Self-Caging or Playing With the Edge? News Selection Autonomy in Authoritarian China

Abstract

This article studies how the political affiliation and administrative rank of news organizations in a nondemocratic setting affect news selection autonomy. While existing studies have found that further commercialization contributes to more news selection autonomy, the extent to which political affiliation and administrative rank of news media explain autonomy remains unknown. Eight Chinese news organizations of varying political affiliations and administrative ranks were thus selected to compare their news and frame selection strategies. The findings reveal that political affiliation largely explains news selection autonomy: Party-affiliated outlets generally have lower news selection autonomy than nonparty outlets. Administrative rank has some effect on news selection autonomy in the highly competitive media markets, where news organizations with a lower administrative ranking must play more with propaganda control to compete with their higher ranking counterparts.

News media commercialization in Chindia: Changing theoretical perceptions

“…Previous studies have attempted to make connections between the rank of a newspaper in China and its autonomy and have found that the higher the ranking of the paper, the lower its autonomy. For non-party newspapers, however, a higher rank is usually associated with a higher level of autonomy (Kuang, 2012).…”

“…In a controlled society such as China, ranking is important with regard to surviving against local competition, but its importance becomes secondary when party or government interests appear. For the Chinese media, a ranking is less important than the media-government or 'independent' orientation (Kuang, 2012). In some ways, it indicates that there is less government control over the content.…”

“…Even if the media industry becomes commercialized in a country, it still tends to follow party viewpoints and goals. Without significant political changes in such a society, marketization and commercialization will not be able to improve the level of media autonomy (Kuang, 2012). In fact, commercial liberalization of the media can be an additional factor in authoritarian resilience (Stockmann and Gallagher, 2011) and, therefore, understanding the differences in the realities of the practical implementation of the concepts of liberalization in the two countries of interest is crucial for the contextual perception of this study.…”

Information Jamming and Capture Cost: A Global Game Analysis of Collective Action

“…There is also a growing recognition that some independent reporting can actually help authoritarian regimes in developing countries (See Bennett & Livingston, 2018;J. Chen & Xu, 2017;Kuang, 2020;Kuang & Wang, 2020;Kuang & Wei, 2017;Santo & Costa, 2016;Sunstein, 2018). Some scholars in particular have argued that some central government has benefited from an active captured media that helps keep local officials in check, although it is largely blocked from serious reporting on malfeasance at higher levels of government (Liebman, 2011;Shirk, 2011;Zhao, 2000).…”