Online News-Prompted Public Spheres in China

Online News-Prompted Public Spheres in China
Author: Xuanzi Xu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2022-10-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031121562

This book argues that there are constant formations of online public spheres in present-day China, prompted by never-ending news. It contends that these publics are chronic, although individually they are usually transient. They are networked, which enables them to go viral in hours, and they may engender unexpected consequences. These features explain why online public spheres survive in China even though censorship and information manipulation are pervasively and strategically maneuvered to guide or manufacture “public opinion”. The book also proposes that there are deeply entangled structural factors bolstering China's online news-prompted public spheres: the continuous flow of news information, the countless public spaces facilitated by China’s digital infrastructure and the rise of rights-conscious netizens. Pushing forward a new way of conceptualizing the idea of public spheres, this book contends clearly that public spheres are most often sparked by chronic news in today's media-saturated societies. Delving into the life cycles of public spheres, it goes beyond static analysis of individual public spheres and instead studies their five qualities, which, except for the networked quality, have never been systematically addressed in scholarship.

Online News-Prompted Public Spheres in China

Online News-Prompted Public Spheres in China
Author: Xuanzi Xu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre:
ISBN: 9783031121579

This book argues that there are constant formations of online public spheres in present-day China, prompted by never-ending news. It contends that these publics are chronic, although individually they are usually transient. They are networked, which enables them to go viral in hours, and they may engender unexpected consequences. These features explain why online public spheres survive in China even though censorship and information manipulation are pervasively and strategically maneuvered to guide or manufacture "public opinion". The book also proposes that there are deeply entangled structural factors bolstering China's online news-prompted public spheres: the continuous flow of news information, the countless public spaces facilitated by China's digital infrastructure and the rise of rights-conscious netizens. Pushing forward a new way of conceptualizing the idea of public spheres, this book contends clearly that public spheres are most often sparked by chronic news in today's media-saturated societies. Delving into the life cycles of public spheres, it goes beyond static analysis of individual public spheres and instead studies their five qualities, which, except for the networked quality, have never been systematically addressed in scholarship. Xuanzi Xu completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia, and her MA at the Sorbonne University, France. Her research focuses on how the everyday news participation of ordinary Chinese Internet users contributes to the formation of online public spheres in China. More broadly, she is interested in the interplay between ICT, civil society and the state, and is keen to explore the political implication of the unfinished information revolution.

China's Galaxy Empire

China's Galaxy Empire
Author: John Keane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019762913X

In China's Galaxy Empire target a development of enormous significance: China's return, after two centuries of decline and subjugation, to a position of prominence in world affairs. The daring thesis is that China is a newly rising empire of a kind never before witnessed: a galaxy empire. The first to be born of the digital communications era, this young empire is economically and politically powerful, and heavily armed. Its gravitational, push-pull effects are impacting every continent--and even outer space, where China is competing with the United States, India, and Europe to become the leading power. The galaxy empire interpretation rejects clich?d misdescriptions of China as a "big power" or monolithic "autocracy", and it explains why China defies older definitions of land, sea, and air-based empires. The book charts the developments that have made its rising empire so novel, including the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, the rapid rise of a global Chinese middle class, and internal colonialism in Tibet and Xinjiang. The book notes the protean, shapeshifting qualities of this young empire. It therefore warns against the political and military perils of simple-minded, friend-versus-enemy thinking and "Big China, Bad China" politics. But it also proffers a forewarning to China's rulers: while every rising empire aims to shift the balance of power in its favour, no empire lasts forever, and some are stillborn, because they indulge illusions of greatness and reckless power adventures.

Making Online News

Making Online News
Author: Chris Paterson
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2008
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781433102134

Volume 2 summary: Online journalism has taken center stage in debates about the future of news. Instead of speculating, this volume offers rich empirical evidence about actual developments in online newsrooms. The authors use ethnographic methodologies to provide a vivid, close analysis of processes like newsroom integration, the transition of newspaper and radio journalists to digital multimedia production, the management of user-generated content, the coverage of electoral campaigns, the pressure of marketing logics, the relationship with bloggers or the redefinition of news genres. -- Publisher description.

Engaging Social Media in China

Engaging Social Media in China
Author: Guobin Yang
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1611863910

Introducing the concept of state-sponsored platformization, this volume shows the complexity behind the central role the party-state plays in shaping social media platforms. The party-state increasingly penetrates commercial social media while aspiring to turn its own media agencies into platforms. Yet state-sponsored platformization does not necessarily produce the Chinese Communist Party’s desired outcomes. Citizens continue to appropriate social media for creative public engagement at the same time that more people are managing their online settings to reduce or refuse connection, inducing new forms of crafted resistance to hyper-social media connectivity. The wide-ranging essays presented here explore the mobile radio service Ximalaya.FM, Alibaba’s evolution into a multi-platform ecosystem, livestreaming platforms in the United States and China, the role of Twitter in Trump’s North Korea diplomacy, user-generated content in the news media, the emergence of new social agents mediating between state and society, social media art projects, Chinese and US scientists’ use of social media, and reluctance to engage with WeChat. Ultimately, readers will find that the ten chapters in this volume contribute significant new research and insights to the fast-growing scholarship on social media in China at a time when online communication is increasingly constrained by international struggles over political control and privacy issues.

