Love NBA, hate BLM : racism in China’s sports fandom

This article aims to explore how racism plays out in China’s sports fandom in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement sweeping across the globe. To this end, we conducted a case study of basketball fans’ postings on the most popular Chinese-language sports fandom platform, Hupu. The research discovered that the often-negative assessments of the BLM movement posted on Hupu were largely informed by racism deeply held in traditional Chinese thinking, which provided the grounding for Chinese sports fans to appropriate racial discourses to assess progressive equal-rights politics in Euro-American societies. The trajectory of such a discursive practice was twofold, enabling these sports fans to rationalize their political views pertaining to both international and domestic arenas. The research findings urge scholarly attention to the dynamic interplay between regional popular cultures and global equal-rights politics in the digital age in China and beyond

“She uses men to boost her career” : Chinese digital cultures and gender stereotypes of female academics in Zhihu discourses

Portrayed by the media as the story of “how a female PhD juggles intimate relationship with four male PhD academics”, the LM incident, named after the female main character of the story, was a high-profile case, which provoked public debates on Chinese social media in 2019. In this article, we explore how the stereotyping of female PhDs plays out in Chinese Internet users’ discussions about the LM incident. We collected a total of 632 relevant posts from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site – Zhihu and analysed them by drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA). The research findings reveal how a sexualised portrayal of female PhDs, which is dramatically “different” from the traditional, asexual stereotypes of well-educated women, is established in Zhihu users’ postings. Many Zhihu users, including both women and men, mobilise an overwhelmingly sexualised portrayal of female PhDs, which speaks to the normalisation of patriarchal discourses in the status quo of Chinese academia and beyond. The research findings shed light on post-socialist gender politics, which facilitates the perpetuation of gender essentialism in China in the post-reform era

An institutional approach to understanding public relations in Chinese cultural contexts: Field and institutional work

Little research has questioned the sociological root of the adoption and adaptation of Western originated public relations (PR) in a non-Western context. To fill in this gap, this research explores how Chinese actors, ranging from PR agency consultants, in-house PR practitioners, media people, and regulatory body, reflexively and creatively navigate the pre-existing cultural contexts to construct and institutionalize the field of PR practices in China. Specifically, this research aims to understand how China’s hybrid contexts foster the complexities and dynamics of the PR field, as well as how the field actors’ creative agency reshapes the broad contexts. This research contributes an alternative to the dominant managerial-functionalist scholarship of PR through a critical examination of PR as a socially constructed field in China. To investigate the interplay between PR actors’ practices and the pre-existing contexts, this research applies an institutional theoretical approach, specifically by applying the key notions of field and institutional work. The notion of field is used to examine the complexities and dynamics of Chinese PR practice, which is governed and legitimized by multiple logics, and which is influenced by actors’ evolving inter-relation. The notion of institutional work is adopted to uncover Chinese PR actors’ strategic responses to various institutional pressures, and particularly their “broad agentic work” to create PR as an institution. In addition, Chinese culture, in the form of guanxi and harmony, are incorporated in the institutional analysis of PR of this thesis. Bourdieu’s concept of social capital is used to interpret the role of guanxi in both PR practices and institutional work of Chinese PR. This research employs a multi-method qualitative approach consisting of 70 semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document review. Participants were selected from the cities of Chongqing (n=16) and Beijing (n=54), comprising four groups of actors — PR agency consultants, in-house PR practitioners, media people and PR association regulators. Participant observation was conducted in a top local PR agency in Beijing, from which extensive documents, such as PR proposals, agency-client service contracts, internal training materials and the like were accessed and collected. The data set was analyzed through interpretive thematic analysis. This research provides significant insights into the extant body of PR knowledge in three ways. Firstly, studying PR at a field level enables a sociological account of PR practice in terms of logic and legitimacy. As found in this research, the field of Chinese PR is co-shaped by multiple, interwoven logics that are derived from China’s hybrid contexts. While the market-oriented logic leads to multi-way interactive and pragmatic PR practices, the state authoritarian logic wields constraints of ideological surveillance and domination. Guanxi is creatively used by Chinese PR actors to facilitate PR practices through exploring room for negotiation over the fuzzy edges of ambiguous rules. The logic of harmony mediates those potential conflicts (e.g., market vs. state) while allowing for actors’ ongoing contestation and compromise to achieve consensus about PR practice in China. Secondly, confronted with various institutional pressures (e.g., state, media), Chinese PR actors apply different strategies, ranging from camouflage, seeking logic resonance, and harnessing the social capital of guanxi to accomplish specific PR tasks. Moreover, those active PR actors, who initiate the creation of PR as an institution, adroitly convert those pressures to opportunities through cultivating coalition and leveraging resources from other powerful or even rival actors. Such field level institutional work has led to the increasing marketization and democratization of state level PR practices. The Chinese government appears to be gradually loosening its ideological control over the field of PR, and shifting away from the top-down, propagandistic logic towards marketorientated, multi-way interactive logic of PR. Thirdly, the perspective of social capital extends current understanding of power in the PR literature. This thesis argues that power in PR may not necessarily mean domination or manipulation. Rather, power can be understood from the perspective of negotiating policies and empowering PR initiatives. As exemplified in this research, Chinese PR practices are empowered by the social capital like guanxi through its fluidity within social networks and its convertibility to other economic, cultural and symbolic forms of capital

The articulation of 'agency': How can public relations scholarship and institutional theory enrich each other?

