University of Pennsylvania Press

Chapter Title: The Coevolution of the Internet, (Un)Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China Chapter Author(s): Min Jiang

Book Title: The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China Book Editor(s): Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, Guobin Yang Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press. (2016) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1b3t8nr.4

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C H A P T E R 1

The Coevolution of the Internet, (Un)Civil

Society, and Authoritarianism in China

Min Jiang

Th is chapter extends Guobin Yang’s 2003 seminal article on the coevolution of the Internet and civil society in China.1 It argues the Internet has facili- tated, on the one hand, the coevolution of Chinese civic spaces and authori- tarian control, and, on the other, the coevolution of civic activities and uncivil interactions. Th e Internet has not only helped amplify civic discourses and group formations; it has also augmented the infl uence of uncivil exchanges online, leading to a greater degree of fragmentation and cynicism of public opinion. Although social media platforms such as the Twitter- like Sina Weibo can serve as a critical space for expressing and channeling public opinion, they are unlikely to be the ultimate game changer.

In charting the new terrain of China’s online civic spaces, the chapter focuses on four aspects: (1) real- time activism; (2) online po liti cal jamming; (3) weibo celebrities; and (4) the rise of an “uncivil society” online. I explore conditions and instances of “real- time” activism; the use of cultural jamming and “serious parody” for po liti cal activism; the role of weibo celebrities in fos- tering plurality and fragmentation; and the uncivil ideological discourse exchanges that have led to public brawls in the street and pop u lar rejection of “public intellectuals.” In contrast, to curb the po liti cal consequences of new forms of mediated activism, the control regime has implemented a variety of new mea sures besides fi ltering and employment of pro- government com- mentators to forestall or pacify collective actions, including real name regis- tration policy and anti- rumor campaigns.

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The Coevolution of the Internet 29

Th e chapter argues positive development of online public spaces in China relies as much on institutional politics to eff ectively channel public opinion as it does on identity politics and progressive changes in subjectivity through everyday life interactions. While the Internet mediates such negotiations and is increasingly indispensable to the parties involved, it does not determine their outcomes. Th e contextualized use of the Internet and new media, shaped by the social, cultural, and po liti cal protocols surrounding such technologies, ultimately does.

Context

Th e massive diff usion of the Internet and the rise of China as a world power are two prominent stories of our time. In 1994, China connected to the World Wide Web. By mid-1998, Chinese Internet users reached 1 million. Today, China is the second largest economy in the world and home to 632 million Internet users, 275 million microbloggers, 527 million Internet mobile phone users, and such Internet giants as Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Sina.2 Th e rapid development of the Chinese Internet is grounded in the transformation of China itself from a third- world country to a manufacturing and industrial power house aft er the Chinese Communist Party traded Mao for markets and gradually opened its closed doors to the outside world in the late 1970s.

Th e Chinese government’s embracing of the Internet presents a paradox and has attracted heated public debate over the po liti cal consequences of the widespread adoption of the Internet in an authoritarian society. President Reagan famously remarked: “Th e Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.”3 Yet defying such prevailing techno- utopian predictions that the Internet sides with freedom and undermines au- tocratic rulers, Beijing has so far managed to weave and guard an expanding fi ltered web. Besides employing various means of censorship,4 more impor- tant, the regime has built and promoted state legitimacy through economy, nationalism, ideology, culture, and governance to ensure the compliance, if not allegiance, of its population.5

Th is is not to say that Chinese authorities do not fear the diff usion of the Internet in China or its po liti cal implications. In fact, Party mouthpiece and People’s Daily Online’s editor in chief once remarked: “What would it look like if everybody went into politics? . . . China has more than 100 million In- ternet users. If they were all free to speak their minds, we would have a very

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30 Min Jiang

serious situation.” 6 With more than 600 million of the Chinese population online now, control of po liti cal discourse is by no means a cakewalk. As Guo- bin Yang demonstrated in his nuanced account of digital activism in China, the Chinese state’s regulation of the Internet has consistently run against an impressive degree of grassroots challenges fueled by public discontent dur- ing China’s tumultuous economic, social, and cultural transformations.7

Th e evolution of the Internet in China in the last two de cades has wit- nessed the simultaneous growth of authoritarianism and grassroots activ- ism fueled by contention and participation. Dubbed oft en by pop u lar press as a “cat- and- mouse” game, the coevolution of digital activism and authori- tarianism does not pronounce immediate winners or losers. However, it has become increasingly clear that the Internet is not necessarily an insur- mountable threat to capable illiberal regimes. So far the Chinese govern- ment has managed to promote the Internet as a means for socioeconomic development while successfully minimizing its po liti cal impact. Overall, despite limited po liti cal freedoms, people’s freedoms in other realms have expanded with improved living standards and opportunities. China’s on- line activism is thus embedded in a much larger media ecol ogy and social pro cess, where the po liti cal impact of the Internet is mediated through a complex mix of social, economic, po liti cal, and institutional circumstances.8

Unlike the dictators toppled during the Arab Spring— Ben Ali failed to control the communication networks in Tunisia, where protestors used the Internet effectively to or ga nize civil disobedience; Mubarak unplugged the Internet in Egypt and drove protestors to the street— Chinese authorities have walked a fi ne line balancing Internet growth and its attendant po liti cal consequences. Its “networked authoritarianism” or “authoritarian deliberation” resorts less to brute force but allows for a considerable degree of give- and- take between the state and emergent civil forces.9 Moreover, China’s expanding economy, the state’s anticorruption promises, its emphasis on governance, and its appeal to Chinese nationalism and civilization have fostered an im- plicit state- society pact, a grand bargain of sorts, that the po liti cal status quo— a one- party system monopolized by a small group of elites with the assurance of reasonable per for mance, social stability, and continued economic growth— shall remain unchallenged. In the realm of new media, such an arrange- ment has translated into a form of “informational authoritarianism” that combines capitalism, authoritarianism, and Confucianism to institute state regulation, as well as widespread self- censorship among Internet ser vice/ content providers and users.10

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The Coevolution of the Internet 31

While much of the previous literature tends to focus on grassroots empowerment,11 or disempowerment,12 this chapter argues for a dialectic coevolution of the state and an emerging Chinese civil society mediated via the Internet. Th e grassroots empowerment narrative focuses on the Inter- net’s decentralized structure, low cost, greater access to information/ideas, communication speed, user interactivity, connectivity across space, online dissent, or ga ni za tion, and mobilization. On the other hand, the disempow- erment thesis emphasizes state control of Internet infrastructure, prohibi- tion of po liti cally sensitive content, regulation of ICP/ISP, state surveillance of netizens, and rampant self- censorship, as well as commercialization, entertainment, slacktivism, and distraction away from critical social issues and real changes.

Does the widespread adoption of social media in China alter the balance of power between the state and the emerging civil society? In what ways does it contribute to citizen empowerment? How have authorities adjusted to contain public opinion? Taking the perspective of a coevolution of the Internet, (un)civil society, and authoritarianism in China, in what follows, I discuss the most recent development of the Chinese Internet and new media, particularly the rise and fall of Sina Weibo (China’s Twitter) since August 2009.

