsroom Socialization Socialization is the learning process for prescribed norms and values of any role and its functions in a system (Hart et al., 2003). The structuralfunctional undertone notwithstanding, socialization of any kind is two-way traffic On the one hand, organizations’ newcomers have to obtain a series of formal and informal knowledge to reduce uncertainty and take on their professional roles (Bullis & Bach, 1989). On the other hand, experienced staffers play an important role in organizational sense giving through reciprocal communication processes with the inexperienced (Scott & Myers, 2010). During times of change, both junior and senior members have to respond, although the former are more recalcitrant on account of acculturated familiarity to the behaviour than the latter (Hart et al., 2003). Back in 1955, Breed (1955) observed the process through which new journalists obtained and internalized norms and policies in the newsroom. Later studies concurred that to be a journalist, one needs to master ‘news rules’ (Ryfe, 2006). These range from narrative structures and linguistic preferences, through an understanding of ‘news values’, to a sense of what is appropriate and what is forbidden in particular situations. Given the pressurized nature of news production, such competences provide the technical means to meet deadlines. As they become habitual for journalists, they ‘allow them to work quickly without having to think very much’ (Ryfe, 2012, p. 59). At the micro-individual level, tacit knowledge, which plays a key role in the socialization process, is ‘context-dependent, conceptually structured, practical knowledge’, and it is this kind of expertise that new entrants must acquire in order to function adequately as professionals normatively accepted in any given organization (Gascoigne & Thornton, 2013, p. 192). Tacit knowledge is particularly important to journalists, as individuals from this profession are connected more ideologically than organizationally across the world (e.g., Deuze, 2004). For example, Zelizer (1993) showed that informal networking and credentials from sources are more often than not referred to as the higher ranges of the latter, indicating professional ability among reporters. In China, the exclusive, and at times blended, relationship between journalists and government sources is perceived as the character of authority and credibility among journalists H. Wang & Sparks (2020).

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The concept of ‘tacit knowledge’ was coined by Michael Polanyi, who argued that the very fact that something could not be specified in detail meant that ‘it can only be passed from master to apprentice’ through ‘personal contacts’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 52). Tacit knowledge can be transmitted only through practical interactions between novice and experienced journalists, through the workflo . The entry of new individual members leads to tensions over the expertise at stake, since the newcomers need to learn existing practice but, at the same time, wish to modify them to cope with new problems (Lave & Wenger, 1991, pp. 115–116). In the case of contemporary journalism, characterized by rapid changes in ‘existing practice’, it is likely that tensions between old-timers and newcomers will be particularly acute. For instance, Usher (2014) summarized that as interactivity and participation become the new norms for digital journalists, audience tastes and views of online opinion leaders have been integrated into the news production routine. In this project, we argue that the intervention of mistakes are a turning point for newcomers to actualize and materialize their role and function in the newsroom. Order and Disorder The mastery of tacit knowledge secures the legitimacy of a profession. Profession, as Lewis (2012) argued, ‘is an ongoing project for social actors to translate one order of scarce resources into another’ (p. 839). It represents stabilized interrelationships on a grand level among forces such as politics, economics, culture, and technology (Abbott, 1988) that set the stage for the existing social order. At a mezzo level, Bullis and Bach (1989) claimed that professions produce and reproduce order at two levels, the formal organizational level and the informal personal level. While formal socialization structures the hierarchy of the society, informal socialization represents what happens to an individual’s feelings and sense of belonging in the underlying transformation of the structure. In journalism studies, the consensus points to a rather commonsensical understanding of professionalism, which is to reproduce the socioeconomic order. For example, Tuchman (1987) already saw that although working for different media organizations, American journalists adopted similar regulative rules of routines, which led to a homogenous consent of ‘good’ journalism. In China, journalism assumes first and foremost a political role to promote and legitimate the control of the Communist Party (Stockmann, 2013). The production of professional journalism is the production of social order. The advent of digital technologies disturbed the socialization process of news and, by extension, the existing order. This is prominent in two branches

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of discussion. First, at the macro level, both Western and Chinese studies showed that traditional journalism lost their marketability in the wake of citizen journalism (Tong, 2018; D. Wang & Guo, 2021). As a result, many news organizations dropped the norms and values that guided their practices (see Lewis, 2012). This has fundamentally changed the content of knowledge for newsroom socialization. Second, at the micro level, digital technologies have changed the socialization process in terms of mode of communication. The proliferation of social media has reduced the interpersonal communication between staffers. D. Wang & Guo (2021) discovered that WeChat (the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp) became the most popular communication channel for journalists and editors to make decisions on news topics, forcing the fadeout of traditional forms of socialization in journalism. Media Professionals in China Socialization and professionalism often go hand in hand in journalism studies. In China, although contestation was the main characteristic between media and state since the country’s economic reform, journalists could only ‘dance with fetters’ (Tong, 2007). The meanings of news and content of news socialization are predetermined by the state and unchallenged by other social forces (Stockmann, 2013). Despite the political sensitivity of the profession, studies have mostly documented the working environment of contemporary journalism in China and eschewed the issue of political censorship from the government (Shirk, 2010). Journalists who violate the rules risk losing their jobs or ending up in prison. Previous studies have shown that Chinese media professionals were designated certain role conceptions consistent with the country’s economic reform. For example, Hassid (2011) identified four types of journalists in the Chinese press: ‘communist professionals’, ‘American-style professionals’, ‘workaday journalists’, and ‘advocate professionals’ (p. 814). However, with journalism moving online, variations of professional role conceptions have shrunk (Wang, Huang, & Guo, 2020). While the exact reason for the shrinking conception remains puzzling, one can reasonably speculate that journalists are forced to turn to government resources for preservation of identity and draw the boundary line from other information producers. One indication is that young journalists were advised to be more flexible in taking up their roles and less affili ed to one idea of professionalism (ibid). As H. Wang (2021) argued, this shift toward cynical role conception represents a reconciliation between young journalists and social change.

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The Case Study Situated in the context of digital transformation of the traditional press, this study looks at how newly recruited journalists with a focus on digital skills socialize into the newsroom in the Chinese press. In keeping with what happens in newspaper industries globally, the press under study is struggling to manage the transition from an established printed paper to digital editions which are central to its survival. Different from the self-initiated Western digital editions, the studied press relied on annual state subsidies To show its determination to move online, the studied press established a digital newsroom, known as the ‘New Media Centre’ (NMC). NMC was set up in 2014 but adopted its current form only in early 2018. It has 33 staffers responsible for producing multimedia content for the paper’s digital platforms, who are mostly newly recruited. Reflecting financial difficulties the paper did not have its own app, but it provides material for two national commercial news aggregators, with whom it has a revenue-sharing agreement. The overall work of the NMC is primarily editorial, with little to no original news generation. Mostly, journalists are repurposing materials from legacy media. To censor the information produced by the young and inexperienced new staffers, the organization appointed experienced staffs from the print newsroom as the editorial heads of the NMC. According to the deputy chief editor of the paper, the team had two objectives in mind. For the senior positions, the main concern was to appoint staffers he trusted not to commit political mistakes; and for the positions of editor and deputy editor, he selected two experienced journalists from the printed paper. The frontline staff, on the other hand, were chosen with very different qualities in mind. They were all young, having been born in the 1990s or later, and this was seen as being their prime qualification.According to the deputy chief editor: Youth means unpolluted. I deliberately tried not to recruit people who were born before the 1990s. When I moved experienced journalists from the printed paper to be our frontline web editors, I had two reasons. The first is about generations. . . . Our paper deliberately recruited internet migrants [1990s born] as the majority of the new media department, so that they would not be polluted by traditional [journalistic] values. The second reason is compatibility: Print values and online values are incompatible . . . It is impossible to expect old print journalists to fit digital culture, but combining them together will work. I believe in my choice.

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Although these young recruits did not have practical print journalism experience, they all studied journalism at universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and overseas. The key to their appointment was that they possessed the competence to produce online news and videos and to operate the various dissemination platforms. Clearly, computer skills, thus, override journalism knowledge. From the perspective of socialization, repositories of tacit knowledge of seasoned journalists will be passed on to the new entrants. In the process, the disjuncture between different degrees of experience, skills, working circumstances, and workspaces meant that what is usually an invisible and individualized process of socialization could become a visible issue of organizational structure and formal interventions. This provided an opportunity for us to analyse the socialization process in the newsroom, where newcomers are nurtured into a set of existing values, practices, and tensions. It is against this backdrop, and in connection with the literature on socialization and professional order in journalism studies, that we propose two research questions: RQ1: How do new journalists socialize into the newsroom in the digital age? RQ2: How are print and digital journalists different in the process?

Methods Data analysed in this study came from a Chinese newspaper whose daily operations reveal the meanings of online news production. For the fiel work for this study, we gathered qualitative data through participant observation, virtual ethnography, and extended, semi-structured, interviews. We spent four months working in the online section of the newspaper. Although the online newsroom was our focal point, its interactions with the print newsroom and the organization as a whole allowed us to explore the tensions and interrelations between old and new practices, and between senior and junior journalists. Inspired by socialization and sociology of news literature, we were especially interested in the editorial interventions by traditional news producers (see Ryfe, 2012; Scott & Myers, 2010). Their interventions illuminated clearly what they took to be the ‘doxa’ of journalism, which all staff should possess as a matter of course and which in other circumstances would constitute the tacit knowledge new entrants would acquire. As the WeChat group formed the focal space for teamwork, content of the relevant journalistic WeChat group was recorded and analysed with approval. Similar to traditional news work in China, a network of censorship

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was diffused in the digital news production process (see Stockmann, 2013; Zhao, 2008). In this particular WeChat group, besides digital journalists as the main workforce, the beat editors, senior editors of the news organization, and propaganda official from the local political authorities were also included as members. A diary was kept recording daily interactions in the newsroom. Internal documents of the organisation were also collected and analysed. During and immediately following the fieldwork, ten in-depth-interviews were conducted to better understand the practices of the group. Interviewees were all from NMC, including both the beat editors and digital journalists. All respondents and co-workers were aware of the status of the investigator, and all were offered anonymity. The author was removed from the WeChat group after the fieldwork, and the draft of this project was presented to the beat editor of NMC to ensure their confidentialit .

Findings New recruits in the digital newsroom work under a level of time pressure unprecedented in the business. Those on aggregation assignment have to relay between 50 and 80 stories a day. The staff working for the social media platforms have to push stories twice a day, averaging four articles per push. The limited number of stories means that the editors have to select carefully from many possibilities and then re-edit them to fit the medium. As might be expected of a large group of inexperienced journalists working under considerable pressure, the staff of the NMC make mistakes. The leadership of the NMC and of the newspaper as a whole, as well as outside authorities, are constantly picking up these errors and intervening to minimize damage and maximize information security. Since much of the internal communication of the newspaper takes place electronically, through WeChat groups, it is therefore possible to analyse the frequency and topics of such interventions, identifying the kinds of mistakes made and the areas in which these journalists fall short of the ‘professional’ criteria for rapid and correct judgements. The corrective mechanisms adopted by the organization are, similarly, uniquely visible. As we argue, errors and interventions are indicators of the socialization process and the outcome of tensions between traditional and digital journalism.

Socialization and Interventions In the four months of fieldwork, from September 2018 to January 2019, the internal WeChat group of the NMC logged errors in content, on average, more than once every day. These led to 94 interventions by senior staff,

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Table 6.1 Editorial interventions on WeChat by source and topic, September 2018 to January 2019 Source External Internal

Total

Category Political issues Professional issues Professional issues (technical/linguistic) Professional issues (judgemental) Commercial issues Political issues Unclassified issues

Number 6 4 29 16 12 26 1 94

or rather, more than one every two days. There were two sorts of ‘professional’ errors, technical/linguistic and judgemental. The former had reputational implications for the newspaper brand, and corrections were usually accepted immediately by the journalists involved. Judgemental errors did not have the same immediate damaging consequences, but senior staff recognized that they might pose problems in the longer term. We argue that technical errors are made due to lack of formal knowledge, such as grammar and sentence structure, whereas judgemental errors were made due to lack of tacit knowledge. Interventions were conducted by senior staffs and government official in the WeChat work group (see Table 6.1 for the breakdown). For purposes of analysis, we sorted the interventions on two bases – source and topic. Sources of the interventions were divided into those external to the organization and those internal to the NMC. Interventions external to the organization, all from the local Propaganda Department and Cyberspace Ministry, tended to be detailed instructions about the coverage of important events and were often directed not at the NMC but to all media in town. Given the omnipresent external censorship in Chinese journalism (see Tai, 2014), it is striking that the total of outside interventions is only 10 out of 94 overall, and that specifically political interventions constitute less than 10% of the total. The internal technical/linguistic interventions were often very simple. For example, on December 19 the NMC editor noted ‘the designer’s name is spelt wrongly’. Others involved standard journalistic errors like the failure to check sources. These technical/linguistic interventions are the largest single group of interventions. They suggest that, as he explicitly stated, ‘You are still amateurs’.

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The internal judgemental interventions were more concerned with how the journalists treated particular items. On September 23, for example, journalists were censured for not realizing that the launch of a section of the high-speed rail network was an important story, prompting the deputy editor in chief of the paper to extrapolate in his remark: ‘young web editors do not have a sense of news values’. Other recurring themes included the choice of headlines and the overall tone of articles, particularly obituaries. One intervention, on October 6, asked for changes to a headline since ‘all platforms used the same headline, which shows how lazy and mechanical we are’. As for the topical dimension, interventions were particularly salient in two areas – commercial and political. Commercial interventions were concerned with the protection of the newspaper’s own brand and the prevention of copyright infringements through the reuse of material from other news organizations. One such case, on November 11, involved the deletion of an article about a local finance company, which is a big advertiser, forcing its employees to purchase company products. Political interventions were the second most commonly occurring type. Some involved practices contrary to standard journalistic rules that the leadership promote at other times. For example, on November 6, a directive stated: Our story on Huawei was published one hour before the standard notice from the propaganda department. In this case you have to bear in mind that we can track what happens but we can never report it independently. We have to strictly follow the propaganda department. Sometimes, political interventions were buried in apparently commercial directives. Reporting of a fire caused by poorly installed lighting was censured since it ‘was too sensitive because the owner of the building is a client of the newspaper’ (September 15). Upon investigation, however, it turned out that lights had been installed by the local government as part of a political celebration and that these had malfunctioned. The owner of the building, a close friend of the deputy chief editor, had asked him not to cover the story since he was worried he would be scapegoated by the city government for causing the fire. We can draw two major conclusions from these interventions. First, nearly 90% of them (84 out of 94) were generated inside the newspaper. They therefore constitute ‘self-censorship’ in the broadest definition of the shaping of editorial content in order to correspond to the established norms of the news organization. It should be noted, however, that more than 50% (49 out of 94) concerned journalistic issues. While political interventions were easily the second largest category, occurring on 32 occasions, none of

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these involved major issues of principle. At least on the basis of this evidence, control in the Chinese newsroom is primarily about ensuring adherence to recognizable journalistic standards and that political interventions tend to have a mundane character. The second major conclusion we can draw is that these interventions are numerous and wide-ranging. Taken together, they suggest that this group of young journalists, however excellent their educational backgrounds, lacked the necessary tacit knowledge of Chinese journalism to function efficient . The lack of knowledge was extensive, running from their failure to recognize good news stories to their inability to check sources, up to failing to observe the elementary political rules of reporting sensitive issues.

