Qun Wang | Fordham University (original) (raw)

Papers by Qun Wang

Internet Policy Review, 2023

With the rise of online video content, especially the growth of online video consumption during t... more With the rise of online video content, especially the growth of online video consumption during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study focuses on Google’s video search as an important but understudied platform to explore Google’s role in three media diversity areas — format-type diversity, source diversity, and structural-social diversity—in the online video landscape. Findings of this study reveal a complicated picture: on the one hand, Google can expose users to video content alternative to YouTube video, which involves a variety of media and non-media sources; on the other hand, the lack of diversity can be found in the studied areas. In addition, Google-source partnership and the limited presentation of minority sources at the time of a global crisis, this study argues, has profound implications for media diversity. While normative expectations of digital platforms’ role in media diversity depend on different understandings of democracy models, media diversity is an important thread of the ongoing debate regarding platform governance. This study sheds light on one video platform, as a case updating our understanding of media diversity in the digital age.

First Monday, 2021

News aggregators have triggered copyright-related disputes between tech companies and news publis... more News aggregators have triggered copyright-related disputes between tech companies and news publishers. In the EU and the U.S., copyright systems have developed distinct characteristics. Because American tech companies stand to be hugely affected by the EU’s new copyright rules, some observers point out that the copyright war in Europe is fundamentally a collision between European and American copyright law systems. To respond to this observation, this study examines and compares European and U.S. perspectives on copyright and uses copyright as a lens to explore how digital platforms that aim at global influences provide the opportunity for different legal systems and legal traditions to converse and conflict. Through the comparison, this study argues that fundamental issues such as the nature of news are not effectively addressed in either system. While the EU and the U.S. present different regulatory trends in the case of copyright, a two-way shaping is at play.

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 2020

This essay proposes a new theoretical framework, the differentiation/de-differentiation framework... more This essay proposes a new theoretical framework, the differentiation/de-differentiation framework, to help understand the evolving power dynamics between news industry and tech industry from institutional, relational, and dialectical perspectives. This study examines two waves of de-differentiation and two waves of differentiation between the two sectors and investigates the driving forces behind these changing trends. The proposed framework in this study makes contributions to a better understanding of the dynamics, complexities, and future trends in the changing media and tech environment.

This dissertation examines the history, evolution, and influence of Google and its news aggregati... more This dissertation examines the history, evolution, and influence of Google and its news aggregation service in the past two decades. From historical, technological, legal, and journalistic perspectives, this dissertation provides a snapshot of the changing media landscape in the digital age. It makes theoretical and empirical contributions to the ongoing conversation about the the interrelationship between digital platforms and the traditional media industry.

This study builds on previous research that provided a comprehensive analysis of local journalist... more This study builds on previous research that provided a comprehensive analysis of local journalistic output on a large scale, analyzing 100 randomly selected U.S. communities. While that study focused on overall levels of journalistic output, and the question of how community characteristics factor into the health of local news ecosystems, this study
focuses on the types of outlets available in these communities; and how these different types of outlets (TV, radio, newspaper, online-only) differ in terms of their production of local news.

International Communication Research Journal, 2018

This study examines media differentiation as a counter trend to media convergence by focusing on ... more This study examines media differentiation as a counter trend to media convergence by focusing on the differentiation between Chinese state media and commercial online media—a product of China’s political influence and Chinese media’s strategies in response to such influence.

Journalism Practice, 2018

Drawing on Shoemaker and her colleagues’ five levels of analysis, i.e. the individual, routine, o... more Drawing on Shoemaker and her colleagues’ five levels of analysis, i.e. the individual, routine, organization, institutional, and social system levels, this study examines news media’s post-election self-examination. This study uses natural language processing-related techniques to analyze a corpus of news articles published 10 days after the election day to understand the nature and distribution of identified problems and proposed solutions at the five levels. This study finds that news media's inward reflections focused more on the routine level while problems at individual and organizational levels were not prominently examined. Outwardly, more discussions were pointed to institutions that share the media ecosystem with the news industry. This study serves as an empirical contribution to metajournalistic discourse analysis. Findings reveal the discursive struggle to construct and reconstruct the journalistic field.

Digital Journalism, 2017

Building on Bourdieu’s field theory, this study proposes a dimensional model to understand the jo... more Building on Bourdieu’s field theory, this study proposes a dimensional model to understand the journalistic field and its adoption of audience metrics as a trend. To trace the cross-field influences that have shaped the trend, this study first examines changes in neighboring fields, such as the online advertising and online audience research fields, and the intermediate field, i.e. web analytics services that work with newsrooms. This study then identifies and examines three axes of the journalistic field, i.e. the techno-economic means of journalism, the subject of journalism, and the object of journalism. The goal of this study is to contextualize, through a sociological lens, the adoption of audience metrics in relation to the dynamics and struggles inside and outside the journalistic field, and to understand the origin, driving forces, and implications of this trend.