Online Activism and (Un)Civil Society

As many Chinese are now connected via mobile social networks, digital ac- tivism has acquired new characteristics. I highlight in the following: (1) real- time activism, (2) online po liti cal jamming, (3) weibo celebrities, and (4) the rise of an uncivil society online.

Real- Time Activism

Th e arrival of mobile microblogging and photo sharing makes possible the instantaneous broadcast of an unfolding event over the Internet and social networks. With deeper integration of the mobile web into people’s everyday life, a new genre of media activism— real- time activism— has emerged as Chi- nese netizens start to document and amplify anything they fi nd provocative, scandalous, and intriguing in real time. Some accidentally become national

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32 Min Jiang

or international news and even lead to policy change as they tap into wide- spread public sentiment and deep- seated social problems.

Speaking at a public lecture at Peking University in June 2010, propaganda offi cial Li Baozhu proudly announced: “With a wave of my hand, tens of mil- lions of posts about the Deng Yujiao incident were all deleted.”13 Th e comment, accompanied by live pictures, was quickly circulated on Chinese microblog- ging before being taken down by commercial portals soon aft erward.

One of the most prominent cases of real- time activism concerns the Wenzhou train collision. On July  23, 2011, two high- speed trains crashed into each other at 8:34 p.m. near Wenzhou, a coastal city in southeast China, causing four cars to fall out of a sixty- foot- tall viaduct and resulting in forty deaths. Four minutes aft er the accident, a Sina Weibo user posted the fi rst tweet about the accident. Nine minutes later, a desperate plea for help was posted on Sina Weibo, retweeted more than one hundred thousand times (later censored): “A cry for help! Train D301 has been derailed not far from Wenzhou station. Children are crying up and down the carriage. No staff member has come out! Hurry up and save us!” Two hours aft erward, the fi rst tweet about rescue relief was sent from the scene and government appeal for blood donations was put on Sina Weibo. Later, a user’s tweets from the blood donation clinic were reposted more than one hundred thousand times.14

At a time of crisis when offi cial media are absent or barred from report- ing, social media users become de facto reporters on the scene, giving ac- counts in real time. Weibo is oft en chosen in China to break such news not only because of its speed or con ve nience but also because of its connected- ness and publicness. Deeply embedded in users’ social relationships and everyday life and used by many professional reporters, weibo was highly conducive to the spread of critical news and information before stricter reg- ulations were imposed by authorities later to rein in public opinion and spread “positive energy.”15 A week aft er the accident, more than 10 million comments about the crash had been posted on Sina Weibo, nearly all of them angry, questioning authorities’ rescue eff orts, the hasty burial of evidence, and the truth behind the accident.16

Few social media users are activists, yet oft en by accident their fi rsthand accounts, when widely circulated, form the basis of truth and public dis- course. Within twenty- four hours aft er the accident, video clips of authori- ties burying a train carriage spread like wildfi re online.17 People believed they were “burying the truth.” Aft er offi cial media announced the end of rescue eff orts merely eight hours aft er the crash, the survival of “miracle girl,” two-

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The Coevolution of the Internet 33

year- old Yiyi, whose parents died in the crash, further fueled online fury.18 In response to reporters’ charge that the Ministry of Railways was trying to thwart investigation, the ministry spokesman haplessly commented: “Whether or not you believe it, I believe it,” which immediately took fl ight as an Internet meme. Even offi cial media turned up the heat on the ministry. State tele vi sion CCTV anchor Qiu Qiming veered from his script and asked on air: “Can we drink a glass of milk that is safe? Can we stay in an apartment that will not fall apart? Can we travel roads in our cities that will not collapse?”19

Th e hastily constructed railways under Minister “Great Leap Liu,” as an offi cial report later revealed, were plagued with safety hazards due to infe- rior engineering, poor management, and systemic corruption. Th e minister was sacked for embezzling millions of dollars from public projects. Conse- quently, the world’s largest and fastest railway, Harmony Express, one of China’s proudest modern achievements, has come to represent recklessness and fraud.20 In this case, real- time activism, in the form of civic journalism and public criticism, played a crucial role in helping uncover the truth by keeping the pressure on the government. Media of all kinds— old and new, grassroots and offi cial— participated in exposing the iconic failure of govern- ment per for mance that in large mea sure violated the grand bargain of mod- ern Chinese politics that allows the Party to “reign unchallenged as long as it is reasonably competent.”21 However, weibo’s connectedness and public- ness, as the chapter will later explain, have come under increasing state scru- tiny as the government propaganda apparatus begins to pressure commercial operators to fi lter around the clock and silence infl uential users online.

Online Po liti cal Jamming

Not only can activism in the social media age occur in real time; its style has also taken a more playful turn to evade censors and reach larger publics. On- line po liti cal jamming— the use of digital media and pop u lar culture to dis- seminate dissenting images and viewpoints, disrupt stultifying mainstream po liti cal discourses, and expose social injustices— borrows from “cultural jamming” practices that target and subvert mainstream corporate culture and ideologies.22 Like cultural jams, online po liti cal jamming challenges dominant po liti cal discourses by producing and distributing counter- hegemonic messages via new media: logos are reconfi gured, images Photo- shopped, pop u lar fi lms clips remixed, and pop culture references appropriated

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34 Min Jiang

and distributed via digital networks.23 Not only are such practices rooted in parody as a powerful tool of po liti cal re sis tance worldwide throughout hu- man history, to which China is not an exception; they have acquired new genres, features, and potency in Chinese cyberspace, creating an alternative carnivalesque world of freedom and laughter where the rich and powerful are ridiculed and subverted.24

Similar to its Western counterparts, online po liti cal jamming in China has spread acerbic critique of contemporary Chinese politics cloaked in frisky artistic forms and helped energize acts of social and po liti cal activ- ism. For instance, Chen Guangcheng, a famous Chinese human rights activist and self- taught blind lawyer, is internationally recognized for or ga- niz ing a landmark class- action lawsuit against authorities’ abuses in family- planning practices in Linyi, Shandong. Aft er serving four years in prison, he was released in 2010 and was under house arrest until his remarkable escape to the  U.S. embassy in Beijing in April 2012. To protest against the brutal treatment of Chen, his supporters made stickers, the size of a booklet cover, featuring a stylized graphic of Chen’s face with his signature sunglasses (see fi gure 1.1), modeled aft er the logo of KFC, a well- known U.S. fast- food chain in China. “Pearl Her,” a Chen supporter, reportedly had four thousand of these stickers produced and asked fellow supporters to put them on their cars. A Google Maps page was also set up for a “FREE CGC Car Sticker Club” where supporters who had put the sticker on their cars could register their approximate locations. She remarked: “dissidents have traditionally been quite confrontational with the government. . . . But we should learn how to express ourselves and protest in an orderly way, to use art and enter- tainment more freely. It is like Occupy Wall Street.”25

