This edited collection brings together journalism scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, the UK and Australia to address a variety of pressing issues and challenges facing digital journalism in China today.
While China shares certain affinities 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.
Chapter 1. Introduction Chinese Digital Journalism: Disruptive or Sustainable?
Shixin Ivy Zhang and Jing Meng
Chapter 2. Theories of Journalism in the Digital Era: Knowledge, Value, and Conceptual Framework
Jiang Chang and Runze Ding
Chapter 3. Academic Discourses of Digital Journalism in China: A Literature Review 1961-2021
Haiyan Wang and Lin Wu
Chapter 4. (Re-)Popularising Party Journalism in China: A Qualitative Study of Xinhua News Agency’s Online Media Content
Xin Xin
Chapter 5. The Tabloidization of Party Media: How The People’s Daily and CCTV Adapt to Social Media
Kecheng Fang
Chapter 6. Socialization and Control in the Digital Newsroom
Dan Wang
Chapter 7. The Platformization of Chinese Official Media: The Case of Newspaper X
Luming Zhao and Jiaxi Peng
Chapter 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
Chapter 9. Classroom vs. Newsroom: Journalism Education and Practice in The Digital Age
Steve Zhongshi Guo and Dan Wang
Chapter 10. Conclusion: Retrospect and Prospect
Shixin Ivy Zhang and Jing Meng
Biography
Shixin Ivy Zhang is an Associate Professor in Journalism Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China.
"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 University, UK