Journalism, 2017

Compared to its Western counterpart, China’s media culture has its uniqueness. The relationship b... more Compared to its Western counterpart, China’s media culture has its uniqueness. The relationship between Chinese media and media users presents ‘Chinese style’ characteristics, especially with the rise of participatory journalism online. Based on critical reflections on the agenda-setting theory and existing research work on participatory journalism, this essay proposes three models of participatory journalism in the Chinese context. Depending on the interaction between media agenda and audience agenda, the three models are as follows: (1) the incompatible model, (2) the negotiatory model, and (3) the unconventional model. This essay aims to use these three models to demonstrate the notion of ‘journalism as process’ proposed by Robinson and the significance of the socialization and politicization of audience understanding.

Journal of International Communication, 2015

Using China’s Red Cross scandal as a central case, this study examines the interaction between Ch... more Using China’s Red Cross scandal as a central case, this study examines the interaction between Chinese mainstream media and media users on China’s Internet in the course of the event. This study reflects on how the participation of Chinese netizens impacted Chinese mainstream media in the digital age, how Chinese mainstream media responded, and how the interplay between the media and media users affected the trajectory of the event. The Red Cross case indicates that in today’s China, the boundary between the political domain and the entertainment domain is fluid. The two domains have different functions and implications. The specific case discussed in this paper traveled back and forth between the two domains depending on the power dynamic between the media, media users, and the larger social, political context.

Conference Presentations by Qun Wang

The study examines mechanisms that Google News uses for news personalization and argues that diff... more The study examines mechanisms that Google News uses for news personalization and argues that different mechanisms carry with them different implications. It might be easier for news organizations to adopt specific mechanisms but it's more important to understand the implications for journalism and society. Presented at the 12th International AAAI Conference On Web And Social Media. June 25-28, 2018, Stanford, CA.

Drawing on Billig’s banal nationalism theory, this study develops a two-step analysis to examine ... more Drawing on Billig’s banal nationalism theory, this study develops a two-step analysis to examine how Belgian national identity was constructed in visual shared on Twitter on the day the Brussels attacked happened on March 22, 2016. We identify and examine three categories of key images. The meanings of these images are discussed in relation to Belgium’s political, cultural, and linguistic background. Combining image analysis and user profile analysis, this study reveals that the national identity of Belgium, a nation with contested national consciousness, was collectively constructed by both users inside and outside Belgium, therefore, an interaction between banal nationalism and banal cosmopolitanism. The study reveals new aspects of banal nationalism and uneven cosmopolitanism and attempts to make methodological and theoretical contributions to future studies on nationalism in the digital era.

This paper provides an overview of the co-evolution of contemporary China’s media industry and pu... more This paper provides an overview of the co-evolution of contemporary China’s media industry and public opinion.

Public sphere is traditionally understood as a notion originated in the 17th century in Europe. T... more Public sphere is traditionally understood as a notion originated in the 17th century in Europe. This study examines public sphere in digital China as an effort to explore the nature and modes of public sphere in different contexts. This study uses the Tianjin explosion incident as a case study to investigate characteristics of China’s online public sphere. The study involves in-depth examination and analysis of online posts and user profiles by tracing the experience of one ordinary Chinese web user. Based on the review of existing literature on public sphere, this study proposes three hypotheses: 1). Online public sphere is plural. The relationship between different publics is not necessarily oppositional or antagonistic. 2). Online public sphere is dynamic. There are different modes and drives of intra- and inter-public dynamics, which contributes to the formation, reformation and overlap of different publics. 3). Online public sphere contains both discourse-as-genre and discourse-as-action, which could lead to actions at both micro- and macro-level. Findings of this study support hypothesis 1&2 and partly support hypothesis 3. Based on these findings, this study reveals a stratified, dynamic and action-possible online public sphere in China.

This study utilizes comparative case studies to explore patterns of the development of online col... more This study utilizes comparative case studies to explore patterns of the development of online collective actions in different contexts. Two patterns of dynamics, vertical and horizontal, were identified. Vertical pattern generates penetration effect. Collective actions go through three tiers of public sphere. Horizontal pattern promotes spread effect. Collective actions float and circulate in the first-tier public sphere. While vertical pattern is more likely to facilitate online-offline transformation, horizontal pattern strengthens the discursive power of public opinion but is less likely to lead to offline consequences. This study suggests that patterns of collective actions may be shaped by different community structures.

This study uses a historical approach to trace the origin and evolution of the data-driven audien... more This study uses a historical approach to trace the origin and evolution of the data-driven audience understanding that has been prevalent in news industry in recent decades. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, this study examines journalistic field and its neighboring fields to understand cross-field influences in shaping the adoption of audience data in journalism and implications of such adoption. Externally, this study examines changes in advertising industry and online audience rating industry and their influences on news industry. Looking inside the journalistic field, this study examines the emergence of data journalism and its influence on the datafication of audience. This study also identifies web analytics services aiming at news industry as an intermediate field, a theoretical contribution to complement the field theory. The study finds that journalistic field is a trend follower rather than trend leader in the adoption of audience data. In doing so, it tends to confuse news audience with the audience of other institutions.