Another FREE CGC’s participatory act is the Dark Glasses Portrait campaign (see fi gure 1.2). To support Chen, an anonymous Chinese artist, “Crazy Cab,” began to solicit and curate digital photos of netizens wearing the blind activist’s signature sunglasses in 2012. Viewed in isolation, each photo did not trip censors. When aggregated, however, these photos evolved into a powerful and continuous picture wall, reminding people of the hoodie- wearing campaign for Trayvon Martin in the United States and the hijab “Be a Man” photo drive showing solidarity for the Ira nian Green Movement.26 As an act of guerrilla activism, the campaign was designed to avoid censor- ship, as authorities cannot possibly round up everyone wearing sunglasses.27

Such acts of “serious parody” are examples of Chinese activists’ appro- priation of cultural jam techniques for digital po liti cal activism.28 Cultural

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The Coevolution of the Internet 35

or po liti cal jamming, Cammerts explains, draws inspirations from art move- ments of Dadaism, Surrealism, Fluxus, and Situationism.29 It borrows from Dadaism the idea of assigning diff erent meanings to objects, exemplifi ed in the art work of Marcel Duchamp, who famously dubbed a urinal art and named it Fountain. Likewise, the “FREE CGC” sticker recoded the ready- made KFC logo with disruptive meanings. In addition, cultural jamming adopts the optical illusion practice of Surrealism, cleverly designed to confuse the viewer. Th e “FREE CGC” sticker clearly baffl ed the Chinese police, who did not notice them. “And if they ask what Free CGC means, we say it is free KFC,” says an activist.30 Moreover, po liti cal jamming follows Fluxus’s principle of integrating social action in the fl ux of everyday life, blending art and social

Figure 1.1. Source (original source unknown): http:// newnation . sg / tag / obama - fried - chicken/ (New Nation, a Singapore- based online publication, has granted the author permis- sion to reuse the image for this chapter).

Figure 1.2. Source (screenshot): http:// ichenguangcheng . blogspot . com / . Site creator has chosen to remain anonymous.

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36 Min Jiang

critique into a form of counter- artistic movement. In the “FREE CGC” case, not only did activists produce and distribute stickers online; more important, participants integrated activism into both material (for example, a car) and immaterial (for example, performing) aspects of their daily life. Lastly, po liti cal jamming is détournement, or rerouting, in the Situationist sense. By hijacking the original artwork, détournement, like the “FREE CGC” sticker, situates new po liti cal messages in existing consumerist culture and public spaces, both online and offl ine.

Th is new type of “art as po liti cal act” in the Chinese activism scene owes a debt to famed Chinese artist- activist Ai Weiwei. A student of Duchamp, Ai views art not as something detached from society or transcending so- called ordinary people but part of everyday life and experiences. “If artists betray the social conscience and the basic principles of being human, where does art stand then?” Ai asks.31 A provocateur who dares to pose nude to con- demn the Party and give the middle fi nger to iconic buildings around the world, including the Tiananmen and the White House, Ai also led notable eff orts that combined art and digital activism. Between 2008 and 2009, he investigated student casualties due to the collapse of “tofu- dreg” (shoddy) school buildings in the aft ermath of the Sichuan earthquake. A list of 5,385 names was collected, for which he was severely beaten. To mourn the dead and shame authorities who refused to release students’ names, the list was printed on white paper, each name read aloud and recorded by strangers who volunteered to participate in digital art making.32 In both cases, social me- dia facilitated the diff usion of po liti cal jamming to larger publics and helped coordinate large- scale per for mances in a participatory manner. However, the impact of po liti cal jamming is not impossible to control if the state resorts to more forceful means to suppress activists and diff use poorly coordinated actions.

Weibo Celebrities

Besides real- time activism and po liti cal jamming, the role of weibo celebri- ties in China’s emerging civil society is worth noting. By introducing distinct identities, information, and worldviews, weibo celebrities tend to foster plural- ity and fragmentation simultaneously. Here, weibo celebrities refers to users on Chinese microblogging platforms with large numbers of followers. Known as “Big Vs,” their accounts are usually verifi ed, designated with a V.

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The Coevolution of the Internet 37

In January 2015, all top ten Sina Weibo celebrities had more than 40 million fans. Among them, “Weibo King,” actor Chen Kun, had more than 73 million. “Weibo Queen,” Yao Chen, had 72 million. While many of these celebrities are entertainers, others, such as Kai-fu Lee, ex- CEO of Google China, also have more than 50 million followers.33 Copying its celebrity- driven business approach from blogging to microblogging, Sina Corporation has actively cultivated its “stars” and a celebrity culture from sports, entertainment, and media to real estate, science, and technology to drive online discussion, traf- fi c, and ultimately profi t. Although Sina Weibo’s user base has witnessed a signifi cant loss to Tencent’s WeChat, a group- chat social media platform, Weibo remains as China’s “public forum,” central to the publicness of Chinese social media.

Weibo celebrities, a new breed of opinion leaders in the social media age, hold considerable sway in China’s public opinion space. Compared with the 80- million- member Chinese Communist Party, weibo celebrities’ fans are for- midable both in numbers and loyalty. As many offi cial media are not held in high esteem in China, weibo celebrities with their expertise, charisma, and authority are an important source of alternative news, information, and opin- ions to millions. Although opinion leaders and public opinion formation are certainly not new in China,34 or elsewhere,35 weibo has arguably altered in no small mea sure Chinese microbloggers’ access to news and information, their relation to one another and social elites, public opinion formation, and even online activism mechanisms.

Th e public campaign against child traffi cking “Take a Photo, Save a Child” is one such example. It was started in 2011 on Sina Weibo by Profes- sor Yu Jianrong, a weibo celebrity known for his support for social justice issues. Soon, a microblog site was launched for people to post photos of child beggars in the hope to re unite parents with their kidnapped children. More than 175,000 people joined the eff ort and posted more than twenty- fi ve hundred photographs. Supported by ultra- weibo celebrities like Yao Chen and Kai-fu Lee and sanctioned by the state, the campaign garnered a great deal of attention. It also made weibo celebrities out of grassroots advocates such as Deng Fei, a journalist from Phoenix Weekly, and Charles Xue, a Chinese American angel investor. Although only a few children were successfully identifi ed and re united with their families as a result of this campaign, the charitable eff ort raised widespread social awareness and solicited long- term commitment from Jet Li’s One Foundation and legislative support.36

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38 Min Jiang

Weibo celebrities’ contribution to such charity causes and similar episodes of civic activism have benefi ted from weibo’s functionalities and sociality and weibo celebrities’ infl uence. Although these celebrities’ po- liti cal impact is under the constant surveillance of commercial operators and authorities, their posts oft en blur the boundaries between self- media and public media, private lives and public issues. In his exuberantly optimistic book, Weibo Changes Everything, Kai-fu Lee compares weibo users with ten thousand fans with magazine own ers, those with one hundred thousand fans to regional newspaper publishers, and those with 1 million or even 10 million followers to having the infl uence of national papers and national TV stations. Celebrity posts are no longer self- talk but public talk.37