Restoring Order Faced with a poorly functioning New Media Centre, the leadership of the newspaper took steps to remedy the situation and restore order. The first was to establish a set of formal rules embodied in a Code of Conduct, developed in late 2018. Alongside a general re-emphasis on basic journalistic principles in a Chinese context, such as ‘maintaining the correct political orientation’ and ‘setting strict standards for sourcing’, the Code stresses the need to: Strictly follow the three-revisions procedure. Released news stories [i.e., those about to be published] should be scrutinized first by the platform manager, then the head of the department, and then by the editorial committee members on duty that day. In the case of significant events and news, all stories should be scrutinized by the head of the organisation. New Media Centre’s Code of Conduct (2018) This procedure (三审三校, literally, ‘three scrutinies and three proofreadings’) is widespread in Chinese media (Xiong & Zhang, 2018, p. 101). The priority for deciding whether any material is acceptable rests not with the NMC, but with the staff of the printed paper. The Code states that ‘All divisions should let print editorial staff supervise their content. Immediate action should be taken once print editorial staff find any mistakes in the released content’. This reliance on the staff of the print edition was an ongoing theme during the fieldwork. The Editorial Committee sent experienced print journalists to give critical lectures to the staff of the NMC on several occasions, and in October it was decided to allow journalists from the print edition to publish their stories directly in online media, bypassing web editors.

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Despite these measures, the organizational management team also decided to restructure the NMC. Three ‘Content Revisers’ were set up as gatekeepers to NMC. Their appointments were designed to strengthen the ‘three scrutinies’. All three staff were from the print division, with at least one decade of newspaper editing experience. The new structure introduces not only an additional layer of editorial supervision, but also a new workflow to NMC. This new layer is explicitly charged with reviewing material before it is released. According to the deputy chief editor: Usually we separate our news into two kinds: Relayed news [often from legacy media] and original news. For the relayed news, the platform will directly release it without going through the content reviewers and the departmental head. The content reviewers will read all of this material together at 15.00, when the daily summary list is submitted. For original news, the content revisers and head of department need to approve it before it is released. The working solution to the enormous amount of material that flows through the NMC is thus to rely upon the print edition, and other legacy media, to have carried out the process of ‘three revisions’ before the material reaches the web editors so that it can be assumed to be ‘professional’. It is the material generated by the NMC itself that is suspect and must be submitted to an extra layer of revision before it can be published.

Conclusions Guided by literature on professional socialization, this study records and examines editorial interventions in a Chinese news organization. It is clear that editorial power remains in the hands of print journalists who set the norms of ‘professional’ journalistic practice and attempt to impose them on their online colleagues. The group of young web editors have been unable to act as ‘professional’ journalists by traditional standards. They possess the technical skills needed in a new media environment, but they constantly wrestle with the clashing journalistic norms. What they do not possess is the tacit knowledge that marks their colleagues from the print editions. They cannot be expected to acquire such knowledge without active participation in a community of practice that shares experiences and mutually develops solutions to new problems. Consequently, the normal process of informal education was impossible. In its place, a formal process of written instructions and organizational changes, designed to police the new recruits and correct their errors, has been established. For their part, the senior

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journalists are resistant to practical modifications appropriate to the digital environment. The professional orthodoxy they strive to impose is that of the printed newspaper. This kind of newsmaking, which they know from long experience, meets the socially recognized norms of journalism and minimizes any risks, particularly political ones, that might provoke punishment. This evidence suggests three theoretical conclusions. The first is that the continuing debate over the relative merits of formal education and practical experience in the training of journalists is misplaced. The young journalists have acquired indispensable new media skills from their formal education, but the absence of tacit knowledge makes it hard for them to be fully admitted into the professional community of practice. The second concerns our understanding of political censorship. The imposition of the ‘correct political orientation’ upon Chinese media is incontestable, but the majority of studies tend to see it as something externally imposed upon journalists. The evidence presented here demonstrates that such external censorship certainly exists, although in this instance it addressed very mundane issues of presentation rather than great questions of press freedom. By far the most prevalent form of censorship, however, is internal to the newspaper. What appears here as censorship imposed from higher in the organization is simply a consequence of the ‘unprofessional’ actions of the junior staff. In a normally functioning newsroom, such choices would be self-censorship proper – the unremarked and often unconscious decisions of professional journalists who are thoroughly conversant with the prevailing ‘news rules’. The third consequence concerns the overall conceptualization of Chinese journalistic practice. As a result of the research focus upon censorship, the available picture of Chinese journalism has very little space for analyses of other aspects of news production. In fact, in this case, more than half of the matters upon which senior staff intervened were not connected to formal politics. Rather, they concerned standard issues of accuracy, sourcing, and timeliness, among others, all of which are familiar from Western studies of journalism. Any adequate study of the making of news in China must be able to account for these recognizably ‘professional’ elements as well as the well-rehearsed political dimensions.

References Breed, W. (1955). Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis. Social Focus, 33:4. Bullis, C., & Bach, B. (1989). Socialization Turning Points: An Examination of Change in Organizational Identific tion. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 273–293.

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Hart, Z., Miller, V., & Johnson, J. (2003). Socialization, Resocialization, and Communication Relationships in the Context of an Organizational Change. Communication Studies, 54:4, 483–495. Lasorsa, D. L., Lewis, S. C., & Holton, A. E. (2012). Normalizing Twitter: Journalism Practice in an Emerging Communication Space. Journalism Studies, 13:1, 19–36.2w3 Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. Lewis, S. C. (2012). The Tension Between Professional Control and Open Participation: Journalism and Its Boundaries. Information, Communication & Society, 15:6, 836–866. New Media Centre. (2018). XX bao xinmeiti zhongxin xingwei shouce [Code of conduct at Paper xx’s new media centre]. (for internal use; organization’s name changed). Ryfe, D. (2006). The Nature of News Rules. Political Communication, 23:2, 203–214. Ryfe, D. M. (2012). Can Journalism Survive?: An Inside Look at American Newsrooms. Polity. Schudson, M. (1989). The Sociology of News Production. Media, Culture & Society, 11:3, 263–282. Scott, C., & Myers, K. (2010). Toward an Integrative Theoretical Perspective on Organizational Membership Negotiations: Socialization, Assimilation, and the Duality of Structure. Communication Theory, 20, 79–105. Tajfel, H. (1978). Social Categorization, Social Identity and Social Comparison. In H. Tajfel (Ed.), Diffe entiation Between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 61–76). Academic Press. Tong, J. (2007). Guerrilla Tactics of Investigative Journalists in China. Journalism, 8:5, 530–535. Tong, J. (2018). Journalistic Legitimacy Revisited. Digital Journalism, 6:2, 256–273. Tuchman, G. (1978). Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. Retrieved from http://ecsocman.hse.ru/text/19190482/ Wang, D., & Sparks, C. (2020). Smartphones, WeChat and Paid Content: Journalists and Sources in a Chinese Newspaper. Journalism Studies, 21:1, 37–53. Wang, H., & Sparks, C. (2019). Chinese Newspaper Groups in the Digital Era : The Resurgence of the Party Press. Journal of Communication, 69, 94–119. Wang, D., Huang, V. L., & Guo, S. Z. (2020). Malleable multiplicity and power reliance: Identity presentation by Chinese journalists on social media. Digital Journalism, 8:10, 1280–1297. Wang, D., & Guo, S. Z. (2021). Native advertising in the Chinese press: implications of state subsidies for journalist professional self-identification. Digital Journalism, 9:7, 974–990. Xi, J. (2014). Guanyu tuidong chuantong meiti he xinmeiti ronghe fazhan de zhidao yijian [Directives on Boosting Integrated Development of Traditional Media and New Media] (the ‘8.18’ talk).

7

The Platformization of Chinese Offici  Media The Case of Newspaper X Luming Zhao and Jiaxi Peng

Introduction In their leisure time, Chinese users may open the mobile application of a domestic news agency. Among the news feeds pushed to them by the algorithm are the user notices reporting from professional journalists and content produced by influencers, research institutions, social groups, and local government departments. Users are so engrossed in reading that they do not seem to care about the distinction. This has become a common situation since the popularity of platformization among news agencies in China. Since 2017, after shifting to online journalism, representative Chinese popular officia media, such as Southern Metropolis Daily, China Youth Daily, and Beijing News, used platformization as part of their entrepreneurship strategy. Expressed broadly, they aim to invite other individuals and institutions to join their own platforms to create news content that complements the professional newsroom routine, which is an ongoing process. The adoption of platformization by Chinese officia media can be seen as an effort to address the challenges of digitalization and platform companies. Although a popular view suggests this is the media’s hasty response to metrics and economic problems, there is a lack of studies examining what platformization means for Chinese news agencies, especially within the context of widespread media control and censorship in China. Our research questions are as follows: What are the motivating factors for engaging in platformization for the Chinese officia media? From organization to production, what are the routine changes of platformization on the Chinese officia media? What kind of effectiveness has platformization brought to Chinese official media In this study, we assume that platformization is the process of moving Chinese officia media toward an open digital journalism institution. The Chinese officia media’s efforts to undertake platformization are examined by analysing a digital newspaper, Newspaper X, and its platformization DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-7

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strategy, X Platform. Our investigation found that Newspaper X has cautiously adopted platformization, seeing it as a tentative business rather than a thorough infrastructure to advance newsroom convergence. Platformization has not yet become an institutional culture of Newspaper X, and there is a physical and digital wall of separation between professional journalism and their own platform, to minimize the economic and political risks of platformization. On a positive note, platformization complements the flex bility of news production, including the flexible adaptation to changes in the business performance environment and efforts to provide a more dynamic journalism culture. This study echoes the call by scholars such as BelairGagnon and Steinke (2020) for a non-Western case for digital journalism. It will help in understanding the positive and negative impacts of the Chinese officia media’s proactive response to platformization, which has not yet been investigated.

Literature Review Digital News Production and Platformization News production is rooted in sociology and focuses on how journalists gather information and control communication channels (Gieber, 1964). In turn, control over news production may originate from within the newsroom and other social factors, such as governments and large corporations (Breed, 1955; Tuchman, 1972). The discussion of social control in newsrooms was crucially aided by Bourdieu’s (1993) ‘field theory’, which posited that the journalistic field is part of the field of power that contains internal struggles between different forces in the field. Although social control is a classic issue for newsrooms’ developing habitus, it faces an emerging context known as platformization. Nieborg and Poell (2018) defined platformization as the penetration of digital platforms’ economic, governmental, and infrastructural extensions into the web ecosystems. The conceptualization of ‘platform’ implies openness and neutrality. These researchers focused on how the platforms reshape the frameworks and functions of the social and economic systems, including the levels of infrastructure, programmability, and data flo . However, it may increase uncertainty and crisis in journalism (De Kloet et al., 2019; Zelizer, 2015). Platforms as digital intermediaries (e.g., Facebook, WeChat) become the primary way audiences read news content (Kleis & Ganter, 2018), and news production increasingly becomes open-source. Anderson (2016) and other researchers proposed ‘news ecosystems’, in which different actors jointly determine how news is produced and disseminated. This prompted newsrooms to build the logic of producing news on the algorithmic processing of platform companies (Christin, 2020).

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As market orientation becomes more noticeable, print journalists facing the digitization of their work worry about the public service value of journalism (Cohen, 2019). This demonstrates that multiple social factors still control digital news production. The platformization of news occurs primarily outside traditional news agencies. Although some agencies collaborate with platform companies to develop some open initiatives (e.g., Open API) (Aitamurto & Lewis, 2013), cases of news agencies expanding their roles and managing their own platforms are still lacking. The sociology of news production inspires this study, and its theoretical framework follows the theory of social control in newsrooms developed by Breed, Tuchman, and Bourdieu. This chapter treats platformization as a process of institutional innovation in digital journalism but does not presuppose their platforms must have the mixed characteristics of infrastructuralization, open-source, economic, and data circulation. Our primary research interest is how Chinese officia media recognizes platformization and their specific implementation approach to it. Chinese Press Reform and Popular Official Medi This study endorses the comparing media system developed by Hallin and Mancini (2004). The Chinese officia media system is closest to the Mediterranean model, with the development of journalism constrained by government control. China’s news agencies are largely nationalized with government financial support. However, similar to journalism in Western countries, they also faced business performance and financial challenges in the last two decades. Local governments have limited financial support for provincial press groups, so they need to look to the customer and advertiser for funding, and underperforming provincial press groups may face dissolution or restructuring. An essential contribution to the typology of the Chinese news media was provided by Wang et al. (2017), who classified news institutions into three categories: popular officia media, Party-oriented officia press, and market-oriented commercial media. For instance, China Youth Daily and Beijing News can be classified as popular officia media. They are news agencies managed by provincial press groups, unlike the Party-oriented official press such a People’s Daily, which is directly under the central authority. Although all are under government control, they differ in terms of financial structure and news topics covered. It has been demonstrated that the Chinese popular officia media have a certain market orientation and greater emphasis on infotainment and fostering accountability. Journalists affiliate with them are social actors with a certain degree of job autonomy, negotiating with the government on some topics of watchdog journalism (Hassid, 2011; Repnikova, 2017).

