International News and the Distribution Question: China, Falun Dafa and Pluralism in Canadian Media Policy (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
In this dissertation, I examine news media contraflow, flows of news and information from historically underrepresented parts of the globe into advanced media systems. I assess North American governance of news media flows in light of increased availability of nonwestern news organizations. The research in the following chapters examines the cases of the Al Jazeera Network (AJ) and China Central Television (CCTV) to more fully account for transformations in the gatekeeper roles of regulatory bodies, media distribution industries and communication norms that govern North America's engagement with these emergent news providers. The proliferation of foreign news broadcasters makes examining institutions of reception-state regulators, public activist groups and distribution industries-increasingly important. Through case studies, I look, first, to recent changes in the production of international news in the neoliberal landscape of global communication. I examine significant new news content creators and identify what I call a hybrid media production model. State media enterprises are becoming savvy users of communication networks transformed by neoliberalism. In the second part of the dissertation, I outline the inchoate "foreign media policies" of the United States and Canada by analyzing the complex of law, norms and market conditions that influenced the reception of AJ and CCTV. guidance of my committee members helped at every step. John Nerone is a rare advisor, providing intellectual and personal support through tough times. Tabe Bergman, Rich Potter and a long list of other colleagues at the Institute improved the project in too many ways to note. Will Youmans, Paula Chakravartty, Arlene Luck at IJoC and a number of anonymous reviewers for the ICA, NCA, UDC and the SIU/Texas Global Fusion conferences helped refine drafts of chapters. The Association for Canadian Studies in the United States provided funding for travel to Washington, DC and Ottawa where archives and interviews expanded my understanding immeasurably. The Canadian regulatory officials, Peter Foster and Tandy Yull in particular, were giving of time and resources. I also extend gratitude to the media activists who voluntarily met with me and enriched the research. The consistent kindness I experienced during my time in Ottawa has confirmed my love of Canadians. I would also like to offer deep thanks to my father, stepmother , sister and beloved Sarah Colvert for putting up with the "diss moments" when I alternated between frantic and apathetic. When work took me away, I could trust the love of family to support me and provide childcare. Without the personal touch and understanding of family I would have lost my way. The insights of Martin Srajek also made this possible by keeping my head and soul together. In the process of my graduate studies, I was lucky to have a son. The hours we spent together huddled around apartment heat vents enabled me to dive back into research with renewed vigor. Because of that time together, I emerge from graduate student life a better person. v
This article uses cosmopolitanism as a theoretical basis for the investigation and analysis of the global corporate and state media’s normative roles in human rights and democracy. Through the case studies of CNN and Xinhua’s reportage of the Tibetan protests in 2008, the article observes patterns of ideological coalescence between western capitalist hegemony and the big western media conglomerates such as CNN. It argues that, as a good global corporate citizen, CNN undoubtedly made contributions in exposing human rights abuses in Tibet, but also unwittingly worked to advance the interests of a manipulative and unjust neoliberal international order that uses human rights as a political tool. This is demonstrated not only through CNN’s selective articulation of human rights, but also the worrying coincidence between its ideological construction of the Tibet story and the rebuke of China’s human rights record by the western governments and other western institutions. While Xinhua provided an alternative discourse to that of human rights, it was observed that whereas nationalism arguably protects China’s revolutionary legacy and its modernization project, the discourse was also largely authoritarian and acted in contradiction to some of the constitutionally entrenched civil and political liberties of minorities while also raising cynicism about the Chinese government’s commitment to international human rights laws that it ratified and acceded to.
Falun Gong and the Canada Media Fund
Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, 2017
What do Shen Yun, New Tang Dynasty TV, Human Harvest (originally entitled Davids and Goliath), The Art of Courage (a film about Falun Gong artists in 'Exile'), Avenues of Escape (a film about people 'escaping' China), In the Name of Confucius (a film attacking the PRC's Confucius Institutes), and The Bleeding Edge (a fictional film about forced organ harvesting) have in common, beyond their anti-China focus?-All, it turns out, are bankrolled by the Canadian government's Canada Media Fund. In the present paper, we will provide a preliminary outline of these activities, and, in the words of our subtitle, ask: Why is the Canadian Government bankrolling an anti-China propaganda campaign?
International Journal of Communication
Sino-American discourse on the nature of the press as a social institution is a historical subject in addition to one for our times. This article locates today's Sino-American discourse on the role of the media in a broad historical context before observing the degree to which the globalization of media technologies has complicated what for a century was typically a confrontational discourse between the two countries over the appropriate role of the press in society. It reveals that China and the United States sparred over that question from the early 20th century forward and that each country has served as a foil for the other insofar as attitudes about the media, as well as media practices, have been articulated and justified.