Oft en critical of social ills, top weibo celebrities, such as real estate ty- coons Ren Zhiqiang and Pan Shiyi, IT elite CEO Kai-fu Lee, and economists Mao Yushi and Lang Xianping, exert considerable infl uence. Th ese public fi gures use weibo not only as a PR tool to cultivate their personal image but also as a means to express their views and infl uence the public. Moreover, the separation between private lives and public issues has become increas- ingly artifi cial and fl uid for weibo celebrities. For instance, research fi nds that between October and November 2011, one- fi ft h of “Weibo Queen” Yao Chen’s posts concerned public issues rather than topics about entertainment or herself.38 Her revelation of her distant relatives’ experience of forced de- mo li tion put the social issue at the front and center of her followers’ minds. Another weibo celebrity’s, Luo Yonghao’s, public smashing of Siemens’s faulty refrigerators and CCTV anchor Zhang Quanling’s post about erro- neous ads on Baidu also put these companies in the public spotlight, chan- neling personal frustrations and driving public discourse.39

The Uncivil Society Online

However, like previous web technological changes, weibo’s impact on Chi- na’s emergent civil society and activism is highly mixed. Not all weibo ce- lebrities are civil in their discourse or online behavior. Besides individuals and groups conducive to the expansion of open discussion and growth of an emergent civil society, more radical and extreme personalities and groups have thrived as well. Th e coexistence of groups of diametrically opposed ideologies has led to considerable slanging matches, online verbal abuse, and even public brawls in the street. In addition, “50 cents,” or paid pro-

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The Coevolution of the Internet 39

government online commentators reportedly reaching 2 million,40 have fl ooded weibo and other pop u lar online spaces, breeding substantial confu- sion and discursive frictions.41 As a result, public discourses and opinions formed in such online spaces are not necessarily coherent or always pro- ductive, and they have grown more fragmentary, polarized, theatrical, and cynical over time, culminating in the phenomenal pop u lar rejection of “public intellectuals.”

For instance, Kong Qingdong, a professor of Chinese at Peking Univer- sity and a descendant of Confucius, is a highly controversial weibo celebrity. On January 24, 2012, during an interview on Chinese news site v1.cn, he openly cursed Hong Kong residents as dogs of the British Empire: “As far as I know, many Hong Kong people don’t regard themselves as Chinese. Th ose kinds of people are used to being the dogs of British colonialists— they are dogs, not humans.” 42 Refusing to apologize for it, he defended his remarks as “free speech.” 43 On the Chinese Internet, Kong, Zhang Hongliang, Sima Nan, and Wu Fatian are popularly referred to as the “New Four Arch Evils” in China.44 Appealing to pop u lism, nationalism, Maoism, and even the Cultural Revolution, these Far Left fi gures known for their ultra- nationalistic, anti- West, anticapitalist stance amassed a considerable following online for their defense of “the people” against “the elite.” 45

Social media not only amplifi ed the voices of such extremists and fueled fragmentation and polarization but, perhaps more important, helped disman- tle the “public intellectual” in China. In a most theatrical fashion in 2012, the high- profi le weibo debate between Han Han and Fang Zhouzi and the physical brawl started on weibo between Wu Fatian and Zhou Yan enveloped Chinese netizens in deep cynicism. “Public intellectual,” defi ned in contem- porary China by infl uential metropolitan paper Southern Daily’s supplement Southern People Weekly as “knowledgeable, progressive and critical individ- uals who actively engage in public aff airs,” has become a label to be shunned like a plague by online celebrities.46

Before the arrival of weibo, Han Han was already a literary star and pub- lic fi gure. His blogs were read by tens of millions and in Time magazine’s 2010 “Time 100” poll, Han Han, at twenty- seven, came in second.47 For many, es- pecially Chinese youth, Han Han is the ultimate nonconformist: a high school literary competition winner and dropout, a pop u lar blogger, a best- selling author, a singer, and most recently a professional racecar driver. An out- spoken critic against China’s establishment with snarky wit, Han Han is the unoffi cial rebel voice of his generation.48 Fang Zhouzi’s fl ame war with Han

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40 Min Jiang

Han started in mid- January 2012. Following Han Han’s three controversial po liti cal posts on revolution, democracy, and freedom, blogger Mai Tian accused Han Han of being the front man of a team of ghostwriters and promoters. Aft er Mai Tian withdrew his accusation as a result of counter- evidence, Fang picked up the crusade and engaged Han Han in a war of words over the authenticity of Han’s work.49 Fang Zhouzi is known in China as a fraud buster, having brought down most prominently Tang Jun, former pres- ident of MSN China, for lying about his PhD degree. Th eir wrangle, broad- cast live from Sina Weibo, polarized not only China’s literary, media, and intellectual circles, who split into a “Han camp” and a “Fang camp”; it most tragically alienated millions of weibo users disappointed by the malicious lan- guage and behavior of the so- called public intellectuals online. Both camps used the same derogatory labels— “50 Cents” and “residual toxin of the Cultural Revolution”—to condemn each other. Although their debate fi zzled because of lack of evidence off ered by either side, the spectacle they cre- ated in China’s public life cast deep skepticism on both public fi gures and Chinese intellectuals in general.50

However, the most dramatic uncivil dispute is the physical fi ght between Wu Fatian and Zhou Yan, started and arranged over weibo and known as “Weibo Brawl.” Wu Danhong, or “Wu Fatian” online, was an assistant pro- fessor at Beijing University of Po liti cal Science and Law whose staunch de- fense of the Party had earned him the “Advanced 50 Cents” badge.51 On July 3, 2012, Wu posted a tweet on Sina Weibo supporting the construction of a questionable metal refi nery plant in Shifang, Sichuan Province, that had sparked local protests and been halted. His remarks infuriated Zhou Yan, a Sichuan TV reporter empathetic to the protest. An exchange of insults quickly escalated to a fi ght appointment at Beijing Chaoyang Park on July 6, 2012, that drew onlookers online and offl ine. Videos of the encounter circulated widely aft erward, including footage of Ai Weiwei trying to attack Wu, a trans- gression some said they were willing to forgive because it was Wu Fatian.52 Yet the public was not so forgiving of the ways “public intellectuals,” espe- cially the well- educated democracy- loving liberals, behaved at the scene. Th e transition from verbal abuse to physical attack on Wu Fatian shocked and disappointed many sympathetic to liberal views in China, prompting some to remark that the brawl smeared the image of liberals and in eff ect made more room for those opposing liberal and demo cratic views in China.53

Following these high- profi le incidents, “public intellectual” has turned into a widely accepted pejorative in China. Not only is the hooliganization

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The Coevolution of the Internet 41

of public intellectuals a tragic turn of China’s emerging civil society, it also casts serious doubt on the conducive role that the Internet is thought to have played in the development of China’s emergent civil society. Instead, through social media, paid commentators, and self- seeking personalities, abrasive exchanges between ideological factions have propelled the Chinese online space to be more fragmentary, polarized, theatrical, and cynical over time.