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Starting in 2014, media convergence became one of China’s national strategies. This strategy requires all the officia press groups to transform into new media, utilizing the digital media revolution to capture ideologically relevant opinion positions (Bandurski, 2020). Several Chinese researchers consider platformization a new feature of domestic press reform (e.g., Li, 2018; Yu et al., 2015). But in this context, ‘platform’ has a different meaning: it may denote a multimedia production and distribution platform within the institution (e.g. ‘central kitchen’, 中央厨房) but more often represents an audience-oriented content platform, which is also the focus of this chapter. In other words, it consists of a contributors’ network operated by officia media that encourages organizations and individuals meeting the requirements to participate in content production on their own platform (website and app), forming a new information space structure. Those studies in Chinese focused on the role of Ping Tai Hao (平台号, a common nomenclature for platformization strategies) as an agent of platformization, both politically and economically, in the Chinese officia media. However, they failed to focus on the bottom-up newsroom perspectives and dynamic coordination processes. Using Newspaper X and its platformization strategy as a case study, this chapter explores the motivations, mechanics, and effe tiveness of platformization on the Chinese official media

Data and Methods Founded in about 2015, Newspaper X is one of China’s most well-known digital newspapers. It is run by a provincial press group and initially supported by state funding. However, it quickly transitioned to a market-oriented model based on digital advertising revenue. Newspaper X’s success in the digital news field has attracted imitators from other provincial press groups. This supports the typicality and accessibility of the case study. We mainly investigated a Newspaper X column that focuses on creative media and visual journalism – one of the first four newsrooms to respond to Newspaper X’s platformization strategy. Qualitative data from the walkthrough method and newsroom ethnography were used to investigate the studied case. The walkthrough method allows direct engagement with an application interface to examine its technological mechanisms and embedded culture and thereby understand how it guides users and shapes their experiences (Light et al., 2018). We diachronically checked (from 2018 to 2021) the policies, rules, and interface designs of the way Newspaper X presents X Platform. For newsroom ethnography, several researchers claim that studying digital journalism should temporarily depart from newsrooms to tackle journalism outside traditional news agencies (Zelizer, 2004; Cottle, 2007). However,

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we argue that platformization is a complex social process, and that we need to return to the sociology of news production, including the physical (newsrooms’ physical structure and management) and virtual (code and interface design) levels (Robinson, 2011), to understand the factors by which platformization is perceived and controlled. Therefore, intensive fieldwork was conducted in the summer of 2021. The empirical material includes semistructured interviews with eight members of the newsroom (one manager, five journalists/editors, and two designers). While this is not a large sample of interviews, we believe it is highly directional. The participatory observations include two informal newsroom visits (May 2019 and July 2021) and content collaboration with the newsroom (from 2018 to 2021). The triangulation methodology (Bryman, 2004) was used to identify common themes in the data collected by the two methods. We consulted with the newsroom and the name of the newspaper was anonymized.

Key Factors for Pursuing Platformization: What Determines Their Change? During Newspaper X‘s fourth year as an innovative digital news agency in China, X Platform was created. Initially, the platform opened with four columns, including commentary, nonfiction writing, documentary photography, and visual journalism. All were handled by the newspaper’s four newsrooms, which had previously opened similar columns, meaning that each newsroom needed to be responsible for two columns thereafter, one in Newspaper X and one in X Platform. The difference was that professional journalists produced news stories on behalf of Newspaper X, while the X Platform had editors contacting the external creators to post related content. Subsequently, X Platform expanded to 10 columns, parallel to the original professional journalism columns, covering almost all the common news topics. Newspaper X’s platformization strategy predates other Chinese officia media of the same period. However, their journalists and editors were not told by their executives that Newspaper X would move from a professional news agency to an open news ecosystem and face competition from a variety of social actors. In this case, platformization was merely considered a new tentative business outside professional journalism. Unlike news aggregators and social media user-generated content production, X Platform first implemented a demanding invitation-only format. They encouraged only influencers who met the requirements (qualifications and political stance), research institutions, social groups, and local government departments to join as external content creators, bringing infotainment and soft news. To this end, Newspaper X hired more staff concentrating on editorial positions,

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whose job consisted of keeping in touch with content creators and inviting them to provide priority or exclusive content for X Platform. Similar to the incentive programs of platform companies, invited users are paid a stipend for posting. X Platform has adequate financial resources from the press group it is affiliate with. Its editor mentioned in an interview that they are encouraged to use more funds to invite quality creators to join the platform. The platformization strategy is believed to be operating effectively in the eyes of the press group of which Newspaper X is a part. In public information from the staff of Newspaper X, celebrating the third anniversary of the platformization strategy, they claimed to have invited more than 20,000 external content creators to join X Platform and accumulated almost 100 billion page visits to the platform. These figures gave them confidence that X Platform had become an emerging channel for news distribution outside platform companies. Interviews with the newsroom yielded four motivations for Newspaper X to launch platformization that form an interconnected relationship. The first motivation is providing adequate content. Newspaper X staff realized that news audiences enjoy and want more news stories labelled with X. However, ‘completing In-depth coverage is costly for journalists’ (Interviewee 3), so a self-evident move could consist of opening up the production source. The second motivation is creating channels independent of platform companies. The negative impact of news aggregators and social media (represented by Jinri Toutiao, similar to Buzzfeed) on the Chinese officia media was huge. Therefore, Newspaper X prioritized providing more content and keeping it in their own media channels to reduce dependency on platform companies. Third, adequate content with independent channels would likely lead to higher website traffi and gain the confidence of audiences and advertisers, which remains essential for officia media that need to be market-oriented to earn revenue. Finally, as influence rises, success in platformization would probably help Chinese officia media to solidify voice and visibility, which can be considered one of the political demands for a state’s media convergence strategy. Platformization in Physical and Digital Levels This section focuses on the process of platformization of the Chinese officia media at both the physical (newsrooms’ physical structure and management) and virtual (code and interface design) levels. Take the case of the newsroom we mainly visited, where the two columns share the same manager and both work on visual journalism. In 2017, in the early stages of the platformization strategy, journalists, editors, and visual designers of the two columns were located on the same offic floo . Team members from both sides participated

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in weekly meetings to pitch news stories. After 2020, X Platform’s identity as a separate business was emphasized. The staff of X Platform was unified on a new offic floor and thus kept at a distance from the original journalism institution: ‘We still sometimes meet and discuss projects together, but in reality, we belong to two different businesses & departments’ (Interviewee 5). The relocation of the floor implies the zoning: ‘The two news columns are similar, but we know we work in different directions (Interviewee 1). On the virtual level of platformization, the contents of X Platform are presented in a unified website and mobile application user interface of Newspaper X. This includes a separate tab bar and a news feed mixed with professional journalism, which brings a certain culture and data circulation. It is difficul to distinguish the differences in sources from the news feed. The editors state that they have equal recommendation rights to the content produced by the journalists or platform creators, so they share the same news feed. This is part of Newspaper X’s policy to implement platformization. Editors also assert that the change from traditional news content gathering is that platformization has encouraged them to learn the methodology from news aggregators. The focus is not on gatekeeping which stories should or should not be published, but on lowering the barrier of content formats and topics, getting more content onto the platform, then categorizing and redistributing it based on quality. This process is imbued with the ethos of journalistic professionalism: ‘I will check which content from the platform broadly meets our journalistic criteria, such as being objective and accurate, and having interesting and exploratory values. I would recommend them first (Interviewee 5). Although the content from X Platform appears in the news feed, Newspaper X tries to clarify its identity. At the page bottom of the platform content, the agency provides a notice stating that the content is user-uploaded rather than professional journalism and does not represent the views or positions of Newspaper X, which only operates the platform. The font size and colour of this notice do not make this apparent, as the rest of the page design is the same. Nevertheless, the general trend is that Newspaper X has been differentiating between professional journalism and platform content. In 2018, the platform content carried Newspaper X in the title of the link after being shared on social media. However, the social media sharing design was modified in 2021 so that all the content from the platform displays only the name X Platform. This implies that there is a certain difference between the two. Flexible Adaptation and Diversified News Content Newspaper X’s efforts to distance their professional journalism from the X Platform proved that users are less concerned and easily confuse the two. Editors have found that users in the comments section always see creators’

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content as professional coverage by X’s journalists and praise some of the quality content: ‘I enjoyed reading this story, thank Newspaper X’. As a result of reputation-sharing, Newspaper X becomes collective, with external creators from the platform, to face a bigger news ecosystem. The relationship is also confused by some news aggregators. When content from the platform is retrieved by a web crawler of a news aggregator system, it is labelled as work sourced from ‘Newspaper X’ rather than from ‘X Platform’. This ambiguity provides a good opportunity to disseminate some excellent content produced by non-journalists, as the audience believes it is provided under Newspaper X’s supervision – a news agency with a positive cultural and political reputation. In addition, this may further increase the confidence of the audience and advertisers to invest in Newspaper X and enhance the resilience of news agencies to the business environment. However, due to the negligence of human editors, a few advertorials, disinformation, and sensitive content (politics-related) labelled as Newspaper X may be retrieved by web crawlers and disseminated on social media feeds, which is criticized by the outside world as requiring Newspaper X to take responsibility. This is why Newspaper X is trying to distance itself from platform content. Newspaper X’s editor admits it is a double-edged sword, and they do not want to see platform content being secondarily republished indiscriminately by news aggregators. However, it is hard to stop. The implied dilemma is that if they put aside the responsibility and relationship between the platform and the officia media and let the platform totally lose the reputation effect from Newspaper X, then the platformization strategy is meaningless. Although Newspaper X is very cautious in allowing watchdog/investigative reporting under China’s widespread media censorship, platformization offers the possibility of diversified news content. Editors may incorporate their own norms of journalistic professionalism in the selection of platform content. In addition, some quality content that is infotainment but highly relevant to social concerns may be allowed to be posted on X Platform, but this carries risks. For instance, some investigative articles on Chinese environmental pollution or women’s rights are posted on the platform with the tacit approval of the editor but may be ordered to be deleted by the authorities after a period of time. The empirical materials from the newsroom interviews suggest the standard of human censorship in terms of platform content may be more lenient or more stringent. Either way, the administrative responsibility of the agency is the same. However, since the officia media’s own platform is an innovation, the standard of the administration’s censorship toward innovative strategy is not continuous and visible. Thus, it requires negotiation between Newspaper X and the authorities to make decisions in a balance of achieving high performance while taking on public

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responsibilities that are rooted in the characteristic identity of the Chinese officia media (for example, maintaining social stability). This also means that Newspaper X will control some of the openness traits of platformization (more like ‘quasi-platformization’) and tackle the platform governance issue more urgently (Gorwa, 2019) earlier than platform companies, avoiding the negative economic and political consequences of disordered platform content. This is a peculiarity of the platformization implementation in the Chinese official media

Discussion and Conclusion Using Newspaper X as a case study, this paper analysed the impact of the adoption of platformization by Chinese officia media. In contrast to the argument that newsrooms are slow to innovate (Boczkowski, 2005), we contend that Newspaper X has undertaken a rapid pace of innovation, which aligns with the notion of local digital journalism projects tending to perform better than their counterparts in traditional media (Usher, 2017). However, when it comes to the actual deployment of platformization, they have taken a cautious approach. We argue that this caution comes from the news field of the Chinese officia media, where social control by the government, advertisers, and audiences exerts influence, especially for the popular officia media with a market orientation. Platformization can be considered one business of the press group’s media convergence goal, rather than a complete infrastructure or ecosystem engaging in the re-regulation of the original institutional structure. The owned platform is a new factor of social control as well as a controlled subject, rooted in the reputation and responsibility of the officia media, which is a unique conceptualization of ‘platformization’. This chapter responded to previous studies (Sparks et al., 2016; Zhang, 2019) and refined four interconnected motivations for adopting platformization: providing adequate content, creating channels independent of platform companies, striving for a new revenue source, and solidifying the leading voices and visibility of official media For the Chinese officia media, platformization takes place within a dynamic process of power games between various parties in an attempt to achieve a temporary balanced result. At least for the time being, platformization is not an institutional culture, and the perception of journalists and editors is weak and subtle (Xiong & Zhang, 2018; Yin & Liu, 2014). Under social control, there is a wall of separation between the platform and professional journalism. Their work is visible to each other but zoned (semi-transparent), while the platform does not affect the original journalistic habitus. This suggests ‘quasi-platformization’ is a more appropriate metaphor, as it is not fully compatible with the openness and programmatic

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Figure 7.1 The platformization of Chinese official media A two-way effect.

nature of the platform, as previously mentioned in several studies, and only has some cultural, economic, and data circulation characteristics. A positive aspect is that platformization provides flexible adaptation to business and performance environment changes. Sharing reputation and balancing risk are both results of platformization, which represents a two-way effect (see Figure 7.1). It may regain the autonomy and cultural dynamism of Chinese officia media (Li & Sparks, 2018; Stockmann, 2013) – support some quality coverage/article of social problems, while putting higher demands on the reputation and capital maintenance of the officia media – but may suffer negative consequences for inadequate self-censorship of platform content. We believe this chapter goes beyond the framework of previous platform theory and returns to the sociology of news production to explain the platformization of the Chinese officia media and identify the motivation, processes, and effectiveness in a more detailed manner than the earlier studies. However, this study also has limitations. As a case study, the platformization strategy of Newspaper X with its inspiration for other officia media supports the typicality and accessibility of this case. However, it is a bottom-up (newsroom) investigation that lacks a macro perspective, such as interviews with senior managers. Further, in managing China’s extensive and complex media system, platformization is differently understood and implemented by the central Party-oriented officia press (e.g., People’s Daily), local Party-oriented officia press (e.g., Shanghai Observer), popular officia media (e.g., Beijing News), and market-oriented commercial media (e.g., Caixin). Consequently, future work should consider a comparative study of media systems and cross-nationality.

