Inequality and Communicative Struggles in Digital Times: A Global Report on Communication for Social Progress

Originally the “Media and Communication” chapter of the International Panel on Social Progress, published by Cambridge University Press, we hope this version as a CARGC Press book will expand the reach of the authors’ vision of communication for social progress.https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_strategicdocuments/1001/thumbnail.jp

Media, communication and the struggle for social progress

This article discusses the role of media and communications in contributing to social progress, as elaborated in a landmark international project ? the International Panel on Social Progress. First, it analyses how media and digital platforms have contributed to global inequality by examining media access and infrastructure across world regions. Second, it looks at media governance and the different mechanisms of corporatized control over media platforms, algorithms and content. Third, the article examines how the democratization of media is a key element in the struggle for social justice. It argues that effective media access ? in terms of distribution of media resources, even relations between spaces of connection and the design and operation of spaces that foster dialogue, free speech and respectful cultural exchange ? is a core component of social progress

Managing digital contention in China

This paper explores new developments in cyber content management strategies in China by highlighting the rise of participatory, peer-to-peer censoring practices, and examining how the People's Daily have responded to the contentious events in the top 20 public opinion incidents of 2016, to illustrate how official media uses different types of management strategies to mediate and demobilise contention, on top of information containment strategies such as censorship. I also discuss briefly the creation of a Digital United Front which seeks to incorporate social influencers and cyber elites into mainstream political institutions such as the CPPCC. Not only do these strategies further undermine the formation of a political locus opposite the state, they continue to subsume previously oppositional narratives into grander narratives of stability and national progress. Online political participation in Chinese cyberspace must seek further paternalistic protection from Party authorities in order to legitimise their contention. Although this strengthens the Party-state's claim to legitimacy, ultimately this weakens the emergence of civil society in China as the only form of contention that can survive is those that are legitimised by the Party-state, and the political space oppositional to the state remain closed off

Communication, the Nexus of Class and Nation, and Global Divides Reflections on China’s Post-Revolutionary Experiences

This paper locates the problematic of communication and global divide in the nexus of class and nation in the context of post-revolutionary China’s twisted developmental path and its world historical economic ascent in the era of neoliberal globalization. After a brief overview of the politics of class mobilization for nation-building during the Maoist period, the paper moves on to examine the role of communication in contributing to reform-era China’s spectacular rise in the global hierarchy of economic power on the one hand and a drastic process of domestic social stratification and class polarization on the other. As China’s lower social classes are making redistributive and social justice claims on the Chinese state and propelling it to fulfill its socialist promises from within, China’s increasingly denationalized middle class are protecting this state from the outside by championing Chinese nationalism in the global symbolic arena. These historically specific re-articulations of class and nation not only continue to bolster China’s post-revolutionary state in the capitalist global order, but also make it impossible to completely shed its socialist color

Edward Herman and Manufacturing Consent in China

International audienceBoosted by a Chinese translation of Manufacturing Consent in 2011, "manufacturing consent" and "propaganda model" have become fairly well-known terms in the Chinese communication studies field. Actual understandings and invocations of these ideas, however, are complex and multifaceted. Graduate students tend to have a superficial understanding of these ideas without a grasp of Herman and Chomsky"s broader critique of the political economy of global communication. State propaganda officials and communication strategists tend to accept these concepts for their demystification of the US media system on the one hand, and use Manufacturing Consent as a "how to" guide to enhance the effectiveness of Chinese official communication on the other. While there are also examples of more substantive expositions of Herman and Chomsky"s ideas on their own terms, a strong liberal perspective continues to take the US media as a normative model for China and ignore works such as Manufacturing Consent. As China expands its global reach, how Chinese scholars come to terms with Western critical communication scholarship and develop their own indigenous critique of the political economy of global communication has emerged as an issue of both theoretical and practical importance

Wallis Roger and Stanley J. Baran (1990), The Known World of Broadcast News : International News and the Electronic Media

Zhao Yuezhi. Wallis Roger and Stanley J. Baran (1990), The Known World of Broadcast News : International News and the Electronic Media. In: Communication. Information Médias Théories, volume 13 n°1, printemps 1992. Ethique. pp. 258-261

La Matrix mediática: la integración de China en el capitalismo mundial

El 8 de octubre de 2003, en una conferencia en la Escuela central del Partido en Beijing, el zar de los medios transnacionales Rupert Murdoch, quien alguna vez había dicho que la televisión satelital pondría fin a los regímenes autoritarios en todo el mundo, trataba de convencer a los principales líderes chinos de que liberalizaran el mercado de medios en el país. Frente a los dirigentes partidarios, Murdoch aseguraba que la liberalización económica y el mantenimiento del poder político de estos eran compatibles, y planteaba también que “China tiene potencial no sólo para seguir los ejemplos de EUA y el Reino Unido, sino también para mejorar sobre la base de esos ejemplos y alcanzar éxito ‘por sí misma’”. ¿Fue Murdoch demasiado lejos para halagar los oídos chinos? ¿Cuán plausible es que China tenga éxito “por sí misma” en este área crítica de poder global? Si China puede lograr tener éxito “por sí misma”, ¿qué rol jugará en el mismo el tipo de capital transnacional que representa Murdoch, cuya presencia en China tiene ya una magnitud tal que en 2003 Murdoch estaba entre las principales veinte “palabras clave” de la industria de medios china?

Wallis Roger and Stanley J. Baran (1990), The Known World of Broadcast News : International News and the Electronic Media

Zhao Yuezhi. Wallis Roger and Stanley J. Baran (1990), The Known World of Broadcast News : International News and the Electronic Media. In: Communication. Information Médias Théories, volume 13 n°1, printemps 1992. Ethique. pp. 258-261