Control Regime in Action

To respond to new forms of digital activism and curb the po liti cal con- sequences of social media, China’s control regime has implemented various new mea sures besides fi ltering and hiring pro- state commentators to fore- stall collective actions. Two are highlighted here: (1) real name registration policy and (2) anti- rumor campaigns.

Real Name Registration Policy

Th e rapid growth of the weibo user base from nil to 278 million in three years worried authorities.54 During its ascendance, Chinese weibo has witnessed many explosive exposures of corrupt offi cials, government unaccountability, and social injustices, thriving as the cyber epicenter of China’s sociopo liti cal lives. Weibo’s aff ordances and deep integration into China’s public life are regulatory nightmares. To curtail public rage on weibo, Beijing Municipal Provisions for Microblog Development and Management (Microblog Provi- sions hereaft er) was promulgated on December 16, 2011, targeting more than a dozen microblog ser vice providers headquartered in Beijing, especially Sina Weibo.55 Such provisions required weibo operators to implement real name registration by March 16, 2012.

Ostensibly promoted by the state to tame online rumors and safeguard a healthy online environment, the policy is seen as an offi cial tactic to curb public discourse, targeting each microblogger.56 Specifi cally, users are ex- pected to register their IDs with weibo as mandated by the state. Following the principle “front stage voluntary, backstage real name,” microbloggers can use pseudo user names, but they are asked to register their real identi- ties backstage with weibo operators, linked to their national ID cards, mobile phone numbers, or other identifi cations. Weibo businesses maintain their

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42 Min Jiang

servers do not retain user ID information, but users’ national ID card in- formation will be compared against public security’s database to verify user identity. Unregistered users can view microblogs but cannot post or pass along any.57 By March  2012, Sina reportedly had verifi ed 60  percent of its users.58 In December 2012, the policy was passed as law in the National Peo- ple’s Congress.59 Th e State Council expected major portal websites to verify user identity by June 2014, although, to date it is not clear how many users have registered with their real identities.60

Specifi cally, Article 8 of the Microblog Provisions requires microblog- ging ser vice providers (MSPs) to “build a comprehensive system of con- tent evaluation and monitor the production, reproduction, publication, and distribution of microblog information.” 61 Article 9 stipulates: “Any or ga ni za tion or individual . . . must register with real name. Th e use of fake or stolen ID cards, business registration information, or or ga ni za tion code is forbidden. Websites that off er microblog ser vice should ensure the truth- fulness of user registration information.” Additionally, Article 5 eff ectively legalizes censorship by commercial intermediaries. In December 2012, the real name registration policy was endorsed by the National People’s Con- gress Decision on Strengthening Internet Information Protection, which requires all ISPs to collect users’ real names when providing Internet con- nection, analog phones, mobile phones, or information publishing.62

Th ese top- down mandates triggered a heated debate among weibo operators and users. Tencent CEO, Ma Huateng, publicly opposed the policy, arguing that it poses a great threat to user privacy and security and places an unreasonable burden on ISPs. Ma’s sentiments were echoed by Chen Tong, Sina’s editor in chief, who argued back in 2005 that the indiscriminate adoption of real name policy was unlikely to deter slander or other illegal activities.63 However, unable to resist state pressures, Sina, for instance, reportedly hired more than a thousand people to manually monitor and delete weibo posts around the clock besides using computational fi ltering and encouraging weibo users to fl ag abusive users.64

Regulators brushed aside public concerns for privacy and rights to expres- sion, stressing instead reducing “pornography, rumors, slander, fake identi- ties that threaten network security and social stability.” 65 Downplaying the policy’s chilling eff ects, China Central Tele vi sion (CCTV) deleted its own news on the bankruptcy of South Korea’s real name registration policy.66 State media also actively promoted stories that gave citizens the false impression

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The Coevolution of the Internet 43

that such a policy was prevalent elsewhere in the world. Li Yizhong, the for- mer minister of industry and information, publicly stated: “Internet real name registration, according to our research, is adopted by most countries.” 67 While “real name” sites like Facebook are pop u lar around the world, they are not mandated by the state or connected to users’ national IDs. Li’s comments were fl atly rejected by some. One user remarked: “Th ere are many such ‘mosts.’ Most countries have competitive elections. Most countries’ offi cials publish their property rec ords. Most countries’ highways are free. Most coun- tries don’t limit the mobility of their residents through Hukou system. Most countries have press freedom.” 68 Authorities’ impulse to control information fl ow and public opinion through the real name registration policy is not new, but the speed and extent to which the policy has been pushed through with- out strong public opposition is alarming.

Anti- Rumor Campaigns

Th e rollout of real name registration policy may be considered part of Chinese authorities’ much larger campaign to regulate speech online. Besides encouraging weibo users to self- censor through legislation, the latest anti- rumor campaign also employs judicial decisions and extralegal tactics to achieve the state’s regulatory goals, targeting in par tic u lar weibo celebrities, or “Big Vs.”

In September 2013, China’s highest court handed down a judicial deci- sion, announcing stiff penalties for posting rumors that get shared fi ve hun- dred times or seen fi ve thousand times.69 A convicted off ense could carry a three- year jail sentence, a ruling deemed by many as setting a dangerous pre- ce dent for free speech despite reported cases of fabricated rumors for money and infl uence. Th e fi rst person to run afoul of the law was an outspoken sixteen- year- old, Yang Hui, who questioned the local police investigation of a suicide case in Gansu Province. Th e police’s evidence, he argued, was highly inadequate. His accusation quickly went viral. But it turns out Yang’s “rumor” was right. Th e police’s case eventually collapsed, and the local police chief was suspended. Yang was released. China Daily, however, calls the incident “an accident.”70 In a fundamentally fl awed legal system, “rumor” is oft en used as a means of social protest and proves to have an unusual degree of truth and accuracy in China.71 Instead of increasing government transparency

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44 Min Jiang

and responsiveness, the state’s demonization of “rumor” produces a chill- ing eff ect on the public’s ability to know, to question, and to act.

Th e most prominent cases of state rumor campaigns were orchestrated via offi cial Chinese media. One targeted a vocal Chinese American weibo celebrity and investor Charles Xue and another New Express reporter Chen Yongzhou. Known as “Xue Manzi” on the Chinese Internet, Xue became fa- mous for championing several charity causes, including the 2011 campaign against child traffi cking and his initiative to ask netizens to pitch projects over weibo for which he provided angel investment. By the time he was arrested for prostitution solicitation on August 23, 2013, he had more than 12 million weibo followers. It was widely speculated that Xue’s criticism of social and police issues prompted the detention. In early August, Xue was among a group of “Big Vs” invited to meet with the head of the State Internet Infor- mation Offi ce (SIIO), who urged the group to be more constructive in their online postings. It seems offi cials did not deem his per for mance adequate. Paraded on state tele vi sion CCTV, Xue appeared rueful in jail clothes and confessed his wrongdoing. Even Hu Xijin, editor in chief of Party paper Global Times, commented on Sina Weibo (later removed): “Using sexual scandal, tax evasion and so on to take down po liti cal foes is a hidden rule common among governments worldwide.”72 By making an example of Xue, the state shamed a few “Big Vs” and intimidated others.