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Nieborg, D. B., & Poell, T. (2018). The Platformization of Cultural Production: Theorizing the Contingent Cultural Commodity. New Media & Society, 20:11, 4275–4292. Repnikova, M. (2017). Media Openings and Political Transitions: Glasnost Versus Yulun Jiandu. Problems of Post-Communism, 64:3–4, 141–151. Robinson, S. (2011). Convergence Crises: News Work and News Space in the Digitally Transforming Newsroom. Journal of Communication, 61:6, 1122–1141. Sparks, C., Wang, H., Huang, Y., Zhao, Y., Lü, N., & Wang, D. (2016). The Impact of Digital Media on Newspapers: Comparing Responses in China and the United States. Global Media and China, 1:3, 186–207. Stockmann, D. (2013). Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China. Cambridge University Press. Tuchman, G. (1972). Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of Objectivity. American Journal of Sociology, 77:4, 660–679. Usher, N. (2017). Venture-Backed News Startups and the Field of Journalism: Challenges, Changes, and Consistencies. Digital Journalism, 5:9, 1116–1133. Wang, H., Sparks, C., & Yu, H. (2018). Popular Journalism in China: A Study of China Youth Daily. Journalism, 19:9–10, 1203–1219. Xiong, H., & Zhang, J. (2018). How Local Journalists Interpret and Evaluate Media Convergence: An Empirical Study of Journalists from Four Press Groups in Fujian. International Communication Gazette, 80:1, 87–115. Yin, L., & Liu, X. (2014). A gesture of Compliance: Media Convergence in China. Media, Culture & Society, 36:5, 561–577. Yu, G. M, Jiao, J., & Zhang, X. (2015). The Derivation, Theory and Operating Crux of Platisher. Journal of Renmin University of China, 29:6, 120. [In Chinese] Zelizer, B. (2004). When Facts, Truth, and Reality are God–Terms: On Journalism’s Uneasy Place in Cultural Studies. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1:1, 100–119. Zelizer, B. (2015). Terms of Choice: Uncertainty, Journalism, and Crisis. Journal of Communication, 65:5, 888–908. Zhang, S. I. (2019). The Business Model of Journalism Start-Ups in China. Digital Journalism, 7:5, 614–634.

8

‘Giving Up’ vs. ‘Holding On’ A Comparative Case Study of Chinese and Australian Newspaper Publishers’ Approaches to Their Print Editions in Their Digital Transition Chengju Huang

The Print Newspaper in the Digital Age Though debate about the relevance and viability of the print newspaper is not new, it has become fiercer and more dynamic in recent years with the worsening of the overall market ecology for newspapers globally in an accelerated digital age. For those critics who more or less believe in a theory of technological determinism, the death of the print newspaper has already become a de facto reality. They argue that despite the symbolic existence of the print newspaper, which may last for a little longer, its fate is historically doomed because of its technological irrelevance in the digital media ecology. In a McLuhanist rhetoric, this is a typical ‘the medium is the message’ game. As Warren Buffett argued, ‘if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the Internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed’ (Morton, 2007). In Australia, for example, between 2003 and 2020, the print circulation of its daily metropolitan newspapers dropped by nearly 67% from about 2.4 million to less than 800,000 – a rate of decline of approximately 10% a year since 2008. As of 2019, Australia’s print newspaper readership rate was about 30% or 6.2 million (Roy Morgan, 2019). According to a recent survey, the use of print media in the country has halved since 2016, with 80% of respondents saying they did not read a newspaper or magazine in the week prior to the survey. While a quarter of readers now primarily access news from social media, only 4% read news primarily in print formats (Park et al., 2021). Between 2002 and 2018, overall newspaper advertising revenues fell about 37%, from A$3.0 billion to A$1.9 billion, and print circulation revenues fell 38%, from A$1.3 billion to A$0.8 billion (AlphaBeta Australia, 2020). In China, the newspaper industry has also suffered a clear and deep downturn trend since the late 2000s. For example, in 2018, the industry’s DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-8

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circulation income and advertising income were RMB10.2 billion and RMB7.6 billion, a staggering 62% and 83% drop from 2011 respectively. Between 2011 and 2015, newspaper readership penetration rates decreased from 65.7% to 38.4%. In 2015, newspaper circulation through retail sales dropped 46.5% compared to the previous year (Huang, 2021, p. 190). In the same year, core business revenue and net profit of China’s 43 press groups dropped 6.9% and 45.1% respectively from a year earlier, and 31, or 72%, of these groups were loss-makers (Top Story, 2017). There have been waves of restructuring and rationalization in the industry, leading to the closure of numerous newspaper titles and big job losses. On the other hand, by the end of 2019, China’s online news consumers reached 731 million, and the number of people accessing news via mobile phone stood at 726 million (e.g., Top Story, 2017, 2018). The other side of the debate, however, takes a more optimistic, or at least dialectic, approach: It argues that print newspapers, as both a unique form of mass medium and a journalism genre, are still alive and well. And there may yet be a chance for the industry to survive and stabilize, though it will likely be smaller and less influential than it once used to be. For them, painting a highly generalized if dark picture about the industry without a closer look at the details of the issue in context is, in the words of Marc Edge (2014), more like a greatly exaggerated ‘myth’. Many critics emphasize that print newspapers, particularly the quality titles, remain strong and retain a loyal readership by continuing to offer readers good journalism and there is still a considerable degree of genuine interest in, and trust of, newspaper journalism. This view was typically reflected in a 2017 report released by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN) titled Print-Online Performance Gap. The study found that though total circulation declined for the investigated 51 US newspapers during 2007 and 2015, their print version (even though it dropped from 42.7% to 28.8%) still reached far more readers than their online offering (which increased from 9.8% to just 10%). Authors of the report thus ‘do not believe that the readers abandoned the print product for the websites of the newspapers’ (Wan, 2017). However, a recent Australian survey shows that though those readers who abandoned the print edition of a newspaper may not necessarily shift to the digital version, those loyal readers who are deeply attached to the print version are likely to extend their interest to relevant newspapers’ online offering and become cross-platform readers (The Conversation, 2021). WAN’s (2017) report also provided information about newspaper industries in selected other countries (beyond the US market). For example, a study that compared audience attention to 11 British national newspapers’ print, PC, and mobile versions found that despite both the circulation and revenues of their print editions being in ‘steep decline’, the total time audiences devoted

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to these newspaper brands favoured the print editions. The study found that of the time spent with those surveyed newspaper brands by their British audiences, ‘88.5 percent still comes via their print editions’, which suggested their print editions still remained their ‘most important platform’. Overall, they ‘engage each of their online visitors for an average of less than 30 seconds a day, but their print readers for an average of 40 minutes’ (Thurman, 2017, pp. 1409, 1418). Similarly, Thurman and his co-author in their case study of the United Kingdom’s Independent revealed mixed results for the newspaper’s digital-only strategy (since March 2016). Though its net British readership remained stable in the year after it stopped printing, the total time that the audiences spent with the online version fell by 81%, caused by ‘huge differences in the habits of online and print readers’ (Thurman & Fletcher, 2018, p. 1003). More recently, WAN estimated that in 2018, print revenues still accounted for 86% of news publishers’ revenue worldwide. Nearly 54% of newspapers’ overall revenue came from circulation sales, overtaking their advertising revenue as happened in the previous four years. The report declared that ‘[p]rint is still king globally’, though ‘digital is the key to growth’ (WAN, 2019, pp. 6, 13). Even the New York Times, arguably the best performer in digital transition in the global newspaper world, ‘still has about 830,000 print subscriptions and that revenue makes up almost half of its total subscription revenue’ (WAN, 2021, p. 54). It is also noteworthy that despite the sharp fall of print newspapers’ advertising revenue, ‘printed newspaper advertising remains the most trusted medium for advertising among global consumers’. This may offer ‘[a] good a gument for newspapers’ (WAN, 2021, pp. 76, 77). All this tells a much richer story about the allegedly ‘dead’ print newspaper in terms of its resilience as an established mass medium and journalism genre, its changing business model (shifting from one based on advertising revenue to one based on reader revenue), the complex and dynamic relationship between the print edition and the digital edition, and its social role and value to the public. This, accordingly, calls for a critical revisiting of any hasty and simplistic view of digital transition without careful research and strategic thinking and planning.

Method Why a Sino-Australia Comparison? Traditionally, when it comes to the study of Chinese journalism from a SinoWestern comparative perspective, US and British media have remained the dominant priority choices for representing ‘Western’ media. By comparison, much less attention has been paid to other Western countries. Australia’s media industry, for example, has remained considerably under-researched in China

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despite China’s close economic and cultural relationship with the country as an important Western democracy in the Asia-Pacific. The issue of ‘digital journalism’ should be seen essentially as a result of the interplay of diverse factors in a local context, and thus lessons from each (comparative) case study may be viewed as valuable in its own right. From this point of view, a Sino-Australian comparative study may potentially help to bring in some new knowledge or experiences in relation to this matter. The purpose of this chapter is to conduct a preliminary investigation of how the two countries’ newspaper publishers have viewed and approached their ‘dying’ print editions amid their digital transition, and what possible lessons may be drawn from this investigation from diverse perspectives (academic, industrial, and policy). Why West China City News and The Age? A comparative case study is used in this research as a systematic study of the two countries’ newspaper industries based on a large sample size is neither necessary (considering the research focus and scope of this study) nor possible due to limitation of resources. As will be discussed later, the Chengdubased West China City News (WCCN) and Melbourne-based The Age are chosen for this comparative case study for a number of reasons: Both titles are published in a compact size format; both were, and to various degrees still are, a leading daily newspaper title in their respective city and country, with a proud history; both have been experiencing tremendous market pressure and loss of readership and revenues and a bumpy journey of digital transition; and, in the meantime, both have undergone substantial editorial changes. In many ways, they serve as two prime examples that illustrate the difficul situation facing the newspaper industries in their respective countries. Data for analysis are generated from a textual research into the contents of the two newspapers (printed The Age and free online PDF version of printed WCCN are used respectively) during the week from Sunday, August 29, to Saturday, September 4, 2021 against relevant coding categories. These categories are designed to assess their journalistic performance (e.g., among other things, whether there are solid and vibrant news and editorial sections), capacity of attracting commercial advertisements, and market strategies (e.g., ways of retaining traditional/loyal readers). The findings are then further discussed in context and against the research literature.

Findings Data in Tables 8.1 and 8.2 show that the average numbers of pages and stories per issues of The Age during the sampled week were 2.5 and 1.5 times that of WCCN respectively: The Age had 40.6 pages and 32 news

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Table 8.1 Number of pages per issue

WCCN The Age

Sun 8/29

Mon 8/30

Tues 8/31

Wed 9/1

Thurs 9/2

Fri 9/3

Sat 9/4

Average

16 36

16 40

16 40

16 36

16 36

16 48

N/A* 48

16 40.6

* Starting from January 15, 2021, WCCN reduced the number of issues from seven to five per week on an irregular basis.

Table 8.2 Number of news reports (excluding business and sports news) Sun 8/29 WCCN 20 The Age 32

Mon Tues Wed 8/30 8/31 9/1

Thurs Fri 9/2 9/3

Sat 9/4

Domestic/ world

Total/ average per issue

21 28

23 31

N/A 37

115/13 184/40

128/21.8 224/32

22 36

24 27

18 33

reports per issue by average, compared with WCCN’s 16 pages and 21.6 reports. A closer look at their news reporting suggests that The Age took a more independent and balanced approach and focused more on important political, economic, and social issues. Among other stories, its domestic news section published 35 (or 5 per issue by average) critical and in-depth/ investigative reports (Table 8.3). It also presented a considerably diverse coverage of international news: US-led Afghan withdrawal and lessons of the Afghan War for the West, the COVID-19 pandemic, a refugee boat with 539 migrates found and rescued near Italy, Hurricane Ida in the United States, debate on abortions in the United States, China’s ‘crackdown’ on its entertainment and gaming industries, wetlands dying at alarming rate in Brazil, and so on. In comparison, WCCN’s domestic reporting took an absolutely ‘objective’ (non-critical) approach and predominantly offered its readers very ordinary (with low or almost no news values) and often dull social-economic news as well as a high percentage of propagandistic reports covering tedious bureaucratic routines of central and local governments from the officia perspective. For example, during the week, the paper used considerable space to cover environmental concerns raised by the local community. However, it took an overly ‘harmonious’ approach and focused on how hard and efficien the local government had been working on the matter while mentioning nothing about the details of those concerns themselves, whether or not those ‘achievements’ claimed by the government had been assessed by an independent third party, and the remaining concerns. Similarly, it

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Table 8.3 Critical and in-depth/investigative reports in relation to domestic issues WCCN The Age Major issues covered – The Age Critical

0

24

In-depth/ 0 investigative

11

Total

35

0

Fractured federation and dysfunctional national cabinet; the premier’s growing power must be kept accountable; greater scrutiny of state financial policy; lagging vaccine rollout among high school students; nationwide slow progress of transportation infrastructure projects; call for greater action on climate change; GPs kept in dark on virus patients; media bias; political corruption; a bishop’s alleged sexual misconduct; rights of indigenous people; unfair traffic offen penalties; exploitation of foreign meatworkers; overstated foreign influence in Australia The dark story of a union boss; global shipping chaos; hard-working public servants on the anti-virus frontline; sexual crimes and restorative justice; the cost of lockdowns; the crisis of the state’s hospital system; 9/11 memories and reflections; vaccine rollout and kids; school kids getting hooked on nicotine vapes

reported the Chinese government’s new policy of reducing school students’ workload and tightening restrictions of the after-school tutoring industry without any critical analysis and debate. The newspaper also nearly regularly published lengthy (often full-page) promotional articles (in the form of a news report) for local governments’ or businesses’ relevant development/ commercial programs (cultural-tourism projects, automobile show events, and even lottery promotions), a practice which is hardly ethical in journalistic terms. Meanwhile, its highly limited and fragmentary international news coverage during the week focused largely on ‘problems’ in relation to the United States (e.g., the ‘failure’ of the US Afghan policy, the US government’s attempt to ‘politicise’ the issue of coronavirus’ origins tracking, and the country being ‘kicked off’ the EU’s safe travel list due to its increased new COVID-19 cases). In addition, The Age published 38 commentaries and 219 letters to the editor, or 5.4 commentaries (including one editorial daily) and 31.3 letters per issue by average during the week, in its daily ‘Comment’ section. These pieces critically engaged in the debate on a wide range of important issues facing the community, the nation, and beyond (see Table 8.4 for details). By

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Table 8.4 Commentaries (including editorials)/letters to the editor WCCN The Age Sun 8/29