A recent critical turn to both public relations and institutional studies has highlighted ‘agency’ as a shared important theme. While public relations scholars call to bring back ‘agency’ into analysis of practice and process of public relations, neo-institutionalists use ‘agency’ to explain heterogeneity and innovation in institutional outcomes. In this context, this article proposes to use ‘agency’ as a meeting ground to explore how the two disciplines could engage in a dialogue that improves mutual understanding and theoretical enrichment of each other. It argues that institutional thoughts such as ‘embedded agency’, ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ and ‘institutional work’ advance understandings of the downplayed issues of power, diversity and activism in the public relations literature. In turn, the multi-paradigmatic public relations scholarship provides useful tools for analysing institutional agency. Also, this article discusses future research agenda to advance fruitful collaboration between the two domains.</p

Wrestling between marketing promotion and community engagement:Where should university social media communication go?

Compared with the booming PR literature that explores social media use and communication in a wide range of organizational contexts from corporations, governments and NGOs, few studies have interrogated how social media can be employed in transitional universities, which are under dual pressures of market competition and social expectations. To enrich our understanding of this understudied area, this case study examined the use of social media in a New Zealand university. Based on 29 in-depth interviews, content analysis of the university’s social media platforms and document review, this study explored the reported tension between the interactive participatory culture of social media and the promotional use for one-way information transmission and marketing. Given the young, social media savvy nature of universities’ key public – students – this analysis argues that social media should play a major role in facilitating community building and engagement in universities to combat ‘marketing imperialism’, but that an open, participatory approach must be used, rather than seeing social media as a space for all but appealing content production

Public relations as community empowerment: Transmedia storytelling, audience engagement and collaborative resilience building in disasters

Public relations (PR) has for long been criticised for its primary function to generate ‘cash flow’ for powerful organisations and serve the privileged groups. The mainstream PR scholarship is accordingly characterised by a strong tendency to link PR to corporate ‘bottom-line’ through highlighting its economic contribution to organisations. Only until recent years, a growing number of postmodernism and critical PR scholars have called to take the public relations function “out of organisations and into communities” (Holtzhausen, 2000, p. 110), especially to refocus on its social value of community building, engagement and empowerment (Cho &amp; De Moya, 2016; Johnston, 2010; Vujnovic &amp; Kruckeberg, 2011). In response to this call, this study contextualises the understanding of community relations in the practice of disaster risk communication, which provides a salient venue to observe how PR is used to engage with local communities and empower the vulnerable to build resilience to disasters. In particular, this study examines a popular yet under-analysed genre of PR content—storytelling—that is produced, circulated, and shared among wide communities at risk through multiple social media platforms

Beyond ‘love-hate’ stereotype: Reflecting on the new dimension(s) of relationship between public relations and journalism in the ‘post-truth’ era

Considerable research has for long characterised the relationship between public relations and journalism using a ‘ love - hate ’ motif . On one hand, journalists have increasingly relied on public relations leads, contacts and content. On the other hand, journalists have been continually concerned , even to the extent of hostility, about the sheer volume of public relations information and its manipulative intent (Macnamara, 2015) . In the digital age, the prevalence of ‘ fake news ’, either derived from algorithms based on economic interests or constructed by individuals through social media, present s new threats to both professions being able to maintain integrity and authenticity of news production. Despite the common challenge of declining public trust and reputation risk to both journalism and public relations (Allcott &amp; Gentzkow, 2017) , little research has interrogated and reflected on how the relationship between them has evolve

Performing humanism in Chinese Public Relations

As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “The best virtue is as kind as water (shangshan ruoshui).” In English it can be translated to “the highest excellence is like (that of) water.” This aphorism indicates that water, albeit soft, invisible, and even shapeless, has the power to moisturize and transform things in an unobtrusive way. This water metaphor and broadly the Daoist thinking, along with Confucianism, has underpinned Chinese public relations (PR) to establish its own identity and style while copying from the Western ideas, templates, and models. In essence, Chinese ancient philosophies centered on ‘humanism’ consisting of tenets such as benevolence, love, and harmony, with an ultimate purpose of maintaining authority, social order and stability. An overview of the trajectory of modern Chinese PR after the 1980s has revealed not only the traditional cultural influence, but also the creative reinterpretation and ‘performing’ of humanistic values in contemporary PR practices. It is argued that this humanistic (re)turn to Chinese PR has been and will continue to be leveraged as an astute state apparatus to balance the needs from both the authorities and their people

Beyond selling stories:How to Manage Corporate Media Relations in Transitional China

Compared to the Western literature that has fully examined corporate media relations, limited knowledge and practical guidance is available on how to build, maintain or improve corporate media relations in transitional China where market economy prospers under authoritarian regime. To fill this gap, this study provides a comparison of media relations practices in three types of corporations in China, multinational corporations (MNCs), state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and local private enterprises (LPEs). A multi-method qualitative approach is employed including interviews, non-participant observation, and document review. This research argues that managing corporate media relations in China entails firstly going beyond publicity – selling stories to journalists and pushing message awareness. In order to build relationships with both party-state media and commercially-oriented media, corporate PR practitioners need to opt for various strategies tailored to different organizational attributes. This study contributes a holistic and nuanced understanding of corporate media relations in China’s emerging economy

It takes two to tango? Debate on the PR-journalists trust and relationship (re)building in the fake news era

Trust has been a long-standing issue for building a healthy and productive relationship between public relations (PR) practitioners and journalists. Fake news, either aggregated by algorithms based on economic interests or constructed by individuals through social media, presents new opportunities to reflect on the trust and relationship (re)building between PR and journalism. This study aims to investigate how the two parties perceive their relationship(s) to address the common challenge of declining public trust and reputation risk in their own profession field