Equally gripping is the Chen Yongzhou incident. Chen was detained in Guangzhou by Changsha police on October 18, 2013, for allegedly defaming Changsha- based, state- owned Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technol- ogy, China’s second- largest heavy equipment maker. On October 23 and 24, New Express printed extra- large- font headlines calling for Chen’s release, a move seen as an unpre ce dented call for press freedom. On October 26, Chen appeared in a nine- minute national TV broadcast confessing to fi ling stories in exchange for payment from an outside company. Th e story exploded on Chinese social media with many expressing sympathy for Chen and dis- approving of police and CCTV’s abuse of power. Although journalism fraud and bribing is a real issue, people noted the following: Changsha police ar- rived in Guangzhou in Zoomlion’s car; the state- owned company is well connected with local and national authorities; Chen is known for diligent fact- checking and journalist ethics; the CCTV story did not name the third party bribing Chen but obtained and aired Chen’s confessions prior to court trial.73 Th e truth may never be known, but the “killing the monkey to scare

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The Coevolution of the Internet 45

the chicken” tactic is unlikely to be eff ective in eradicating rumors or people’s challenges to authorities in China in the long run.

Refl ections on the (Un)Civil Society

Th e chapter argues that in the social media era, the coevolution of the Inter- net, civil society, and authoritarianism has produced a mixed impact on China’s sociopo liti cal lives. A few new trends of China’s Internet and online activism are surveyed in the chapter, including real- time activism, online po liti cal jamming, weibo celebrities, and the rise of an uncivil online society. Th e state’s containment of public opinion on Chinese social media via legal and extralegal means, such as the real name registration policy and anti- rumor campaigns, are also discussed. In addition, the amplifi cation of both civil and uncivil tendencies on the Chinese Internet has engendered a greater degree of fragmentation, polarization, and cynicism among Chinese netizens for which previous literature on Chinese online civic spaces has not ade- quately accounted.

“Uncivil society” is highlighted here to draw attention to the diffi culty of creating and sustaining civil society, particularly in the Chinese context. Previously, three schools of thought dominated the understanding of civil society: civil society as associational life; civil society as the good society re- sulting from free association; and civil society as the public sphere where citizens engage in discussions over public issues and arrive at consensus.74 Th ese three related views of civil society point to the necessity to build voluntary associations based on tolerance and cooperation, eff ective insti- tutions that produce good government, and the capacity to deliberate demo- cratically. Implicit in these dominant views of civil society are positive assumptions about human nature, consensus formation, and institution building, views that have been critiqued by many for being incapable of recognizing the “agonistic pluralism” world in which we live.75 By remov- ing power considerations and basing deliberation purely on rationality and morality, Habermas’s construction of the public sphere and civil society, though desirable, is seen as far too idealistic, detached from reality.76

Applying the concept of civil society to China encounters additional challenges. While Mouff e’s departure from “public sphere” and introduction of “agonistic pluralism” recognize social confl icts with productive potentials,

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46 Min Jiang

this agonism still rests on an “adhesion to the ethico- political principles of democracy” that is feeble if not absent in China.77 With limited protection for individual rights and arbitrary practice of the rule of law, Chinese poli- tics is dominated by struggles between elite factions at the very top;78 con- fl icts between diff erent social, economic, and ideological strata; and multiple confrontations between the state and the citizenry.79 Ultimately, authori- tarian order and opaque operations of power pose fundamental threats to China’s emerging civil society.80

“Uncivil society online” is used here to capture the extreme incivility of online exchanges between individuals and groups over public issues, which not only fail to produce solutions to problems but also accentuate group identities and widen the ideological chasms between them. Th is notion underscores the following: (1) the plentitude of disrespect between inter- locutors, (2) schisms between groups in ideology and values, and (3) inad- equate mechanisms to channel online exchanges to build eff ective civic institutions. One may reasonably argue that “uncivil society” is not a China- specifi c phenomenon. Th e crisis in democracy experienced in many West- ern societies today— systemic corruption, widespread po liti cal apathy, and failed governance—is also accompanied by an “uncivil” turn in civic life; however, China’s “uncivil society” is embedded in its own unique historical, economic, and sociopo liti cal contexts.81

Further, a conceptualization of civil society as purely oppositional to the state is limiting. On the one hand, it tends to equate “civil society” with “po liti cal society,” and, on the other, it downplays the heterogeneous groups inhabiting the “civil society” space and becomes increasingly inadequate to capture the complex dynamics on the ground.82 As a much larger and diverse Chinese population, rather than a small group of liberal elites, has come to adopt the Internet, the implicit assumption of a liberal subject demanding social justice, media freedom, and po liti cal reforms online may be limited. A rising cacophony nowadays stems not only from contentions between the state and grassroots oppositions but also between various factions of “civil society” groups, including po liti cally conservative, chauvinist, nationalistic, and apathetic subjects and businesses.83

While civil society is commonly associated with the third space, distinct from the private sphere, government, and business as a groundswell for ac- tivism against authorities, in reality the variety of individuals and groups making up “civil society” and the interactions between them are oft en far too complex to be reduced to a linear formula of “civil society = public

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The Coevolution of the Internet 47

sphere = NGOs = empowerment.”84 On the darker side, civil society can include the Mafi a and terrorists.85 In less extreme forms, members of civil so- ciety can include po liti cal opportunists, nationalist ideologues, and reaction- aries. Moreover, civil society’s conceptual in de pen dence from the state and commercial interest oft en fails to translate straightforwardly in practice. Far from it, civil society groups such as human rights organizations in authoritar- ian countries and anticapitalist associations are oft en the targets of state and corporate co- optation.86 Conversely, ideologue factions and trade as- sociations too can seek to infl uence po liti cal and fi nancial authorities.

Th e problematization of “civil society” thus invites a more critical and nuanced reading and analysis of China’s emergent civil society and its en- gagement with the Internet and social media. Previously, for instance, Le and Yang noted that the various strains of China’s online sociopo liti cal discourses can be grouped into fi ve major ideological orientations: Far Left , moderate left , neutral, moderate right, Far Right.87 Netizens’ attitudes toward a unifi ed Chinese nation, Chinese government’s policies, traditional Chinese culture, and Western po liti cal/economic systems oft en guide their choices of online groups, discourses, and interactions with others online. A 2013 mainland China national online survey conducted by Ma and Zhang reveals that among Chinese netizens, “rightists” (those who favor rule of law, protection of personal rights and freedoms, and market economy) constitute 38.7 percent; “left ists” (those who strongly support nationalism and oppose Western po liti cal and eco- nomic systems) make up only 6.2 percent; while the majority are centrists at 55.1 percent. Zhang’s national survey published in 2012, however, fi nds left ists constitute 38.1  percent of Chinese citizens, rightists 8  percent, and centrists 51.5 percent.88 Due to the surveys’ inherent research limitations (for example, the representativeness of survey participants), the opposing statistics they of- fered failed to produce conclusive evidence of the ideological makeup of Chi- nese citizens. However, it seems the identifi cation of such ideological groupings and their potential consensus could be a productive route to understanding the changing Chinese civic spaces besides various forms of social stratifi ca- tion along class, gender, race, generational, and rural- urban fault lines.