1/0

Mon 8/30 0/0 Tues 8/31 0/0 Wed 9/1

0/0

Thurs 9/2 0/0 Fri 9/3

1/0

Sat 9/4

N/A

Total

2/0

Major issues covered/debated – The Age

3(1E)/8

Tell the premier he is dreaming if he believes all people would follow the lockdown 6(1E)/27 rules; the premier’s office had too muc unscrutinized power during the lockdowns; 6(1E)/30 the politics of fighting virus; vaccine 6(1E)/39 passport; the struggling hospital system; don’t compromise democracy in the name 6(1E)/39 of fighting virus; impact of lockdown on 6(1E)/40 economy and life; more support to students during lockdowns; lack of transparency in 5(1E)/36 government’s financial support policy; gap in Australia’s vaccination rollout between 38(7E)/219 the rich and the poor; racial discrimination; Australia’s economic recession; lack of gender equality in federal politics; lack of ‘true leaders’ in this challenging time; investing more in infrastructure for future worst-case scenarios; better pay for nurses; job security and exploited workers; climate change; dreams still blossom during the pandemic; alleged war crimes of Australian troops in Afghanistan; US-led Afghan retreat; spend more to support people rather than buy expensive US weapons; the prime minister is a ‘bully’ (as alleged by some who had worked with him); Victoria can’t have one lockdown after another

contrast, WCCN did not have a specific ‘Comment’ section and published no editorials and letters to the editor and also no commentaries from its own or independent commentators during the sampled week. It only reprinted two commentaries from Xinhua: One that criticised the US government’s ‘conspiracy’ theory around the coronavirus origins issue against China (August 29, p. 9), and another calling for tightening regulation against ‘dodgy’ television programs (September 3, p. 8). The Age’s coverage of other issues during the week was also more comprehensive and diverse than that of WCCN across all categories, as shown in Table 8.5. This contrast was particularly reflected in the former’s business and sports reporting in terms of both quantity (72 and 117 reports respectively) and quality (covering major events and issues in those two areas with relevant news, information, and analysis). Unlike The Age, WCCN did not have regular and specific ‘Business’ and ‘Sports’ sections, and its coverage of these two important areas

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Table 8.5 Other contents

WCCN The Age

Business (article total)

Entertainment, Sports travel, lit & (story arts, & life total) (article total)

TV guide (page total)

Puzzles/ weather (page total)

Inserted weekly magazines with ads (title)

20 72

50 57

0 24

0/0.75 7/7

0 2

9 117

Table 8.6 Advertisements and retail/subscription prices Displays Classifieds Full-page Inserts/ Retail price (item (page (page flyers (per copy) total) total) total) (page total) WCCN 6 The Age 64

1.7 13.5

0 28

0 29

Full-year Full-year digital home sub. delivery

RMB1.0 Free RMB396* A$3.6 A$270 A$697** (weekdays) (plus free (plus free A$4.6 (Sat) app and app and A$4.0 (Sun) website website access) access)

*Source: http://wap.17dingbao.com/paper-800 **Source: https://subscribe.theage.com.au/

during the sampled week was extraordinarily limited and fragmentary. The Age also published two inserted weekly magazines, Good Weekend and Sunday Life, as well as a TV guide, a full-page colour weather forecast map, and full-page puzzles on a daily basis, obviously targeting its traditional/aged readership. Finally, The Age published nine displays, nearly two pages of classifieds, four full-page ads, and seven pages of inserts/flyers per issue during the week (plus a considerable number of advertisements in its two inserted weekly magazines). The paper also charges readers for both of its print and digital editions as well as full access to its online contents via paywalls. In comparison, WCCN published only scant advertisements and offers free access to its digital edition and online contents (Table 8.6). Overall, the findings suggest that while focusing (more) on its digital transition, The Age has well maintained its print edition through a ‘holding on’ strategy. In comparison, if not in contrast, WCCN’s digital transition has gone hand in hand with its (literally) ‘giving up’ its print edition.

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Discussion Established in 1854, The Age ‘is widely considered to provide some of the finest news coverage in the country’ and ‘has been highly regarded for its dedication to accuracy’ and ‘particular attention to politics and economics’ (Britannica, 2021). Since the early 2010s, the newspaper has experienced a progressive decline in readership and revenues due to market competition, its overreliance on classified advertisements in its old business model, and the lack of a swifter and more determined digital transition strategy (Beecher, 2013). As of June 2011, the average daily circulation of its weekday editions still remained at 190,750 copies, ranking the fourth most circulated daily newspaper nationwide. By the end of 2018, the figure had dropped to 74,360 copies, or a 61% decrease, which made it the ninth most circulated in Australia (Wikipedia, 2021). This trend largely reflected the overall situation of Australia’s newspaper industry during this period. While starting its digital transition from the 2000s and gradually becoming a market leader in digital journalism in Australia more recently, the newspaper has wilfully well kept its print edition and adopted some bold (albeit controversial) reforms. Among other things, against the grave competitive pressure from the Herald Sun, its same-city rival and an extremely popular tabloid title, its decision to shift to a tabloid-size format in March 2013 after nearly 160 years of publication as a broadsheet masthead has been the boldest and most debated move. To some critics, this shift would, based on historical experience, nearly certainly mean the newspaper’s retreat from its watchdog journalism tradition. Others, however, argued that this ‘broadloid’ approach should be seen as a rational way to go for traditional broadsheets like The Age to survive journalistic tabloidization and digitization in the 21st century (e.g., see Huang, 2016; Rowe, 2013). More than eight years have passed since this move, and despite continued circulation and revenue pressures, the print edition of The Age, against all odds (e.g., the investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted in 2013 that the newspaper’s print edition would have to close in two years; see Beecher, 2013), has survived and is still arguably in considerably good shape in both journalistic and business terms, as evidenced by this study. The legacy of its print edition as a quality journalism product continues (at least for now). The actual and symbolic value of this legacy for the company’s overall business development, including its continued digital transition, should by no means be underestimated. Among other things, this has made it possible for the newspaper as a company to integrate and distribute its journalistic and business resources across its print, digital, and online news portal platforms under the common domain of the highly valuable Age brand. Recent survey data show that in the 12 months to March 2021, the newspaper ranked the second most read

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Australian newspaper brand with a combined cross-platform readership of nearly six million, of which 1.58 million read its print edition (GX, 2021). Established in 1995 as the very first full-fledged commercially oriented metropolitan daily newspaper in the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) journalism history, WCCN’s immediate journalistic and market success triggered a significant and nearly decade-long metro-paper revolution based on a socialist sensational journalism dubbed as the huaxi (West China) model, and until recently, it had remained an influential player in China’s newspaper industry. By the early and middle 2000s, due to some complex political, market, and communication technological changes, the newspaper, like most other metro papers, first attempted to shift to a new, ‘serious’ press model and, later, started its digital transition. Both reform strategies have largely failed, however, to keep its print edition’s once-impressive journalistic and market performance, as this author has discussed elsewhere (Huang, 2001, 2016, 2021; Huang et al., 2002). The findings in relation to the title in this study further reinforce my recent discussion of the fall of the newspaper as a typical example that illustrates the largely collective journalistic and business collapse of the print editions of China’s metro papers (Huang, 2021). A typical metro paper title like WCCN nowadays would have fewer than 20 pages per issue and publish five issues a week, being filled with rather ordinary and often boring propagandistic stories and articles and extremely scant advertisements. There is a clear lack of journalistic spirit, commitment, and excellence as well as business vibrancy judged by their contents, all of which the sector once proudly upheld. Most titles have degenerated as ‘newspapers’ with little news and even less journalism (Huang, 2021). More recently, some of them have also established their new video-reporting-based online news portals with new business brands. WCCN’s online new portal Front Cover (Feng Mian), for example, has little to do with the WCCN brand itself, further suggesting the publisher’s giving up of WCCN as a print newspaper. A few lessons may be drawn from this study’s comparison of the print editions of the two titles. Theoretically, this study’s findings of The Age’s ‘holding on’ and WCCN’s ‘giving up’ approaches echo relevant research in the literature about newspaper publishers’ diverse and localized strategies/experiences in relation to their print editions in their digital transition in different contexts. Compared with a comparatively more balanced dual-edition (print and online) strategy taken by such influential and more resourceful titles as the New York Tines and The Guardian (Rusbridger, 2021; WAN, 2021, pp. 15, 54), or online-only path of the Independent (Thurman & Fletcher, 2018) and the Wall Street Journal (European and Asian editions), The Age has seemingly taken a middle course before a clearer direction may be found later. This makes sense considering that while print newspaper readership continues to decline in Australia, the number of people paying for online news

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also stagnates. Only 13% of Australians are currently paying for online news, compared with the global average of 17%, and the vast majority of those who are not paying also do not intend to pay in future (Park et al., 2021). As former CEO of the newspaper’s then-parent company Fairfax Greg Hywood said, ‘[w]e know that at some time in the future, we will be predominantly digital or digital-only in our metropolitan markets’, though ‘[w]e can’t say whether it’s three, five or ten years’ (Beecher, 2013, p. 5). On the other hand, the ‘giving up’ practice (while symbolically holding on) of WCCN has happened in the context of China as a pseudo-media market under state capitalism and one-party rule. The rise of China’s mass-appeal metro paper sector reached its climax in the mid-2000s, as its journalistic and financial triumph against the propaganda-oriented Party organ sector in the daily newspaper market became obvious. A professional journalistic culture as well as the practice of watchdog journalism also emerged from this development (e.g., see Huang, 2016; Svensson, 2017). However, this was also the time when the sector’s rapid growth became increasingly untenable due to changing communication technological and market conditions. These challenges were further complicated by highly politically and ideologically charged media policy changes that increasingly required news organisations to absolutely follow ‘the Party principle of journalism’ (Huang, 2016, 2021). As the competition pressure against newspapers from digital media intensifies, commercially oriented titles like WCCN, while continuing to be tightly politically controlled, have received little policy and financial support from the government. Meanwhile, the propaganda-oriented Party organ sector has surprisingly resurged against market logic as a result of government subsidy and policy support (Wang & Sparks, 2018).

Conclusion From an industry perspective, how much effort and resources a newspaper publisher places into its traditional print edition (if at all) in its digital transition is a complex matter that needs careful strategic thinking by considering diverse internal and external factors. Nevertheless, it can be argued that in a general sense, a newspaper publisher’s digital transition does not necessarily mean it has to give up or discriminate against its traditional print edition. Whenever possible, continuing to hold and value its print edition while focusing (more) on its online operation may help better hold its brand value, integrate its resources across platforms, and meet the diverse needs of its readership and, accordingly, better serve its journalism and overall business interest. This can be potentially useful for China’s newspaper publishers like WCCN, considering the low willingness of the majority of China’s internet users to pay for online news contents and China as a rapidly aging

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(but still populous) society where certain market opportunities for quality print newspapers may still exist. Like most of its metro paper peers, it is doubtful that WCCN’s current practice of keeping a well-below-standard print edition would earn it much journalistic and business acclaim. From a policy perspective, the market conditions for commercialized print journalism (as well as digital journalism or, more broadly, any form of journalism) in China can hardly improve without a more open politicalmedia environment. Until recently, the metro-paper sector was still the dominant force in the daily newspaper market, representing the highest possible journalistic and commercial achievements in the PRC’s journalism history. In the absence of an independent serious press sector as well as a vibrant public/community journalism, the journalistic fall of WCCN’s print edition symbolizes the end of a heroic era of professional journalistic development in post-Mao China, which may cause serious journalistic and social consequences.

References AlphaBeta Australia (2020). Australian Media Landscape Trends. Retrieved from https://alphabeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/australian-media-landscapereport.pdf Beecher, E. (2013, July). The Death of Fairfax and the End of Newspapers: Where Is the Journalism We Need Going to Come from Now? The Monthly. Retrieved from www. themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/july/1372600800/eric-beecher/death-fairfaxand-end-newspapers#mtr Britannica (2021). The Age. Retrieved from www.britannica.com/topic/The-Age Edge, M. (2014). Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers. New Star Books. GX (2021, May 25). Almost 95% of Australians See Newspaper Content. Gxpress. net. Retrieved from www.gxpress.net/article/7076/almost-95-of-australians-seenewspaper-content Huang, C. J. (2001). China’s State-run Tabloids: The Rise of City Newspapers. International Communication Gazette, 63:5, 435–450. Huang, C. J. (2016). Towards a Broadloid Press Approach: The Transformation of China’s Newspaper Industry Since the 2000s. Journalism, 17:5, 652–666. Huang, C. J. (2021). The Rise and Fall of Tabloid Journalism in Post-Mao China. In M. Conboy & S. A. Eldridge II (Eds.), Global Tabloid: Culture and Technology (pp. 183–197). Routledge. Huang, C. J., Knight, A., & Davies, C. L. (2002). Beyond Party Propaganda: A Case Study of China’s Rising Commercialized Press. Ejournalist, 2:1, 1–21. Morton, J. (2007). Buffeted: Newspapers Are Paying the Price for Shortsighted Thinking. American Journalism Review. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/ web/20081010072730/www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4416