Transnational Public Spheres

Transnational Public Spheres
Author: Mohammadbagher Forough
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2024-10-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040176631

This book offers the first systematic theorisation of transnational public spheres from non-Western, spatial, and infrastructural perspectives. The current era is characterised by transnational challenges, such as climate change, pandemics, and financial crises, that cannot be adequately addressed by national public spheres. Public spheres, defined as arenas of collective communication and action, are the cornerstone of any people-centred system of governance. This book puts forward a transnational public sphere theory and focuses on spatial, infrastructural, and non-Western perspectives, thus adding to the public sphere theory and practice at both national and transnational levels. The author offers a new conceptual construct, “the right to space”, as a way of transnationalising the theory and addressing its efficacy issues. Providing conceptual clarity on the public–private distinction, this book examines the historical roots of the public sphere in both Asia and Europe, establishes the methodological and ontological foundations for a theory of transnational publics, and analyses contemporary empirical instances of transnational publics in both Asia and the West. This transnationalisation is crucial now that authoritarianism is on the rise and democracy is in decline worldwide. A timely addition to the literature, this book will be of interest to researchers in international relations, political science, political theory, sociology, media and communication, cultural and literary studies, and Asian studies.

China's Embedded Activism

China's Embedded Activism
Author: Peter Ho
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2007-10-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134080549

In recent years China has been remarkable in achieving extraordinary economic transformation, yet without fundamental political change. To many observers this would seem to imply a weakness in Chinese civil society. However, though the idea of democracy as multitudes of citizens taking to the streets may be attractive, it is simultaneously misleading as it disregards the nature of political change taking place in China today: a gradual shift towards a polity adapted to a pluralist society. At the same time, one may wonder what the limited political space implies for the development of a social movement in China. This book explores this question by focusing on one of the most active areas of Chinese civil society: the environment. China’s Embedded Activism argues that China’s semi-authoritarian limitations on the freedom of association and speech, coupled with increased social spaces for civic action has created a milieu in which activism occurs in an embedded fashion. The semi-authoritarian atmosphere is restrictive of, but paradoxically, also conducive to nationwide, collective action with less risk of social instability and repression at the hand of the governing elite. Rich in case studies about environmental civic organizations in China, and written by a team of international experts on social movements, NGOs, democratization, and civil society, this book addresses a wide readership of students, scholars and professionals interested in development, geography and environment, political change, and contemporary Chinese society.

China's Influence and American Interests

China's Influence and American Interests
Author: Larry Diamond
Publisher: Hoover Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2019-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0817922865

While Americans are generally aware of China's ambitions as a global economic and military superpower, few understand just how deeply and assertively that country has already sought to influence American society. As the authors of this volume write, it is time for a wake-up call. In documenting the extent of Beijing's expanding influence operations inside the United States, they aim to raise awareness of China's efforts to penetrate and sway a range of American institutions: state and local governments, academic institutions, think tanks, media, and businesses. And they highlight other aspects of the propagandistic “discourse war” waged by the Chinese government and Communist Party leaders that are less expected and more alarming, such as their view of Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that owes undefined allegiance to the so-called Motherland.Featuring ideas and policy proposals from leading China specialists, China's Influence and American Interests argues that a successful future relationship requires a rebalancing toward greater transparency, reciprocity, and fairness. Throughout, the authors also strongly state the importance of avoiding casting aspersions on Chinese and on Chinese Americans, who constitute a vital portion of American society. But if the United States is to fare well in this increasingly adversarial relationship with China, Americans must have a far better sense of that country's ambitions and methods than they do now.

Discursive Pragmatics

Discursive Pragmatics
Author: Jan Zienkowski
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2011
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027207852

The ten volumes of "Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights" focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While the other volumes select specific philosophical, cognitive, grammatical, social, cultural, variational, or interactional angles, this 8th volume focuses on theories and phenomena at the level of discourse, but leaving aside conversational interaction. It provides the reader with pragmatics-oriented information on discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics, as well as text linguistics and appraisal theory, while introducing other specific approaches to discourse through concepts such as polyphony, intertextuality, genre, and "enonciation." Furthermore, topics such as public discourse, narrative, figures of speech, cohesion and coherence, pragmatic markers, manipulation, and humor, are all dealt with in separate chapters. The binding idea, explained in the introduction, is that discursive pragmatics may serve as a platform for a diversity of perspectives on discourse, as they have emerged not only in the language sciences but also in the humanities and social sciences in general."

Changing Media, Changing China

Changing Media, Changing China
Author: Susan L. Shirk
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2011-01-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199751978

This collection of essays-- written by pioneering Chinese journalists and Western experts--explores how transformations in China's media--from a propaganda mouthpiece into an entity that practices watchdog journalism--are changing the country. In detailed case studies, the authors describe how politicians are reacting to increased scrutiny from the media, and how television, newspapers, magazines, and Web-based news sites navigate the cross currents between the market and the CCP censors.