Conclusion

Although social media platforms such as Sina Weibo provide technological aff ordances for instantaneous communication and endless possibilities of

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48 Min Jiang

group formation, their capacity for civic empowerment is mediated through many factors, including grassroots demands and or ga ni za tion, state inter- vention, and Internet ser vice providers’ policies and practices, as well as the civic groups’ interactions with one another. Social media can serve as a crit- ical space for expressing and channeling public opinion in China, but they are unlikely to be the ultimate game changer. Th e ability of the Internet to transform social and po liti cal realities increasingly needs to suffi ciently ac- count for the eff ect of divergent cyber subjectivities and a wider range of so- cial, economic, and po liti cal factors beyond merely considering the Internet’s technological impact on the state or the grass roots in general.

Such a transition would require a more sophisticated framework to dis- sect the heterogeneous components that make up China’s online civic spaces today without losing sight of the power the authoritarian state can assert over the society or the power of individuals to expand their spheres of infl uences. It also means to take into account both civil and uncivil elements of China’s emergent civil society and their appropriation of new media for identity for- mation and collective mobilization. Previous work has examined in- depth Internet use by diverse civic groups: dissidents, working class, nationalists, activists, environmentalists, urban youth, and young migrant women.89 Each of the subgroups carries distinct yet mixed attitudes toward and demands for the state, the market, and other social strata. Together, they oft en render the emergent Chinese civil society “praetorian,” swirling in extensive and sometimes very intensive po liti cal participation without being channeled eff ectively through formal institutions.90

Positive development of public spaces and power relations in China re- lies as much on institutional politics to eff ectively channel public opinion as it does on identity politics and progressive changes in subjectivity through everyday life interactions. While the Internet mediates such negotiations and is increasingly indispensable to the parties involved, it does not determine their outcomes. Th e contextualized use of the Internet and new media, shaped by the social, cultural, and po liti cal protocols surrounding such technologies, ultimately does.

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News with Views: Postobjectivism and Emergent Alternative Journalistic Practices in America’s Corporate News Media Farooq A. Kperogi

One of the inchoate yet defining features of journalism in the twenty-first century has

been the profession’s unannounced but nonetheless consequential repudiation of the

time-honored journalistic ethos of ‘‘objectivity.’’ In this paper, I argue that the gradual

renunciation of the ideals of objectivity in contemporary journalistic practice, especially

in the United States which birthed the concept, is both a return to journalism’s roots and

a back-handed, if profit-inspired, embrace of certain hallmarks of ‘‘alternative journalism,’’

which emerged as a counterfoil to nineteenth-century notions of ‘‘objective journalism.’’

I demonstrate my thesis by historicizing ‘‘objective journalism’’ and linking its emergence to

multiple impulses: industrial capitalism’s desire to capture as many eyeballs to consumer

goods as possible using the instrumentality of the mass media; the seduction of nineteenth-

century positivism, which conduced to the uncritical valorization of epistemic precision,

measurability, the ‘‘scientific method,’’ detachment, and other manifestations of naı̈ve

empiricism; and the turn-of-of-century delinking of political parties from newspaper

business. I also argue that the progressive abandonment of the tenets of ‘‘objective

journalism’’ by the legacy media is an artful hegemonic containment of alternative

journalism’s age-old ideals and singularities. This, I point out, is actuated by

the imperatives of survival in an increasingly uncertain and fragmented media market,

made even more so by the unexampled discursive democracy and diversity that the

Internet has enabled, which has contributed to the flourishing of citizen and alternative

journalism.

Keywords: News; Views; Postobjectivism; Alternative Journalistic Practices; Corporate;

News Media; Mainstream Media; Citizen Journalism

Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Citizen Media at Kennesaw State University,

Georgia, USA. Correspondence to: Dr. Farooq Kperogi, Department of Communication, College of

Humanities and Social Sciences, Kennesaw State University, 1000 Chastian Road, Kennesaw, GA 30144, U.S.A.

E-mail: [email protected]

ISSN 1535-8593 (online) # 2013 National Communication Association

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2012.752521

The Review of Communication

Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2013, pp. 48�65

One of the inchoate yet defining features of journalism in the 21st century has been

the profession’s unannounced but nonetheless consequential move away from the

time-honored journalistic ethos of ‘‘objectivity.’’ With the growth and flowering of

‘‘niche journalism’’ and the reality of audience fragmentation*encapsulated in phenomena variously characterized as ‘‘microcasting’’ or ‘‘narrow-casting’’*the ideals of demonstrating apolitical, deadpan, and vulgar empiricist sensitivity to the

viewpoints of a broad, diverse spectrum of the mass audience*which many have argued are, in reality, illusory and unrealizable ideals*are diminishing in salience and professional prestige.

1 This is evident in the fact that in America’s corporate

media universe, the most popular media outlets are now, for the most part, those that

are unabashedly partisan and that, in essence, if not in name, disclaim pretenses to

‘‘objectivity,’’ ‘‘fairness,’’ and ‘‘balance’’ in news reportage and commentary. It is no

accident that Fox News Network and MSNBC have a core of aggressively loyal viewers

in ways other American cable news networks have not.

In this paper, I argue that the gradual renunciation of the ideals of objectivity in

much of contemporary journalistic practice in the United States, which birthed the

concept, is both a return to journalism’s roots and a back-handed, if profit-inspired,

embrace of certain hallmarks of ‘‘alternative journalism,’’ which emerged as a

counterfoil to 19th-century notions of ‘‘objective journalism.’’ I demonstrate my

thesis by historicizing ‘‘objective journalism’’ and linking its emergence to multiple

impulses: industrial capitalism’s desire to capture as many eyeballs to consumer

goods as possible using the instrumentality of the mass media; the seduction of

19th-century positivism, which conduced to the uncritical valorization of epistemic

precision, measurability, the ‘‘scientific method,’’ detachment, and other manifesta-

tions of naı̈ve empiricism; and the turn-of-century delinking of political parties from

newspaper business. I also show how ‘‘objective journalism’’ activated the evolvement

of ‘‘alternative’’ notions of journalistic practice and show specific instances of the

adoption of alternative media practices by the corporate media. Finally, I argue that

the progressive abandonment of the tenets of ‘‘objective journalism’’ by the corporate

media is an artful hegemonic cooptation of alternative journalism’s age-old ideals and

singularities. This, I further point out, is actuated by the imperatives of survival in an

increasingly uncertain and fragmented media market, made even more so by the

unexampled discursive democracy and diversity that the Internet has enabled, which

has contributed to the flourishing of citizen journalism.