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Park, S., Fisher, C., McGuinness, K., Lee, J. Y., & McCallum, K. (2021). Digital News Report: Australia. University of Canberra. Retrieved from www.canberra.edu.au/ research/faculty-research-centres/nmrc/digital-news-report-australia-2021 Rowe, D. (2013, March 5). The Tabloid Turn. Online Opinion. Retrieved from www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14759&page=0 Roy Morgan (2019, October 31). 15.4 million Australians Read Newspapers in Print or Online. Retrieved from www.roymorgan.com/findings/ 189-australian-newspaper-print-readership-and-cross-platform-audiences-september-2019–201910310418 Rusbridger, A. (2021, May 6). ‘It Was Exhilarating’: How the Guardian Went Digital – and Global. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/06/ guardian-200-it-was-exhilarating-how-went-digital-and-global Svensson, M. (2017). The Rise and Fall of Investigative Journalism in China. Media, Culture and Society, 39:3, 440–445. The Conversation (2021, May 7). Print Isn’t Dead: Major Survey Reveals Local Newspapers Vastly Preferred over Google among Country News Consumers. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/print-isnt-dead-major-survey-reveals-localnewspapers-vastly-preferred-over-google-among-country-news-consumers-160353 Thurman, N. (2018). Newspaper Consumption in the Mobile Age: Reassessing Multi-Platform Performance and Market Share using ‘Time-Spent’. Journalism Studies, 19:10, 1409–1429. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1279028 Thurman, N., & Fletcher, R. (2018). Are Newspapers Heading Toward Post-Print Obscurity? Digital Journalism, 6:8, 1003–1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/216708 11.2018.150462 Top Story (2017, June 1). China Journalist Association: 31 Press Groups Crippled by Loss as Industry Profit Down by 53.21%. Retrieved from www.sohu. com/a/144998243_570245 Top Story (2018, March 1). Shanghai Press Group Restructuring 91 Enterprises, One Third Press Outlets Closed Down and 2400 Employees Affected. Retrieved from https://freewechat.com/a/MzA5MjIzNjg2NA==/2656541501/2 WAN (2017). Summary: Print-Online Performance Gap. Retrieved from www.blog. wan-ifra.org/reports/2017/03/21/print-online-performance-gap WAN (2019). World Press Trends 2019: Facts and Figures. Retrieved from www. wptdatabase.org/world-press-trends-2019-facts-and-figures WAN (2021). The World Press Trends 2020–2021 Outlook. Retrieved from https:// wan-ifra.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/WAN-IFRA-Report_WPT2020-21. pdf Wang, H., & Sparks, C. (2018). Chinese Newspaper Groups in the Digital Era: The Resurgence of the Party Press. Journal of Communication, 69:1, 94–119. Wikipedia (2021). List of Newspapers in Australia by Circulation. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Australia_by_circulation

9

Classroom vs. Newsroom Journalism Education and Practice in the Digital Age Steve Zhongshi Guo and Dan Wang

Introduction Journalism education has always had an uneasy relationship with its practice. Scholarly attention to this perennial problem has seen a revival in recent years following the entry of digital technologies into the profession. Not surprisingly, much of the newfound interest hinges on whether technology holds the potential to alleviate or exacerbate the problem (Hirst, 2010; Howard, 2014). Researchers agree that the classroom–newsroom disjunction in journalism goes well beyond a mere mismatch of horizons between how journalism is taught and how it is done where some adjustments on either side can be made to correct the situation (Guo, 2009; Song, 2016). What is expectedly a symbiosis is marred, if not undermined, by the absence of a desire for closure on both sides and a lack of overlap between emphasis on the ideal in the classroom and yielding to the real in the newsroom (Deuze, 2006). This study interrogates the phenomenon by adopting the neo-institutionalist explanation which sees journalism education and practice as two independent fields in the larger societal setup, each with its own ontological definition of meaning and epistemological path to knowledge (Ryfe, 2006). This research tradition subsumes two dimensions that govern individual behaviours within an institution: constitutive in the ontological domain, and regulative in the epistemological realm (Ryfe, 2019). We pay particular attention to factors, potential or actual, that affect the size of discrepancies between classroom and newsroom as two parallel structures as well as frictions between them as elements within each structure. Against the backdrop of the broad neo-institutionalist framework, we decompose the classroom–newsroom discrepancies into three interrelated and yet conceptually distinct dimensions: (1) the normative vs. the actual and (2) change vs. status quo at the ontological level, and (3) major vs. minor in curriculum during anticipatory socialization at the DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-9

100 Steve Zhongshi Guo and Dan Wang epistemological level. Compared to public relations and advertising, whose ties with industry are considerably smoother, journalism is fraught with contestations and compromises which are unique to the trade (Deuze, 2006). Our study is contextualized in Hong Kong at a time when political space for discursive diversity has shrunk to an unprecedented low thanks to the promulgation of the National Security Law (SCMP, 2020). Meanwhile, both journalism educators and media practitioners find the nature of their work increasingly subject to and subjugated by the power of the rapidly spreading internet (Lee, 2018).

Explicating Classroom–Newsroom Disjunction The Problem The issue being dealt with here, classroom–newsroom disjunction, is one of no contest rather than one of no compromise for journalism lecturers and the desk editors (Gaunt, 1992). The reason is simple: To the former, tertiary education is the coming of age of a prospective journalist who is to be equipped with skills, knowledge, competence, and normative values for a future career (Hirst, 2010). But to the latter, a staffer fresh from college is no more than an apprentice destined to go through a routine process of learning, relearning, and unlearning, where necessary, in order to fit the bill (Westlund & Ekstrom, 2019). Despite the surge in journalism courses and degrees throughout the world more than two decades ago, seasoned industry practitioners continue to discredit universities for churning out entrants ill-suited for the realities of journalism as a career, resulting in a ‘peculiar disjunction between the reality of how people did become journalists and the ideology of how they should become journalists’ (Firth & Meech, 2007, p. 157). Rebuttals from journalism educators appear to be equally vigorous. Although it is not a licensed trade, they argue, journalism shares a common set of codes of conduct, ethics, and professional principles that transcend time and space (Hirst, 2010). As a super structural product, news is in essence nothing short of a symbolic representation of social conscience, public’s right to know, and moral standards, none of which is the exclusive province of a given media outlet, whenever and wherever journalism is practised. What is more, members of the audience public are more receptive and trusting of journalists with professional background and affiliatio (Carlson, 2017).

Classroom vs. Newsroom 101 Neo-Institutionalist Explanation: Constitutive and Regulative Institutional Behaviour Scholars of journalism studies have tried to understand and perhaps bridge the classroom–newsroom gap through various perspectives. Although digital news is tech-heavy, however, the skills are hardly sustainable or even meaningful if they are discussed separately from the normative values of news accuracy and credibility (Heravi, 2019). Neo-institutionalist theory tackles the problem from a completely diffe ent angle. It sets its sight on individuals and collectives whose behaviours within an institution are organized but not restricted or otherwise homogenized (Ryfe, 2006, 2016). This is particularly true during the structural transformation period when uncertainty prevails. Applying theory to the problem under study, we could see quite clearly that although intuitively journalism education and practice are two overlapping domains or fields, to borrow a term from Bourdieu (1984), each follows its own norms and rules. Ryfe (2006) coined two constructs to grasp the rules governing individual and collective behaviours in an institution: constitutive and regulative. The former, the constitutive, defines what quality news is ontologically, in terms of its innate meaning, its structural position in an institution (e.g., classroom or newsroom), its trajectory of historical development, and its normative and ethical values systems. The latter, the regulative, which is derived from the constitutive, is by definition a epistemological working manual instructing educators and practitioners on how to produce quality news (e.g., accurate, factual, fair, comprehensive, etc.) worthy of their beliefs, titles, and salary. According to the neo-institutionalist perspective, the observed classroom– newsroom disjunction, then, is actually reducible to differences in rules and normative expectations in both institutions (Lewis, 2012). Similar to the twofield view, Hirst (2010) argued that the scale of differences between journalism education and practice is of paradigmatic proportions. Interestingly, however, by sticking to their own values and traditions which are more or less invariant at the constitutive level, the two fields leave open possibilities of convergence at the regulative level. For example, they both gravitate toward digital technology. At times, the two fields find themselves united against and respond in unison to a perceived threat coming from sources external to both fields, such as use -generated content or the me-media (Tong, 2018). Three Sub-Dimensions The logic of the constitutive-regulative division, which derives from the neo-institutionalist approach, offers a useful pathway for researchers to

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grasp the classroom–newsroom discrepancy. But the odd couple situation can be more fully apprehended if one delves deeper into the nature of the relationship. For that purpose, we collapse the notion of discrepancy into three pairs of sub-dimensions: (a) the normative vs. the actual; (b) change vs. status quo; and (c) major vs. minor in curriculum. Each of the three subdimensions taps into a distinct aspect of the gap and directs attention to the possibilities for its closure in the digital age. The normative vs. the actual sub-dimension is the oldest, most prominent, and most persistent of the three. The normative emphasis of universal values in the first journalism programs predestined the schism between principle-based education and profit-oriented practice. Such a disjunction in institutional pursuits is likely to endure because changes and pressures are imagined in the classroom whose insistence on press freedom and ethical correctness comes with little at stake. In the real world, mass media can neither achieve full ideological and financial autonomy nor carry their act in a completely ethical way for the simple reason that they are the product rather than the producer of social forces (Carlson, 2014). Working journalists anywhere in the world know enough to accept this as a fact of their professional life. To new entrants in news media, learning typically means bracketing agreement reality (i.e., textbook knowledge) acquired from journalism school while absorbing experiential reality and knowledge from seniors (Deuze, 2006). Room for negotiation is limited. Native advertising, which is not beneath the accepted conduct of most of the formal media organizations throughout the world, is a case in point. Naturally, paid content that has the look and feel of news is not to be espoused in any way in journalism classrooms even though it is widely practiced in newsrooms (Carlson, 2014). As a tell-tale sign of breach of media professional ethics, journalists themselves generally adopt a hush-hush attitude toward the rising business of soliciting and publicizing native advertising. That said, the rise of digital news in the form of aggregators, although reducing news to second-hand repurposing, has nonetheless brought education and practice closer, with computer skills now being part of journalism curricular everywhere. The change vs. status quo sub-dimension has to do with whether the social functions of journalism should include identification with either an advocacy or adversary role. Apart from the deterministic political economy embedded in the business of news production, journalism also faces public concerns over its entitlement to resources and power which could be wielded against particular social groups (Waisbord, 2013). Two questions emerge. First, who decides what is important? While university journalism programs tend to cling to the view that it is incumbent upon journalists to guide

Classroom vs. Newsroom 103 public attention to important issues (Waisbord, 2013), the consensus among practitioners is quite the opposite. That is, reporters report what the audiences consider to be important (Usher, 2014). While some hold the belief that digitalization is the future of journalism, others are sceptical about its impact on the change-vs.-status-quo gap. In this regard, it is not exactly clear if cyber technology is bridging the news cultures of education and practice, for better or for worse, in the pseudo-community of the World Wide Web. Second, should media take sides? Unlike public relations and advertising, mass media cannot avoid pledging allegiance to political ideology or partisanship, or even to corporate interest in some cases, explicitly or implicitly (Carlson, 2014). Depending on the level of intimacy of its affiliatio to the ruling authorities, a media organization can editorially position itself as being pro-establishment or anti-establishment. The former takes it upon itself to promote the dominant ideology and justify the socio-political status quo. Such an act of boosterism is typically found in the press when making community news (Kaniss, 1997). Although the anti-establishment press makes an earnest attempt to strive for radical social change and keep the public vigilant about power abuse, it belongs to the minority even in Western democracies and is practically non-existent in authoritarian societies. Whether digital technology is capable of elevating voices of opposition to greater prominence in the internet political discourse remains an empirical question. The two represent diametrically opposed conceptions about the social functions of journalism, one pinning hopes on the press to shake the world by eradicating its evils, and the other pegging journalism for an apparatus designed to reproduce and sustain existing social conditions (Hirst, 2010). Some scholars are of the view that a world without a generally accepted storyteller (i.e., mass media) is one stripped of group cohesion and personal identity (Schudson, 2010), while others believe that mass media could devote its energy to, and make good use of its power for, investigations and exposés to fully enact its publicly entrusted responsibility as a key link in the system of checks and balances (Donsbach, 2014). The major–minor in curriculum sub-dimension. At the regulative and epistemological level, the disjunction between journalism education and practice is manifested in the differences of views on the criteria of quality professional knowledge and ways to acquire that knowledge. For journalism educators, pitting skills courses (major) against humanities courses (minor) is a forced alternative. Instead of blending science and reporting, data journalism, for example, tilts disproportionally toward computation (Gynnild, 2013). Rather than coming to the rescue, digital technology has apparently dealt a fatal blow to a profession whose traditional ideals and

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Figure 9.1 A field view of journalism education and journalism practice.

skills are on the brink of demise, resulting in the reverse of the ‘widely cited dictum of putting the pedagogical horse before the technological cart’ (Tsui & Tavares, 2021, p. 109). The fact that most journalism students find humanities courses uninspiring and irrelevant has roots in the questionable curriculum structure of tertiary education where the imposition of arbitrary major–minor boundaries in curricula artificially segregates knowledge into discrete areas mapped with industry sectors (Heravi, 2019). The problem became particularly pronounced when journalism programs in Hong Kong universities started to set up media management streams, AI concentrations, and data and even entrepreneurial journalism branches a few years ago, further shrinking the space for students’ exposure to humanities. A conceptual framework is presented in Figure 9.1. Figure 9.1 is a graphic representation of our theoretical approach. As two separate fields, journalism education and journalism practice share sizable common ground in ideas and ideals of professionalism. They also develop autonomous and exclusive systems of operation conditioned by their social

Classroom vs. Newsroom 105 anchoring, or habitus in Bourdieu’s (1984) field theory. Although technology makes an equal presence in both fields, the non-overlapping parts in the two fields constitute the root cause of tensions across the three dimensions identified in this research. Against the backdrop of the previously mentioned theoretical debates, we therefore pose and address two questions that guide our purpose of understanding Hong Kong journalism education and profession in the time of digital transition: (1) How are the three sub-dimensions manifest in both fields? And (2) what is the role of digital technologies in reconfiguring the relationships in these sub-dimensions?

Methods To address the research questions, we conducted in-depth interviews with two types of respondents: 10 incumbent journalism undergraduate students and 15 journalism educators with extended experience in the industry and degrees in journalism. The 25 interviews took place from early June to September 2021 in Hong Kong. Interviews, which were held in face-to-face and one-on-one fashion, lasted about 30 minutes on average. All respondents were affiliate to a journalism department in public universities in the community. We decided against focus group interviews for fear that any views expressed by an interviewee might prime or otherwise influence those of other panel members present. The first half of the interview was structured with identical questions for all interviewees, and the second half was semistructured with parts of the questions tailored to the particular background of the interviewee. Answers were collated for textual analysis.

