Connecting Cultures (Asynchronous - Online Only)
Public Relations, Secrecy, and the Management of Information in Media Cultures View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anne Cronin
This paper draws on empirical material to examine the shifting role of public relations (PR) in media culture through the lens of secrecy. I explore how PR is shaping new manifestations of secrecy and analyse the impact on democratic culture. This study considers Simmel’s (1906: 423) insights that ‘secrecy is a universal sociological form’ that can be contrasted with ‘publicity’ - the making public of information or interests. An analysis of secrecy reveals the deeper structures and principles at work in any one society at any one time. The significance of secrecy extends beyond that which is hidden because secrecy is actively constitutive of social relations: it structures relationships between individuals and groups (creating elites), coordinates social reciprocity, and is implicated in the operations of power (Simmel 1906). Secrecy is productive as it creates an ‘extension of life’: ‘secrecy secures, so to speak, the possibility of a second world alongside of the obvious world, and the latter is most strenuously affected by the former’ (Simmel 1906: 462). This second world is both concealed and acts to conceal. This paper analyses how PR is a key player in generating this second world - or shadow world - of the media sphere and in managing its relationship with the ‘obvious world’. If, as Simmel (1906) argues, practices of secrecy actively create and reshape social relations, close analysis of PR as one of today’s most powerful vectors of secrecy is urgently required to understand the management of information and its impact on democratic culture.
Regional Internets: The Mobile Telecom-led Model of Internet Development in Japan and China View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shuxi Wu
Despite the continuous call to internationalize internet studies, a coherent examination of different models of internet development beyond the Silicon-Valley-based paradigm is yet to be seen. In the Asian context, scholars aiming to marry internet and regional studies have mostly focused on historicizing the internet in individual nation-states, and have argued for more attention to the state-led nature of local internet industries. Going beyond the geopolitical constraints of the former approach and generality of the latter, this study comparatively examines two early internet service provider (ISP) projects in Japan and China to delineate a model of internet development led by (wholly or partially) state-owned mobile telecommunication companies, which differs from standard internet narratives in the Anglo-American world. After delineating the institutional history of the two dominant mobile telecommunications companies in Japan and China – NTT Docomo and China Mobile – and the early internet scene in the two countries, I describe how the crisis of the telecommunications and internet industry in the late 1990s prompted the creation of the “i-mode” ISP project by NTT Docomo in 1999, which inspired China Mobile’s “Monternet” project in 2000. Through analyzing these two projects, I propose a telecom-led model of internet development different from the Western model. The rise and fall of these two projects in the early 21st century are also discussed. Finally, I argue for the importance of examining alternative internet histories by demonstrating how the logic from the telecom-led model are manifested in the current internet industry in China and Japan.
Dining with the Dragon: An Analyses of Sino-African Engagements in Nigerian Mediascape View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mistura Adebusola Salaudeen
Although the 2018 FOCAC summit witnessed the proposition of several mutually beneficial action plans, this renewed Sino-African cooperation is fraught with escalating tensions and concerns about China’s growing dominance. This calls for more recent empirical understanding of the salience conferred on China’s diplomacy and Sino-African issues by domestic media in Africa. Drawing on Nye’s conceptualisation of soft power, this paper, first analyses the nature of China’s expanding diplomatic frontiers in the continent’s largest economy, Nigeria. Anchored on Framing theory, this study, then, proceeds to investigate the coverage of China and Sino-African engagements in the highly polarised Nigerian media-sphere. Evidence from a quantitative content analysis and a thematic analysis of four randomly selected Nigerian newspapers from September 2018 to September 2020, reveals that elite newspapers (Guardian and THISDAY) held more critical stance of China’s diplomatic activities on the continent than newspapers that cater for the general public (Leadership and Punch). It was further observed that media portrayal of China diverged from the framing of Sino-African ties as newspapers mostly employ positive frames such Exemplary development, Superior superpower, and Benefactor to describe China as a nation. However, when reporting issues related to China’s relationship with Africa, the recurrent frames are often negative such as Machiavellianism, Economic colonialism, and Hostility/Racism. These findings expose China’s use of Nigerian media as a diplomatic tool, and simultaneously underscore the inadequacies of its soft power strategies in Africa as its projected stance of mutualism and partnership is counteracted by its perceived practices of exploitation and economic sabotage
Widening Online Space Limits the Production of Chinese Fanworks View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yue Zhao
It is not surprising that more and more people are becoming fans of something. Creating various kinds of works in light of what they like strengthens their bonds with each other. This kind of relationship, which developed from the gift economy, works with the popularity of new media so that fans can build their community on a couple of online platforms. In China, Bilibili is one of the most famous video-sharing websites built to attract many fans of animation, comics, or games, but it now welcomes more users of different fan identities. Once a unique place for animation amateurs to communicate freely has evolved into a public square with many rules. Moreover, other social media like Weibo, a Chinese Twitter, now operate strictly and put forward some fan-targeted regulations against fans’ posts. This study discusses what kind of online environment is provided for fan productions in China and what factors of Chinese society result in this situation. Through interviews with fan artists and content analysis of related regulations, Field Theory is applied to explain it. It is concluded that as a kind of subculture, as more non-fan members join the online platform where the boundary of fan community has broken down, the space of fan works is becoming smaller. This kind of research has rarely been done in China. Also, the findings may be helpful to scholars who are interested in Chinese studies or fandom studies.
Crisis and Media: Masculinity in Crisis, Loss of Manhood, and the Nation-State in Postsocialist China View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tiantian Zheng
This paper investigates the media portrayal of masculinity in crisis as signifying a crisis of the nation-state in postsocialist China. More specifically, the media depiction of the phenomenon of ‘fake women' is condemned as an epitome of the loss of Chinese manhood and a threat to the nation-state, reflecting powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the ‘sick man’ of East Asia. This paper argues that the media has made effeminate men a scapegoat upon which anxiety over social problems is displaced.
