Weibo, Framing, and Media Practices in China

This study uses frames analysis to investigate online discourses and processes of political deliberation on China’s weibo (microblog) service. It offers a comparative analysis of competing discourses surrounding the case of Wang Yue, a toddler who was ran over by two motor vehicles in Foshan, following which 18 people passed by and ignored her plight. The study aims to understand how weibo facilitate its users to express their differences and deliberate disagreements with each other. The study found that Internet users are rational in the sense that they do not simply lean towards a dichotomised choice of ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-’ official discourse, but they are able to negotiate their moral choices by considering a wide range of social and political factors in such an emotional and morally controversial incident.     

Understanding Support for Internet Censorship in China: An Elaboration of the Theory of Reasoned Action

This study investigates young people’s support for Internet censorship in China within the broad conceptual approach of the theory of reasoned action (TRA). Two concepts, authoritarian personality and third-person perception, were scrutinized as part of our extension of the elaboration of the TRA model. We also closely examined dimensions pertinent to the unique social context of China such as party membership, Confucianism tradition, and one-child policy. A sample of 266 college students in a large metropolitan was surveyed and Structural Equation Modeling was employed in data analyses. Support for censorship based on TRA received general empirical evidence. So did the submissive dimension of authoritarian personality. Mixed findings were discussed and future research directions were suggested.     

Ulrike Marie Meinhof's Bambule and the Censorship of Terrorism in the Arts

Ulrike Marie Meinhof's televised play Bambule was not broadcast for fear that it would elicit sympathy for the terrorist organisation she founded. This is despite there being no justification of violence for political ends. The withholding of funding and sponsorship continued into the late 1980s for works that condemned violence, but which also refused to provide positive support for the anti-terrorist measures of the state. Although understandable when a society is confronted by a crisis such as terrorism, it may hinder both the understanding of the complexities of political violence and debate over the issues it raises.     

Jing Wang,Brand New China: Advertising,Media, and Commercial Culture

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Sometimes Less Is More: Censorship,News Falsification,and Disapproval in 1989 East Germany

Does more media censorship imply more regime stability? We argue that censorship may cause mass disapproval for censoring regimes. In particular, we expect that censorship backfires when citizens can falsify media content through alternative sources of information. We empirically test our theoretical argument in an autocratic regime—the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Results demonstrate how exposed state censorship on the country's emigration crisis fueled outrage in the weeks before the 1989 revolution. Combining original weekly approval surveys on GDR state television and daily content data of West German news programs with a quasi-experimental research design, we show that recipients disapproved of censorship if they were able to detect misinformation through conflicting reports on Western television. Our findings have important implications for the study of censoring systems in contemporary autocracies, external democracy promotion, and campaigns aimed at undermining trust in traditional journalism.     

Tourism,Development, and Media

Tourism has long figured in municipal and state-wide plans for economic development and revitalization. Such plans often articulate themes subsequently used to organize tours, advertising campaigns, and merchandising. In the 1990s, some residents of Roswell, New Mexico, tried to build tourism using typical southwestern themes. Others capitalized on Roswell’s unique association with an alleged crash of an extraterrestrial craft. Early support from the New Mexico Tourism Department (NMTD) facilitated the success of Roswell’s UFO-based tourism. In 2007, NMTD launched its own alien-based advertising campaign promoting New Mexico as a tourist destination.

当代中国市场改革的文化分析

当代中国社会不但在基本政治、经济、社会制度,还在最根本的价值信息上都发生了重大变化。笔者想通过两种分类方式的具体说明来论证中国社会主义计划体制文化与社会主义市场体制文化之间的历史性作用。     

Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China

Book reviewed: Dali Yang. Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China.
Reviewed by VICTOR SHIH     

论市场、政府与法治

市场经济的内在规律对政府和法治提出了不同要求。在市场经济的建设过程中,我国应当尽快完成由全能政府向有限政府的转化,并在法治原则的制约下对市场进行适度干预。     

Interest Group Access to the Bureaucracy,Parliament, and the Media

A key issue for interest groups and policymakers is the ways through which organized interests voice their interests and influence public policy. This article combines two perspectives on interest group representation to explain patterns of interest group access to different political arenas. From a resource exchange perspective, it argues that access to different political arenas is discrete as it is determined by the match between the supply and demands of interest groups and gatekeepers—politicians, bureaucrats, and reporters. From a partly competing perspective, it is argued that access is cumulative and converges around wealthy and professionalized groups. Based on a large‐scale investigation of group presence in Danish political arenas, the analyses show a pattern of privileged pluralism. This describes a system where multiple political arenas provide opportunities for multiple interests but where unequally distributed resources produce cumulative effects (i.e., the same groups have high levels of arena access).     

How Large-Scale Land Protests Succeed in China: the Role of Domestic Media

Land protests account for a large proportion of all protests in China, but existing scholarship on the topic does not explain the conditions under which large-scale land protests succeed or fail. Focusing on the role of domestic media in four of the largest land protests in China from 2012 to 2017, we argue that protests are more likely to succeed –i.e., to accomplish some or all publicly stated goals—when the domestic media side with villagers; conversely, if the domestic media adopt the government’s framing of the events or if they do not report on them, protests are less likely to accomplish their goals. This article makes two theoretical contributions to the literature on media and protests: first, we show that domestic media may function as catalysts or watchdogs in protest outcomes in authoritarian states; and second, we differentiate between short-term and long-term protest outcomes, highlighting how initial short-term concessions are often reversed or followed by repression some months or years later, after unrest dies down.

     

中国劳动力市场演化与政府行为

劳动力市场培育是中国改革的核心问题之一.中国经济改革是在城乡隔绝的特殊背景下展开的.旧体制下,城市国有部门人浮于事,大锅饭、铁饭碗造成效率低下;农村劳动力被禁锢在土地上,隔离在国家工业化进程之外,大量农村剩余劳动力不能及时转移到非农产业,造成极大浪费和损失.劳动力市场改革基于城市"治懒"、农村"治贫"的目标展开.逐步把国有部门职工推向市场,同时逐步改善农村劳动力的配置效率,渐进式改革、逐步释放被压抑的生产力,这是中国经济持续高速增长的根本动力.劳动力市场培育也是城乡劳动者权利的双向调整和逐步接近的过程.改革已取得了很大进展,但城乡劳动者的平等权利尚未实现.名义权利与实际权利的差异是当前最突出的问题.这种权利差异对经济社会协调发展造成威胁.增长、稳定、公平是左右政府改革行为的三大变量.劳动力市场上的权利不平等已成为经济持续增长和社会稳定的巨大障碍.贯彻新发展观,构建和谐社会正在使政策导向发生改变.