Findings The Normative vs. the Actual All the interviewees, except journalism undergraduate students still working on their degrees who were excluded from this part of the analysis, expressed strong agreement that the normative vs. the actual gap exists and is the single most prominent factor separating journalism education from practice. One explanation for this comes from the social psychological constructs of the epistemic and the deontic properties of expectations (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2002). While the epistemic component of expectations denotes experiential rules that regulate behaviour (in the newsroom), the deontic attribute of expectations is related to normative principles of how things ought to be (in the classroom). As such, the two are both interrelated and a few degrees removed, particularly since the deontic expectations entail

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desirable, but not necessarily achievable, goals where unfulfill ent is the rule rather than the exception (Higgins, 1998). One of the interviewees, a senior journalism lecturer with more than 20 years of work experience in the top management of BBC (interviewee A), observed: ‘We teach students laws, ethics and journalism standards not simply because they represent the absolute bottom line in the news business, but also because they are the lowest threshold for being a decent human being’. This view was echoed by another journalism faculty member of similar background (interviewee B, also with years of journalism background) who said, You can’t write news without facing a dilemma one way or another. There has to be an absolute baseline against which you either sell your soul or you betray your organization. The bottom line is you can’t have conflict of interest and you can t make up news. Interviewee C, a journalism faculty with more than two decades of industry experience, expressed the matter a bit more sanguinely when she said, The ‘ought to’ part of the journalism education depends a lot on which journalism school you go to and what media organization you end up with because they really make a difference. The gap between ‘ought to’ and ‘be’ is minimal when you are lucky enough to get a degree in the right school and land a job in a reputable media organization. Other interviewees concurred with this view, showing that the normative vs. the actual discrepancy could vary considerably, reflecting the level of commitment of the education and media institutions to journalism professionalism. That is to say, the intersection between the two fields is maximized at the high-quality end of journalism education and practice. And the reverse is true at the lower end of the continuum. Interviewee D, a seasoned journalism educator who used to be the bureau chief of a major local TV station, offered some insight when he discussed ways through which the working reporters could actually take the edge off the normative vs. the actual gap: Reporters do indeed have to cope with all sorts of pressures, from the desk editor, the chief editor, the editorial policy, the organization’s political stance and the advertisers. But they also have plenty of leeway

Classroom vs. Newsroom 107 to sidestep them if they know how to skip the rope, to make good use of the discretionary space allowed them and to stick to their personal professional beliefs cleverly without openly flouting institutional rules. If you put your mind to it, you can always find a way. One magical word: Improvise. A senior journalism student who worked for three months as an intern in a local television station was quite bitter about the experience. I was only asked to do menial work because nothing I’ve learned can be put to immediate use. Audience metrics is a big thing at the station. It’s rush-rush for everyone and no one does their job in ways that we’ve learned in the classroom. Change vs. Status Quo The problem of what is worthy of reporting for the purpose of ensuring an informed public elicited mixed sentiments from both students and faculty members. Much of existing literature hands the task to journalists and media organizations as the default venue (McManus, 1997). At least in the pre-digital days, involvement by the public in editorial meetings that decide what is to be included, made prominent, and followed up in coverage was barely even nominal. What is important to the public is assumed and based on journalists’ perceptions. News, no matter how critical it appears, is bound to be pro-establishment. We orbit around political power centers and corporate headquarters and report everything key political actors and financiers utters in public. We focus our attention on narratives that promote policies that benefit the community and enhance the image of the community so as to attract investment. (former US bureau chief of Hong Kong’s largest left-wing newspaper) This statement echoes the view of some journalism scholars who see newsmaking as following a market model (Altschull, 1997; McManus, 1997). In the words of McManus (1997), ‘Given the scarce resources of time and capital, rational media firms should provide the least expensive mix of content that is hospitable to advertisers and investors and generates the largest audience those advertisers want to reach’ (p. 287).

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Interviewee E (adjunct faculty and working journalist) expressed a different idea: Since a neutral press does not exist, media organizations can do nothing but take sides, even though a reporter’s personal values and beliefs do not square well with that side. I stand by the public. No social change is achieved with approval from the authorities. And that’s what I tell my students: Uncover what they try to cover up, protest what they try to protect. If that makes me an oddball, so be it. In fact, most interviewees support media’s role in empowering the socially marginalized and recognize the potential power of new media technologies in serving as the weapons of the weak and helping the articulation of minority voices. ‘Practically all social movements are aimed at some forms of social change. How do we tell our students to cover the demands of minority groups such as the new immigrants, foreign domestic workers, and the disabled?’ (Interviewee E, faculty and journalist). Since the right-wing, left-wing, and independent political factions in the community all have their corresponding, or parallel, voices in the media (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), media education should make it very clear that mass media have no obligation to delegitimize dissent, deviance, outcast, street politics, and various social movements because doing so makes mass media an instrument of social control. Speaking from experience, social turbulences always bring out the best in a reporter. (Interviewee B) A sophomore journalism student felt disoriented when she kept hearing contradictory opinions in lectures. In class they all tell us to do the right things, but clearly different lecturers have very different ideas about what is right. Hong Kong’s news stand sells both right-wing and left-wing newspapers, which is right? What are the criteria for judgment? Major vs. Minor in Curriculum The surge of interest in journalism studies has sent universities in Hong Kong as well as the rest of China into a flurry of actions to launch new or expand existing undergraduate and graduate journalism programs.

Classroom vs. Newsroom 109 However, the effect of the move on the classroom–newsroom disjunction remains the contested core between educators and practitioners. Three areas rise to the foreground of concerns: (1) deteriorating quality of journalism graduates; (2) overemphasis on practical skills at the expense of a solid grounding in humanities; and (3) yielding of professional identity to the market, all of which connected to the arbitrary division of major and minor core and electives courses. Media employers like to blame journalism educators for their failure to provide job-ready training, whereas journalism educators point to the rapid increase in student intake and insufficien number of electives outside of journalism as the source of the evil. Both, however, agree that journalism schools are more or less in a state of crisis. As more and more students flood in every year, the quality of students has been on a steady decline. They can’t write properly even in their native language; they can’t tell a story coherently; and that doesn’t seem to bother them at all. (interviewee F, faculty member and a long-term journalist working for Reuters Hong Kong bureau). The statement was made by one, but the sentiment is shared by all our interviewees. A senior journalism student gave an account of the situation that offered a glimpse into the minds of the recipients of journalism education: Most students don’t think journalism takes four years to learn. I’d say one semester, two tops, is all we need to learn how to write news and editorials. All the good courses I have taken in the past three years, I took them outside of journalism. But the best ones are there in political science, sociology, marketing and history. They are simply not open to us. Only about one-fourth (30 credits) of the 120 credits needed for fulfi ment of graduation for an undergraduate in a Hong Kong university’s journalism program can be taken from outside of the home school. However, it seems that digital platforms have opened up a new venue of teaching and practice that promises a narrowing of the classroom–newsroom gap. The buzzword is click-rate both in the cyber world and on campus. It would be foolish for us to pretend that it is not happening out there and still teach students to go after the knowledge iceberg rather than just the visible tip. (interviewee G, faculty with 10 years of experience as anchor in Hong Kong’s largest TV channel)

110 Steve Zhongshi Guo and Dan Wang It is clear that the major–minor unbalance is not merely a drawback in curriculum structure. Journalism programs are under tremendous strain also from the larger social zeitgeist, particularly commoditization of news and technological advances. ‘The current trend of digitization and internet 4.0 have pushed journalism education to the corner where the traditional majorminor difference becomes irrelevant. Journalism dies when we bow to the 5G technology and it dies when we resist it’ (interviewee A).

Conclusion Our discussions of the classroom–newsroom gap have only scratched the surface of the problem from three entry points derived from the neo-institutionalist theoretical approach. Our interviews have confirmed our views on the constitutive (ontological) and regulative (epistemological) divide in journalism education and practice. Comments made by journalism faculty members and students in Hong Kong form the basis of our inference that the state of disarray, caused by the normative vs. the actual, change vs. status quo, and major vs. minor disjunctions in curriculum, is deeply and historically embedded. While all interviewees agree that no panacea exists, most of them were not pessimistic about the future of journalism development either on campus or in the industry. When expressed in the grammar of new media technology, intricacies in the relationship between journalism education and professional practice start to taper off because data journalism, AI, and various algorithms are taking centre stage. One could see it as good news if convergence is where the changes inevitably lead. Finally, there is hope that the classroom-newsroom rupture may be sealed (Song, 2016). On the other hand, digitization could also be a major cause for concern since it renders the humanities base and compassion increasingly to the periphery in both fields. The normative vs. the actual contradiction, if it can be called that, has to be understood in the context of legacy journalism instead of the transformation of it into digital journalism. In other words, the sort of jobs for which the traditional mode of journalism education prepared students are being phased out in both ideals and practices in the digital era. Interestingly, the change vs. status quo issue is likely to stay, continuing to vex scholars and practitioners alike in the foreseeable future, because the aforementioned political parallel system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) or multilateral system shows no signs of going away. The major vs. minor tension in curricula has indeed debilitated fresh entrants in many ways, but our interviews found that the classroom–newsroom division in the current system of journalism education has also equipped graduates for work in the new media

Classroom vs. Newsroom 111 environment, which can be seen as an alternative source of power in the increasingly centralized control of media information. Our findings have left more unsolved issues than those we have addressed. Top among them is where journalism as we define it today is heading in the next phase of technological development. We are unable to make a convincing prediction for the precise reason that no one did that for the current mode of education and production.

References Altschull, H. (1997). Boundaries of Journalistic Autonomy. In D. Berkowitz (Ed.), Social Meanings of News (pp. 259–268). Sage. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Routledge. Carlson, M. (2014). When News Sites Go Native: Redefining the AdvertisingEditorial Divide in Response to Native Advertising. Journalism. https://doi. org/10.1177/1464884914545441 Carlson, M. (2017). Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era. Columbia University Press. De Burgh, H. (2003). What Chinese Journalists Believe about Journalism. Political Communications in Greater China. Deuze, M. (2006). Global Journalism Education: A Conceptual Approach. Journalism Studies, 7:1, 19–34. Donsbach, W. (2014). Journalism as the New Knowledge Profession and Consequences for Journalism Education. Journalism, 15:6, 661–677. Firth, S., & Meech, P. (2007). Becoming a Journalist: Journalism Education and Journalism Culture. Journalism, 8:2, 137–164. Gaunt, P. (1992). Making the Newsmakers: International Handbook on Journalism Training. Greenwood Press. Guo, S. Z. (2009). Through Barbed Wires: Context, Content, and Constraints for Journalism Education in China. In B. Lee & J. Beate (Eds.), Journalism Education in Countries with Limited Media Freedom (pp. 1–30). Hampton. Gynnild, A. (2013). Journalism Innovation Leads to Innovation Journalism: The Impact of Computational Exploration on Changing Mindsets. Journalism, 15:6, 713–730. Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge University Press. Hanson, G. (2002). Learning Journalism Ethics: The Classroom Versus the Real World. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 17:23, 235–247. Heravi, B. (2019). 3Ws of Data Journalism Education: What, Where and Who? Journalism Practice, 13:3, 349–366. Higgins, E. T. (1998). Promotion and Prevention: Regulatory Focus as a Motivational Principle. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 1–46). Academic Press.

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Hirst, M. (2010). Journalism Education ‘Down Under’: A Tale of Two Paradigms. Journalism Studies, 11:1, 83–98. Howard, A. (2014). The Art and Science of Data-Driven Journalism. Retrieved from https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8Q531V1 Jones, A., & Bennett, R. (2017). Reaching beyond an Online/Offlin Divide: Invoking the Rhizome in Higher Education Course Design. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 25:2, 193–210. Kaniss, P. (1997). Making Local News. University of Chicago Press. Lee, F. (2018). Changing Political Economy of the Hong Kong Media. China Perspectives, 3, 9–18. Lewis, S. C. (2012). The Tension Between Professional Control and Open Participation: Journalism and Its Boundaries. Information, Communication & Society, 15:6, 836–866. McManus, J. (1997). The First Stage of News Production: Learning What’s Happening. In D. Berkowitze (Ed.), Social Meanings of News. Sage. Miceli, M., & Castelfranchi, C. (2002). The Mind and the Future: The (Negative) Power of Expectations. Theory & Psychology, 12:3, 335–366. Ryfe, D. (2006). The Nature of News Rules. Political Communication, 23:2, 203–214. Ryfe, D. (2016). News Institutions. In T. Wistschge, D. Domingo, & A. Hermida (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Digital Journalism (pp. 370–382). Sage. Ryfe, D. (2019). Institutional Theory and Journalism. In The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies (pp. 1–5). Schudson, M. (2010). Four Approaches to the Sociology of News Revisited. In J. Curran (Ed.), Media and Society (pp. 164–185). SCMP (2020). Hong Kong National Security Law’s Chilling Effect on Freedom of Speech is Real. South China Morning Post. Song, Y. (2016). Multimedia News Storytelling as Digital Literacies: An Alternative Paradigm for Online Journalism Education. Journalism, 19:6, 837–859. Tong, J. (2018). Journalistic Legitimacy Revisited: Collapse or Revival in the Digital Age? Digital Journalism, 6:2, 256–273. Tsui, A., & Tavares, N. (2021). The Technology Cart and the Pedagogy Horse in Online Teaching. English Teaching & Learning, 45, 108–118. Usher, N. (2014). Making News At The New York Times. University of Michigan Press. Waisbord, S. (2013). Reinventing Professionalism. Polity Press. Westlund, O., & Ekstrom, M. (2019). News Organizations and Routines. In K. Wahl-Jorgensen & T. Hanitzsch (Eds.), Handbook of Journalism Studies (2nd ed.). Routledge. Zelizer, B. (2004). Taking Journalism Seriously: News and the Academy. Sage.