Thesis Chapters by Qun Wang

This chapter looks at ethnic digital media (EDM), which we define as ethnic media that are “digit... more This chapter looks at ethnic digital media (EDM), which we define as ethnic media that are “digital natives,” as a sub-sector of the ethnic media ecosystem. Drawing on agenda setting theory, this chapter introduces the concept of agenda marketing, a set of practices that a platform can leverage to maximize their audience reach and engagement while working to shape public opinion. We consider agenda marketing an important feature that distinguishes EDM from both traditional ethnic media and from digital media serving mainstream audiences. This chapter uses the 2013 “Jimmy Kimmel Live” controversy as a case study to investigate how EDM—specifically, wenxuecity.com, a US-based, Chinese-language web portal—acted as both an agenda setter and agenda marketer in immigrant communities during the controversy. We also discuss what this case suggests more broadly for how EDM are placed within a changing, and increasingly digital, media environment.

Other by Qun Wang

The economic challenges confronting local journalism have been well documented. Both of the reven... more The economic challenges confronting local journalism have been well documented. Both of the revenue streams that local news organizations have traditionally relied upon (subscriptions and advertising) have been dramatically undermined as journalism production, distribution, and consumption have migrated online.
And yet, while we know that local journalism is suffering, we know relatively little about whether all communities are being affected in the same way.
Overall, these findings provide some of the most comprehensive evidence to date of the magnitude of the news deserts problem confronting local communities. These findings, however, offer limited evidence of journalism divides – which we define as patterns in the availability of robust journalism that follow the geographic and demographic patterns that have characterized the digital divide.

The economic challenges facing local journalism and the associated declines in revenues and newsr... more The economic challenges facing local journalism and the associated declines in revenues and newsroom staffs have generated great interest in understanding the composition and dynamics of local news ecosystems. Much of this research has focused on case studies of individual communities while other research has focused either on the content produced by local news outlets in the face of these challenges or on the consumption of local news by the American public.

However, despite what we know about the challenges faced by local journalism, the content of local news outlets, and Americans’ preferences for local news sources, we don’t know a great deal about how different types of outlets are serving the information needs of their communities. This paper addresses this question through an analysis of 100 randomly selected communities across the U.S. Across these 100 communities, this study analyzes over 16,000 stories provided by 663 local media outlets. For this analysis, local media outlets fall into one of four categories (radio stations, TV stations, newspapers, and online-only outlets). Each story in the sample was content analyzed to determine whether the story was original, local, and addressed a critical information need. To understand the journalistic performance of different outlet types, this study analyzes each the story output of each outlet type relative to the outlet type’s numeric frequency. Doing this allows us to assess each outlet type’s news production relative to that outlet type’s prominence in the news ecosystem. To examine production in this way, ratios were calculated comparing the share of total stories, original stories, local stories, and stories addressing a critical information from each outlet type to each outlet type’s share of outlets.

Key findings of this study include:

▪ Local newspapers significantly outperform local TV, radio, and online-only outlets in news production, both in overall story output and in terms of stories that are original, local, or address a critical information need. For instance:

o Local newspapers account for roughly 25 percent of the outlets in our sample, but nearly 50 percent of the original news stories.

o Local newspapers account for nearly 60 percent of the Local news stories in our sample – more than all of the other outlet types combined – despite accounting for only 25 percent of the outlets in our sample.

o Local newspapers account for nearly 60 percent of the stories that meet all three criteria (original, local, addresses a critical information need), with the other outlet categories each accounting for only 10 to 15 percent of the stories that meet all three criteria.

▪ Online-only media outlets remain a relatively small component of local media ecosystems, accounting for about 10 percent of the local outlets in the sample and generally producing only about 10 percent of the news stories in the sample, across the various content categories (original, local, addresses a critical information need).

o Online-only outlets do perform well in terms of the proportion of their story output that addresses critical information needs (over 80 percent).

▪ Radio stations represent the most common type of local media outlet in our sample, but generally are the weakest in terms of the extent to which their story output is original, local, and addresses critical information needs.

Overall, these findings suggest that newspapers are the most important producers of local news in terms of the volume of journalistic output being produced for local communities. The relative paucity of online-only local media outlets, and the relatively limited (compared with newspapers) journalistic output of these outlets suggest that online-only outlets have yet to come close to matching local newspapers as significant sources of reporting that is original, local, and addresses critical information needs.

These findings support the continued importance of public policy and philanthropic efforts to support the viability of local newspapers. These findings also suggest that commercial and philanthropic efforts to establish online-only outlets as comparable alternatives to local newspapers remain far from this goal.