With the increasingly multicultural demography in Greater Vancouver, diasporic media have played an important role in addressing the needs and concerns of immigrants from all over the world. Diasporic media’s strong commitment to show positive recognitions to their intended ethnic community can, however, be seen as a double-edged sword. While their allegiance has, to a certain degree, fractured the “regime of objectivity” found mostly in mainstream media, it has not fully captured the diversity and transcultural interactions between and within ethnic groups. Diasporic broadcasting has accordingly consolidated ethnic enclaves and created the problem of reification. To remedy the situation and foster the transcultural communication in journalism, this paper calls for an establishment of a new regime – the regime of intersubjectivity – to replace the “regime of objectivity.” A three-dimensional model of in-group and out-group transcultural communication in journalism is thus proposed to conceptualize the new regime of intersubjectivity.
Editorial: From Control to Negotiation: Chinese Media in the 2000s
International Communication Gazette, 2007
As China is seen to rise as a major power in the global economy and politics, there has been growing academic interest in the country’s changing media landscape. It is, however, never an easy task to read media systems in a post-Communist market authoritarian society like China. Students of Chinese media studies are often excited by the rapid growth and commercialization of the media industry, on the one hand, and puzzled and frustrated by its lack of press freedom and professionalism, on the other hand. This special issue of The International Communication Gazette wishes to contribute to the current academic debate on the Chinese media by identifying and focusing on some of the most recent changes in this area. Before I introduce the four articles collected in this special issue in some detail, it is useful to undertake a critical analysis of the main theoretical frameworks that have been used to understand the Chinese media ‘puzzle’ in recent research literature, and explore the possibility of developing new ones.
The conditional autonomy of the critical press in China
2008
In the same period, the internet has revolutionized information access, and has contributed to the fierce competition within the Chinese media market. Combined with a decentralized control structure, this has made more problem-oriented, critical journalism possible within Chinese media. When in the 1980s the party-state reduced subsidies and allowed the media to retain its own profits, this raised observers' expectations of a potential transition. Political liber-RESEARCH QUESTIONS The dissertation is structured around two research questions. The first addresses how critical journalism adds new dimensions to the political roles of the media, and the second addresses the relationship between party-state authorities and critical journalists. To explore the political implications of critical journalism in China, the first question asks: What are the political roles of the Chinese media? The understanding of the term political that is applied in this dissertation goes beyond practices that are limited to formal, political institutions. Within discourse theory, politics are connected to the way people organize and control meaning. They are means of producing identities and antagonisms. Through mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion they make some social acts and strategies more likely than others (Howarth, Norval and Stavrakakis 2000, Laclau and Mouffe 2001). In a discursive understanding, the political denotes conflicts of interests, and the strategies of power, domination and resistance that are inherent aspects of every social system. Politics, on the other hand, are strategies designed to reduce or deny conflict (Mouffe 2005). Hence, the political role of the Chinese media is not limited to what it is assigned by the party-state authorities, How is the media's conditional autonomy being restricted, and how do critical journalists attempt to increase their autonomy? The conditional autonomy of the media is a concept that is designed to capture the combination of increased freedom and the continuation of con-By asking what critical journalists do to increase their autonomy, I address how the social and discursive strategies of journalists are conducted within a particular context. Critical journalists' social strategies involve choices about issues, locations and investigative methods. Their strategies are designed to avoid crossing boundaries while retaining their ability to communicate about social problems and critical issues in the media. Discursive strategies are important in achieving this end because conscious and careful choices of narrative techniques, framing and vocabulary make it possible to discuss issues that would otherwise be judged to be too critical and not suitable for publication. ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION Chapter two, Media, power and spaces of representation, is divided in two parts. Part one addresses theoretical perspectives on the conditional autonomy of the media. Media scholars are among the main contributors to this debate, and a central question under discussion is whether or not state-independent ownership is a precondition for the media's ability to serve as a democratizing force in society. This argument is criticized by critical media scholars who argue that in many cases state-owned media have served the public interest precisely because they are not subjected to the same economic interests as privately owned media. The ownership and organization of media institutions are not sufficient to determine what role the media plays in state-society relations. To answer this, it is necessary to take the media's social and discursive practices into account. In particular, the media has a central role to play in shaping public discourse, and this is a crucial aspect of the political agency of critical journalists in an authoritarian context. Chapter two-part two is entitled Containing resistance: hegemony and domination. The perspectives under discussion here all relate to the concept of power. Power is a nodal point for social science, it is contested and is inscribed with different meaning depending on its theoretical context. In the scholarly debate in the 1950s, power denoted the ability of a social actor to decide the outcome of a conflict. Subsequent Foucauldian perspectives have suggested that power is about the structuring of meaning, and have described it as a capillary and productive force. To analyse Nevertheless, critical journalism in China has developed because journalists have found ways to work within and around the limits and boundaries imposed by the party-state. They apply investigative methods, are skilful in utilizing their own networks and seek to approach issues and problems in the ways that are least likely to invoke negative sanctions. The result has been the emergence of new spaces of representation within the Chinese media that allow voices other than those of the authorities to be heard in the public sphere. at "Workshop on media politics and investigative journalism in China".