10 Conclusion Retrospect and Prospect Shixin Ivy Zhang and Jing Meng

The Introduction raised three research questions. First, is China witnessing disruptive or sustainable journalism? Second, in what ways, if any, does digital technology disrupt journalism? Finally, does Chinese digital journalism converge or diverge from Western digital journalism? This Conclusion addresses these central questions, drawing on disruption theory and the theoretical/empirical research of chapter contributors in this section. With regards to the first question, it is rather difficul to provide a defin tive ‘either-or’, ‘black or white’ answer because of the particular multi-level (central, provincial, local) and multi-dimensional (legacy media, digital media, short video platforms, social media) system of media industries and news organizations in China. Unlike the market-driven media industries which characterize the West, Chinese news media are state-driven, stateled, and state-regulated with heavy political constraints. It is true that a few influential legacy media outlets such as the market-oriented outlet Caixin, the digital-only Pengpai (ThePaper.cn), and the mega-state-owned outlets have adopted and implemented digital strategies, produced quality content, and sustained their value and market share, seemingly leading to sustainable journalism. However, the more general trend is that China is witnessing disruptive journalism with its own complexities and nuances. On the one hand, pressured and challenged by the digital disrupters (new entrants), the newspaper industry has suffered a deep downturn since the late 2000s. Numerous newspaper titles nationwide (incumbents) had closed by 2022, most of which were market-oriented metropolitan papers that enjoyed their prime time in the 1990s and early 2000s (see Chapter 8). On the other hand, the central-level state-owned media outlets such as Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily, and CCTV have successfully implemented digital transformations with strong political (policy) support, as well as financi l and technological resources. They restructured newsrooms, upskilled new recruits and journalists, and reoriented content, which reinforced their authority and power in the new media market. But even these mega-state-media outlets DOI: 10.4324/9781003247579-10

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tend to ‘aim low’ to attract, entertain, and please online users, thus seeking popularity and influence (see Chapters 4–6). As Wang et al. (2020) find, Chinese journalism moves in the direction of ‘an increasing yielding to the influence of new media technology and the tightened grip of ideological control’. Disruption theory can partially explain what happens in the news industry in China. It suggests that, if the technology is disruptive, the current performance of disruptive technologies will lie far below the performance demanded by current customers (Bower & Christensen, 1994, p. 50). Later, Christensen et al. (2015) further explain the trajectory of both disruptors and incumbents. Disruptive innovations are initially considered inferior by most of an incumbent’s customers. Disrupters tend to focus on getting the business model, rather than merely the product, just right. When they succeed, their movement from the fringe (the low end of the market or a new market) to the mainstream erodes first the incumbents’ market share and then their profitabilit . This process can take time, and incumbents can get quite creative in the defense of their established franchises. (Christensen et al., 2015, p. 48) If we use disruption theory to explain and predict what happens in the field of digital journalism in China, disruption theory can be adapted as shown in Figure 10.1.

Figure 10.1 Trajectory of disruptive journalism in China adapted from disruption theory. Source: Bower and Christensen (1994, p. 49).

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Figure 10.1 illustrates the trajectory of disruptive journalism in China, in which the horizontal axis indicates time whereas performance, including both market share and quality of content (value), is defined on the vertical axis. In this plotting diagraph, digital disruptors such as news aggregators (e.g. Toutiao), short-video platforms (e.g. Douyin), social media platforms (e.g., WeChat, Weibo, Zhihu – the Quora equivalent in China – and Red) and numerous applications (apps) start at the low end of the market and then move upward to improve their content and take over market share from the incumbent legacy media. But when they reach a certain point, their performance in terms of both market share and content start to decrease. In China, the quality of content of new media, social media in particular, has always been a concern. The situation has deteriorated in recent years. For instance, it was reported that ‘the number of original articles and quality of content decline. The level of activeness of WeChat public accounts is low’ (2021); ‘Why does the quality of Zhihu keep decreasing?’ (2020); and ‘Articles unread. Fans drop day by day. New media people, have you collapsed?’ (2019).1 In other words, digital disruptors do not always outperform incumbents. As for mainstream legacy media, the state-owned or officia media as well as the influential and innovative market-oriented media outlets undergo digitalization, platformization, and ‘enter the substitute industry’ (Meyer, 2004, p. 32) by implementing media convergence, creating their own apps, and managing their Weibo/WeChat account, and thus sustaining their position in the market. Meanwhile, many local market-oriented outlets either close down or stop their print editions. Even if they still maintain the print edition, the quality of content is well below the standard. The content of state-owned outlets is reoriented to boost the click and view rate via popularization and tabloidization, and thus follow a downturn trend. The limitation of this mapping or plotting is that the complexities and nuances in the media market in China are not fully captured or manifested so. The division of market performance and content; different kinds and levels of media organizations; media-state relationship; and the intertwined political, market, and technological forces will all create different outcomes. Turning to the second question about how digital technologies disrupt Chinese journalism, we argue that digital technologies have impacted and prompted changes to journalism theories, news practice, business models, and education. Meanwhile, legacy media have responded by adapting content strategies, newsroom structures, and routines. At the theoretical level, a new paradigm for global journalism studies has emerged, which encompasses news ecosystem/actors studies and hinges on professionalism and information democracy. In the context of China, three dominant discourses in relation to digital journalism have developed over the past decades, namely technological, industrial, and political discourses, while the social

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and professional dimensions remain curiously under-explored (Chapter 2 and 3). At the level of journalism practice, on the one hand, the Party media have gone through ‘re-popularization’ and ‘politically safe tabloidization’ processes to appeal to young audiences and to reshape the officia image on social media platforms. On the other hand, the market-oriented media outlets have adopted a ‘quasi-platformization’ approach to achieve high performance in the trade-off between reputation and risks. Digital journalists from the local press make many mistakes in the eyes of their legacy seniors, which violated the accepted norms of the trade (Chapters 4–7). At the level of business models, while Party media outlets have resurged against market logic with government subsidy and policy support, market-oriented media have faced tightened political control and received little policy and financial support from the government. While digitalization and platformization may be what the future holds for newspaper publishers, the fall of metropolitan titles’ print editions marks ‘the end of a heroic era of professional journalistic development in post-Mao China’ (Chapter 8). In terms of journalism education, three classroom-newsroom disjunctions emerge, including the normative vs. the actual; change vs. status quo; and major vs. minor in curriculum, though digital technology is believed to hold the potential to bridge the gap (Chapter 9). In view of the alleged convergence or divergence of Chinese and Western digital journalism, we would argue that development of digital journalism in China has diverged from that in the West. Differences rather than similarities are evident in comparisons of these two settings. While digital technologies have disrupted the media marketplace, leading to journalism crisis, with legacy media responding with digitalization and platformization in both China and the Western countries, the fundamental difference lies in the market-driven versus state-driven media systems. While market logic and media logic intertwine in shaping the trajectory and practice in the West, politics overrides the market and media logic in China. This collection has offered theoretical discussions and up-to-date empirical evidence to demonstrate that Chinese media have responded to digital disruption with diffe ent content strategies, journalistic practice, and business models. As Huang argues in Chapter 8, ‘the issue of “digital journalism” should be essentially seen as a result of the interplay of diverse factors in a local context’. Finally, we are cautiously optimistic about the prospects and future of digital journalism in China. Looking ahead, the state-media-market-technology nexus will continue to be intricate. The Party media and/or central stateowned media are likely to maintain their leading position given the allocation of resources, whereas the local market-driven media outlets may continue to decline. Here, the Matthew effect and Ratchet effect may complement disruption theory in explaining and predicting what happens in the

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media market. While the Matthew effect suggests that ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’, the Ratchet effect points to the phenomenon that ‘once individuals or subjects achieve a certain level of popularity they usually stay at and do not fall much below that level’. These two effects often work in sync with each other (Wan, 2015). Having said this, it is hoped that digital technologies (ICTs) will bridge the gap between the new entrants and the incumbents, the new media and the legacy media, the newsroom and the classroom. A final note of caution from contributors is warranted. This edited volume offers a brief, wide-ranging examination of significant topics in debates about digital journalism in China. Even so, constraints of word length mean that some important subjects such as investigative journalism, citizen journalism, data journalism, and immersive journalism, as well as audience (online users) research, are not included here. It is hoped that in the very near future, more theoretical and empirical research about these subjects will be conducted and published. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and comparative analyses also need to be enhanced to deepen the understanding of digital journalism studies in China.

Note 1

原创文章数量、质量下降 各公众号活跃度不高_腾讯新闻 (qq.com). 文章没人看，粉丝天天掉，做新媒体的你崩溃了吗？ (baidu.com). 为什么知乎的质量一直在下降？-网络-站长头条 (seoxiehui.cn).

References Bower, J. L., & Christensen, C. M. (1995). Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. Harvard Business Review, 1: 43–53 Christensen, C. M., Raynor, M. E., & McDonald, R. (2015). What Is Disruptive Innovation? Harvard Business Review, 44–53 Meyer, P. (2004). The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age. University of Missouri Press. Wan, Y. (2015). The Matthew Effect in Social Commerce: The Case of Online Review Helpfulness. Electron Markets, 25: 313–324 Wang, D., Huang, V. L., & Guo, S. Z. (2020). Malleable Multiplicity and Power Reliance: Identity Presentation by Chinese Journalists on Social Media. Digital Journalism, 8:10, 1280–1297

Index

academic discourses 23 Age, The 4 audience 3, 4, 5, 36, 38 – 39, 42 – 45, 55, 58, 63, 75, 77, 79, 81 – 82, 87 – 88, 100 – 101, 107 Australia 2, 4, 86 – 88, 91 – 92, 94 – 95 automated journalism 1, 3 business model 1, 29, 49, 88, 94, 114 – 116 CCTV (China Central Television Station) 4, 48, 50 – 52, 56 – 57 central kitchen 29, 30, 33, 77 change vs. status-quo 99, 102, 104, 107, 110 China 1 – 5, 11, 21, 23, 28, 31 – 32, 36 – 45, 48 – 57, 61 – 65, 86 – 92, 95 – 97 Chinese academic 23, 25 Chinese journalism 5, 30 – 31, 36, 40, 42, 45, 68, 70, 88, 114 Chinese official medi 74 – 79, 81 – 83 classroom-newsroom disjunction 99 – 100, 102, 110 classroom-newsroom gap 101 commercial media 55 – 58 constitutive rule 99, 101, 110 constructive journalism 5 Delphi method 4, 11, 13 digital disruption 5, 10, 116

digital era 8, 29, 110 digitalization: digital news 61, 67 digital journalism 61, 67 digital journalism studies (DJS) 8 – 15, 17 – 21n2 digital journalist 1, 3, 12, 61, 63, 66 – 67, 116 Digital News Gathering (DNG) 27 digital newsroom 4, 61, 65, 67 digital publishing 25, 30 digital revolution 28 digital technology 5, 13, 23, 27 – 29, 32, 49, 58, 101, 103, 113, 116 digital transformation 1, 3 – 5, 10, 25, 29, 65 digital TV 25, 30 digital wave 29, 30 digitization 8 – 9, 14, 18, 20, 76, 94, 110 discourses 3, 14, 18, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, 31 – 32, 43, 56, 103, 115 disruption 1 – 4, 113, 114, 116 disruption theory (the theory of disruptive innovation) 2 – 3, 113 – 114, 116 disruptive journalism 3 – 4, 113, 114, 115 disruptive technology 1 Douyin 4, 115 emotion 15 – 16, 52 –53, 54 e-newspapers 28 epistemological 99, 101, 110

Index errors 61, 67 – 68, 71 ethics 102 field 99, 101, 104, 105 – 106, 110 four comprehensives 41 – 42 Global South 1 government 30 – 31, 42, 44, 50, 56 Hong Kong journalism 100, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110 information democracy 12, 18, 19, 20, 115 innovation 2 – 3, 12, 31, 55, 57, 76, 81 – 82 Internet+ 30 investigative journalism 5, 117 journalism education 4, 5, 99, 101, 103 – 111, 116 journalism in China 61 – 64, 66, 72 journalism practice 17, 19, 21n3, 30, 41, 104, 116 journalistic professionalism 12, 16, 17, 19, 21n6, 80, 81 legacy media 3, 4, 28, 65, 71, 113, 115 – 117 legitimacy 4, 5, 10, 16, 29, 63 major vs. minor 99, 103, 104, 108, 110 Mao Zedong 30 market-oriented media 39, 40, 115, 116 media convergence 4, 31, 77, 82, 115 media industry 28, 30 media professionalism 63 – 64 mobile newspaper 28 neo-institutionalist 99, 101, 110 news actor 4, 15, 19 – 20 news aggregator 4, 65, 79, 81, 115 news ecosystem 14, 16, 19, 20, 75, 78, 81, 84, 115 news order and disorder 63, 66, 69 – 70 news platform 77, 82 normative vs. the actual, the 99, 102, 104, 105 – 106, 110 norms 61 – 64, 67, 71 – 72

119

objectivity 5, 16 – 17, 85 official medi 40, 49, 55, 74 – 79, 81 – 84 omni-media 29 online editions 87 – 89, 93 – 95 ontological 99, 101, 110 paradigm 8, 14 – 20, 115 party journalism 36 – 45 party media 5, 48 – 52, 54 – 58, 115 paywall 29, 93 Pengpai 4, 113 People’s Daily, The 4, 13, 17, 33, 48, 50 – 54, 56 – 57, 76, 83, 113 platformization 4, 5, 74 – 79, 80 – 81, 115, 116 polarization 18, 20 popular journalism 36 – 43, 45 professional identity 5, 109 professionalism 12, 16 – 17, 19 – 22, 63 – 64, 80 – 81, 104, 106, 112, 115 professional journalism 5, 75, 78, 80, 82 professional journalists 63, 71 – 72 propaganda 27, 36, 48 – 50, 67 – 69, 96 quasi-platformization 82, 116 red 84, 115 reform and opening up 27 regulative rule 99, 101, 110 self-help 53, 54 social change 19, 32, 33, 64, 103, 108 social function of journalism 103 socialization 61 – 67, 71 social media 14, 17, 40 – 44, 48, 50 – 52, 56 – 58, 64, 81, 86 social media editors 51 – 52, 56 social media platform 4, 40, 48, 50, 52, 55, 57, 67, 116 social media posts 48, 52 sustainable journalism 4, 113 tabloidization 5, 48 – 49, 52, 54 – 55, 94, 115, 116 tacit knowledge 62 – 64, 66, 68, 70 – 71

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techno-cultural symbiosis 14, 20 technology 99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 111 Toutiao, Jinri 3, 4, 79, 115 traditional media 17, 25, 29, 52, 82 user-generated content producer 78 viral content 54, 56 WeChat 3, 4, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 64, 66 – 68, 75, 115

Weibo 4, 17, 48, 50, 52, 54 – 57, 115 West China City News 4, 89 Xi Jinping 31, 41, 48, 56, 61 – 64, 68 – 69, 74 – 76, 78, 90 – 92, 96 Xinhua 4, 36 – 45 Xinhua News Agency 45, 56, 113 Zhihu 115