Do journalists cater to audience's social identity? Assessing the alignment of news content with readers’ national identity orientations

This study investigated the use of national stereotypes and home cultural referents (so-called “domestication”) in foreign news reporting, in relation to social identity theory which posits that individuals are drawn to information/assessments that positively describe the social groups to which they belong. Through a content analysis of influential newspapers from three different countries, this study finds that foreign news coverage tends to depict the home culture favorably while generally denigrating foreign societies, consistent with the theory's predictions. The study also finds that foreign news generally portrays the foreign society negatively with or without the stereotype but that stereotyping will enhance negativity. This research also employed cultural theories to probe the reciprocal nature between the audience and the journalists, both of who may share similar cultural frames.

Audiovisual policy transfer between Mercosur and the European Union has gone offtrack

This article analyses the Audiovisual Mercosur Program as a case of policy transfer between Mercosur and the European Union. A qualitative document analysis, expert interviews and the use of policy transfer theory and its constraints made possible the critical evaluation of the program and its impacts. By focusing on the constraints that led to an incomplete and uninformed transfer, we were able to identify an alignment between the underlying ideas of audiovisual policies in Mercosur and the European Union, but also inadequate governance within Mercosur, unbalanced interests between the two trade blocks, and a lack of policy learning. As a result, the transfer of European Union policies reproduced well-documented failures of the European Union's internal market policies relating to the audiovisual sector.

Africa's global media image in a digital world as an exclusive western preserve?

Who constructs Africa's global media image? That is the main focus of this longitudinal study. It looks at both the journalists and the news sources applied in the British press coverage of Africa between 1992 and 2017. Four British national newspapers (The Guardian, Financial Times, The Times, and Daily Mail) and a mixed research approach (content analysis and semi-structured interviews) were used. A total sample of 7027 articles were utilized, while nine journalists were interviewed. This study discovered that the British newspapers’ coverage of Africa was dominated by Western journalists and the news sources used in the articles were a proportionate mixture of both African and Western sources, especially in the quality newspapers. It also uncovered that Africa's global influence, in addition to other factors impact on the UK newspapers’ coverage of Africa. This study concludes that there are some positive changes in the post-colonial British press coverage of Africa, especially in their use of news sources, but there are still some elements of neo-colonialism and racism in the British newspapers’ use of journalists in reporting on Africa.

Migrant Racialization on Twitter during a border and a pandemic crisis

This work examines how the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the migration debate on Twitter. Through co-hashtag network analysis, time-frequency and content analysis, it shows that the pandemic was related with positive (humanitarian) and negative (threat) stances about migration. The positive side focused on the need to protect refugees stranded at camps in Greece from COVID-19. The negative focused on the Greek-Turkish land-border crisis (Evros crisis), using COVID-19 to reinforce migrants as racialized others. These findings fit the problematization of positive and negative migrant representations in the Global north as Eurocentric. In the case of camps, refugees fit well within the victim/helpless frame, justifying humanitarianism, this time on health grounds. Regarding the border crisis, refugees also fit the Eurocentric frame of violent/male/inferior other who could spread a deadly virus. Overall, COVID-19 intertwined with migration in Twitter debates, reinforcing the racialized, Eurocentric representational field on migrants from the Global south.

‘Fed with the Wrong Stuff’: Information overload (?) and the everyday use of the Internet in rural and urban China

The proliferation of information technologies has changed how Internet users around the world seek information. While information and communication technologies have transformed the structure of the Chinese economy, they have also brought challenges to the informational realms of everyday lives. However, there is a lack of empirical research exploring if users have encountered barriers in seeking online information for daily tasks. This mixed-methods study focuses on the disruptive influence of digital technologies on everyday information seeking practices, namely, the paradoxical co-existence of information overload and the lack of information sources. Results suggest that Chinese Internet users face a dilemma of receiving redundant online information and yet still experience a lack of high-quality information sources online. Findings from this research provide new perspectives of understanding the role of digital technologies in everyday life and also extend the dimensions of digital divides from internet access to disparities in information practices and experiences.

Beyond culture: Advancing the understanding of political and technological contexts in crisis communication

This study aims to theoretically advance the context-oriented tradition in crisis communication by highlighting the political and technological contexts for understanding organisational crises. Using China as a case, the study proposes a broader analytical framework that investigates the societal contexts’ impact on crisis communication from political and technological domains. The analytical framework includes, first, the examination of the authoritarian regime with a divided power structure as the political context in China. Assessing political ideology, political structure, and political history as political contexts allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of political contexts on crisis communication temporally and structurally; second, the investigation of internet users’ voices in a government-regulated commercial space as the technological context in China. Online participation and internet language thereby emerge as prominent parts of the technological contexts for understanding crisis communication in China. The implications and directions of research are also discussed.

Strong-tie discussion, political trust and political participation: A comparative study of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan

This study examined the relationships between social media use, strong-tie discussion, and political participation in three Chinese societies, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Our findings showed that strong-tie discussion is positively related to collective action participation across the three societies. More importantly, strong-tie discussion mediates the effect of political use of social media on political participation in mainland China and Taiwan, but not in Hong Kong. Furthermore, we explored the moderation role of political trust, finding that it narrows down the participation gap between those who use social media more and those who use less in Hong Kong and Taiwan, while enlarges the participation gap in mainland China. This study contributes to the theory of deliberative and participatory democracy by examining the role of strong tie in Chinese contexts and suggests that strong-tie discussion may exert a more important effect on political participation in a more collectivistic society.

Transnational media consumption dissonance and ambivalent sexism: How American and Korean television drama consumption shapes Chinese audiences’ gender-role values

Driven by globalization, modernity and the development of media technology, transnational media consumption is increasingly prevalent. Together with domestic media consumption, transnational media consumption constitutes the fragmentation and diversification of individuals’ media consumption behaviors. Yet research concerning the hybrid media effects generated by domestic and transnational media consumption is still underdeveloped. Using a sample of 556 Chinese Internet users, this study proposes a concept of transnational media consumption dissonance to compare the effects of hybrid media consumption on sexism and gender-role norms in marriage (GRIM). The findings suggest that individuals’ perceptions of gender-role norms are not only affected by domestic media usage but also altered through transnational media usage. We illustrate how transnational media consumption dissonance can affect Chinese audiences’ perception of GRIM through the mediating roles of perceived sexism in American and Korean dramas and their general sexism values.

Comparative communication studies within and beyond Great China

The scholarship on media and communication studies focusing on Greater China has burgeoned in recent years. Yet, little is known about how such scholarship would tackle other sub-fields and the core debates and developments in communication studies beyond the scope of Greater China. In this introduction, we delineate six articles in the Special Issue ‘Comparative Communication Studies Within and Beyond China’ in terms of three layers of comparision consisting of the macro-level unit of analysis, the dimension of comparison, and the design and analysis strategy of comparison. Together, the articles deliver updated investigations about Greater China’s media and communicative environment, provide a comprehensive outlook on the insights to be gained from comparing the Greater Chinese media system with its counterparts across the world, and reflect on both differences and similarities between Greater China and other countries across a spectrum of social, political, and cultural factors.