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AbstractThis article examines the dynamic evolution of China's ideology work through the prism of journalism education. Official sensitivity about both student activism and the media makes journalism education a critical sector for observing how the Party attempts to instil ideology. The article interrogates the process of negotiation of official ideology among authorities, educators and students at elite journalism schools. It demonstrates that alongside state-sanctioned media commercialization and globalization, official influence still looms large in journalism training. Ideological teachings continue to occupy a core place in the curricula, and the authorities deploy a mix of structural oversight, ad hoc surveillance and coercion to keep the educators in check. The effects of the official ideology work, however, are ambivalent, as educators and students engage in the active reinterpretation of the Party's media principles. While these practices do not directly undermine the Party's legitimacy, they demonstrate that official ideology has merely constructed what Yurchak terms a "hegemony of form," highlighting a degree of vulnerability in China's mode of adaptive authoritarianism.

This article examines the evolving process of China's information management at sub-national level through the prism of a crisis event. Specifically, it investigates the response of officials and the media to Beijing's fatal floods of 2012—the heaviest and the deadliest floods the Chinese capital has seen in 60 years. The article draws on ethnographic observations, the analysis of interviews with Chinese media professionals, officials and media scholars, as well as the coverage of the storm by two prominent, but distinct Beijing news outlets: an official daily, Beijing Ribao and a commercial daily, Jinghua Shibao. The analysis reveals various strategies deployed by Beijing authorities to positively shape public opinion, and the media's creative implementation of official directives. Namely, the two newspapers fused regular news coverage with different styles of positive framing. This process of mutual and diverse adaption highlights the increasingly dynamic nature of China's crisis communication and public opinion management. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This article examines the dynamic evolution of China's ideology work through the prism of journalism education. Official sensitivity about both student activism and the media makes journalism education a critical sector for observing how the Party attempts to instil ideology. The article interrogates the process of negotiation of official ideology among authorities, educators and students at elite journalism schools. It demonstrates that alongside state-sanctioned media commercialization and globalization, official influence still looms large in journalism training. Ideological teachings continue to occupy a core place in the curricula, and the authorities deploy a mix of structural oversight, ad hoc surveillance and coercion to keep the educators in check. The effects of the official ideology work, however, are ambivalent, as educators and students engage in the active reinterpretation of the Party's media principles. While these practices do not directly undermine the Party's legitimacy, they demonstrate that official ideology has merely constructed what Yurchak terms a "hegemony of form," highlighting a degree of vulnerability in China's mode of adaptive authoritarianism. (China Q/GIGA)

CARGC Paper 3 grew out of Repnikova's 2014 Postdoctoral Fellow Colloquium. In it, Repnikova rebuked a popular projection in comparing media landscapes based on a binary vision of free versus not free and objectivity versus propaganda. The frequent focus of Western media on censorship in authoritarian regimes, Repnikova argued, highlights the gap between media practices in democratic and non-democratic contexts. Challenging these conceptions, CARGC Paper 3 examined a journalism practice generally associated with democratic contexts—investigative reporting—in a regime most renowned for censorship and pervasive propaganda—contemporary China. ; https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/1002/thumbnail.jpg

Digital innovation has been widely considered as a key solution to the current journalism crisis. While most innovation projects in democratic regimes receive funding from media organizations, venture capital firms, and foundations, many of China's digital journalism projects are funded and led by the state—a model we define as "state-preneurship." In this study, we compare this model with other digital innovation models on three dimensions: the amount and sustainability of funding, the extent of newsroom restructuring, and the transformation of journalistic culture. We focus on the early national success case, Shanghai-based news outlet Pengpai, as well as on eight of its regional copycats. Based on interviews with forty-three executives, journalists, propaganda officials, media investors, and scholars, we argue that while in the short run, state-preneurship has produced fast and large-scale transformations in the digital journalism industry, these changes appear as largely unsustainable in the long run. This is due to (1) the political contingency of state investments and (2) the limited transformation in journalistic culture.

With the rapid decline of traditional media in China, the party-state faces the growing challenge of shaping public opinion online. This article engages with one response to this challenge – a state-sanctioned digital media experiment aimed at creating a new form of journalism that appeals to the public and helps to disseminate Party propaganda. We analyse the emergence of a national success story, Shanghai-based model media outlet Pengpai, and its diffusion across different regions. We argue that the synergy between local officials and media entrepreneurs has propelled Pengpai's national fame. We further demonstrate that while there has been a cross-national attempt to diffuse this model, it has produced mixed results owing to a number of factors, including the superficial commitment of local officials and media professionals. These findings demonstrate that state-sanctioned decentralized experimentation can deliver unpredictable results in the sphere of media policy, and they further question the capacity of the party-state to effectively reinvent public persuasion in the digital age. (China Q/GIGA)

In the reform era, management of information by the Chinese Communist Party has been continuously moving away from explicit, crude tactics of the past toward more subtle and orderly mechanisms of the present. This study examines one facet of this transformation in the online sphere: digital persuasion. Drawing on three emerging trends in online persuasion, including official digital revamping of state media, expansion of government Weibo, and official promotion of patriotic bloggers, the authors explain how online persuasion is taking on an increasingly participatory form under President Xi. Specifically, the conceptualization of 'authoritarian participatory persuasion 2.0' includes direct co-production of persuasion, with netizens called to repost, share and create content, as well as the indirect participation, whereby netizens are invited to partake in the life of the top leader, Xi Jinping, and to consume exclusive practical tips provided by the state. The participatory digital persuasion, whereas intended to facilitate public complicity with the regime, has also opened up spaces for satire and 'incivility' unmasking and challenging the state's covert propaganda practices. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

In 2016, Little Pink has emerged as the label for a new wave of female-led cyber-nationalism in China. While increasingly popularized in media and online discourses, little is known about the evolution of this label and its significance for our understanding of China's digital activism. This article takes the first step at unraveling the Little Pink mystery by examining its origins and contestation in China's online community during the cross-strait memes war of 2016 when mainland nationalists mobilized to challenge Taiwan's election results. Drawing on multifaceted digital data, this study shows that Little Pink was an invented label and that gender was used by conflicting cyber groups in their attempts at reframing the imagery of nationalism. More broadly, this article demonstrates that cyber-nationalism is a phenomenon contested across different digital groups in China, and it should be analyzed more as a case of ambivalence in digital activism than as a manifestation of state propaganda or growing radical nationalism in contemporary China.