Traditional Journalism Returns to its Roots

In bemoaning the putative decline in the quality of modern journalistic output, it is

now fashionable in popular commentaries to invoke the death or dearth of ‘‘objective

journalism’’ as evidence of journalism’s atrophy. 2

In the popular imagination,

‘‘objectivity,’’ however conceived, has been constructed as an intrinsic, ever-present,

and non-negotiable attribute of journalism. Deviation from it is considered a tragic

betrayal of journalism’s most inviolable article of faith. As Ryan put it, ‘‘If the media

News with Views 49

enforce objectivity as a standard, they will flourish; if not, they will not . . . .’’3

However, if indeed American journalism*and other journalistic models it has inspired in other parts of the world*is abandoning the precept of ‘‘objectivity,’’ it is not betraying journalism’s heritage. On the contrary, the move toward partisan

journalism, especially of the kind typified by such cable news channels as Fox News

and MSNBC, is actually a return to American journalism’s roots. Until the latter half

of the 19th century, newspapers in America were established solely as the propaganda

arms of political parties. Newspapers’ reportorial temperaments were therefore

unapologetically partisan. They made no claims to being anything other than

instruments for the vigorous espousal of viewpoints that were congenial to the

interests, goals, and aspirations of their political patrons. They were, as Porwancher

stated, ‘‘an integral component of political party machinery.’’ 4

Embrace of the notions

of objectivity, fairness, and balance by the conventional mass media occurred much

later in American journalism history.

Although in colonial American journalism printers venerated the virtues of

neutrality and fairness, they were not journalists, nor did they conceive themselves

as such. 5

They were tradesmen who understood their duties as nothing more than

serving as disinterested vessels through which information passed to the general

public. Their notion of neutrality consisted in a commitment to providing

professional services to people from all political persuasions. In any case, because

colonial newspapers avoided national controversies and merely reproduced news

reports from the London press, they did not play a significant role in American

national discourse at the time. A poignant illustration of the marginality of colonial

newspapers in American public life can be gleaned from Clark and Wetherell’s

insightful study, which revealed that of 1,900 stories published in Benjamin

Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette from 1728 to 1765, only 34 concerned events in

Philadelphia or Pennsylvania. 6

Thus, printers’ neutrality or lack thereof had no

consequence.

However, when conflict with England intensified in 1765, American journalism

began to play a more central role in galvanizing and mobilizing popular sentiments in

support of nationalist causes. At precisely the time that newspapers became

consequential in American public discourse*which can legitimately be historicized as their time of birth* they adopted a fiercely partisan advocatorial editorial tem- perament.

7 As many media historians have noted, up to the 1890s and even beyond,

coverage of presidential elections was often heavily colored by party allegiances, and

often consisted in the willful denigration and distortion of the viewpoints of

opposing political parties. Self-consciously extravagant exaggeration of the strengths

and merits of favored parties was also a defining characteristic of the journalism of

the period. As Schudson pointed out:

[W]hen a standard Republican paper covered a presidential election, it not only deplored and derided Democratic candidates in editorials but often just neglected to mention them in the news. In the days before public opinion polling, the size of partisan rallies was taken as a proxy for likely electoral results. Republican

50 F. A. Kperogi

rallies would be described as ‘monster meetings’ while Democratic rallies were often not covered at all. And in the Democratic papers, of course, it was just the reverse.

8

This portrait of the editorial character of 19th-century American newspapers is

consistent with the recorded observations of many 19th-century European visitors to

America. For instance, Charles Dickens, whose 1842 visit to America generated

tremendous excitement on the pages of American newspapers, 9

described the

American press as corrupt, unreliable, licentious, and as collectively representing a

‘‘monster of depravity.’’ 10

For Dickens, American newspapers and journalists were

mere instruments of politicians, whom he accused of ‘‘cowardly attacks upon

opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers.’’ 11

So,

open political partisanship in reportage and commentary was as normative then as

the ideals of ‘‘objectivity,’’ ‘‘fairness,’’ and ‘‘balance’’ have been to varying degrees in

America’s journalistic landscape since the early 20th century. Journalists did not

conceive of their roles as watchdogs of the society or, to paraphrase Chicago

journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne, as comforters of the afflicted and

afflicters of the comfortable; they were instruments of politicians and political

parties. 12

As Kaplan noted, the social basis of newspapers’ social legitimacy derived

from their association with political parties. 13

‘‘The New York Tribune, for instance,’’

Kaplan pointed out, ‘‘gained national prominence during 1876�1910 as the quasi- authorized organ of the Republican Party’s reform wing. The line between journalist

and politician blurred as the Tribune’s staff often advised the president and its

publisher was nominated for vice-president in 1892.’’ 14

This state of affairs continued until much later in the century when a new

journalistic ethic, which later became known as ‘‘objective journalism,’’ emerged.

Objective journalism came to encapsulate a broad range of ideals, prominent among

which are accuracy, fairness, impartiality, authorial and reportorial detachment,

independence, and responsibility to the public welfare. 15

Media scholars have

attributed many influences to the evolution of the U.S. media from passionate,

partisan defenders of narrow political loyalties to more inclusive discursive arenas.

These influences ranged from the 1830s Jacksonian Revolution, which was

characterized by a profusion of mass political parties and the expansion of market

economy; the 1870s Mugwump rebellion against unthinking political party

allegiances; industrial capitalism’s desire to deploy the mass media to access the

huge, emergent pool of mass, heterogeneous consumer base that had sprouted; the

news media’s appreciation of the economic benefit of attracting advertising dollars

from all political parties by jettisoning partisanship; the influence of positivism and

‘‘value-free’’ scientific inquiry; the emergence of a corps of college-educated

journalists who wanted to confer respectability and distinct professional identity

on their craft in the early 1900s; and the imperatives of brevity that the emergence of

the telegraph as the central technology for sending news inspired. 16

Whatever it is,

from the early 19th century, ‘‘objectivity’’ came to define the core of American

journalistic practice. It entails or attempts to entail such reportorial rituals as

detachment, avoidance of adjectives in straight news reports, writing in the third

News with Views 51

person, attributing opinions to news sources, attempting to reflect the perspectives of

different sides to an issue, disengagement from ideological associations, political

neutrality, etc. 17

An important component of this shift was the emergence of

advertising, rather than subsidies from political parties, as the main source of revenue

for newspapers. With this shift in source of funding, objectivity became the ‘‘lifeblood

of the US press.’’ 18

Previously existing or emergent alternative models of journalistic

practice were rhetorically marginalized as deviant and worthy only of contempt.

Criticism of Objectivity

Although objective journalism became the canon of journalistic practice*and one of America’s most prized intellectual and cultural exports to the rest of the world*it has attracted criticism from several scholars since at least the 1960s.

19 For instance,

Nanda posited that to the extent that journalists are always already inserted into

gender, racial, and other social relational categories, it is impossible for them to

suspend these sorts of baggage in their evaluation of the truth. 20

Objective journalism

is also criticized for sometimes obscuring the truth through its mechanical,

unproblematized juxtaposition of the ‘‘two sides’’ of an issue. As Durham put it,

‘‘The reportorial canon of presenting all perspectives without engagement with the

political valences of such perspectives effectively prevents any progressive or

emancipatory politics from developing out of journalism.’’ 21

Other scholars argue that, in spite of pretenses to the contrary, commercialized

journalism, by its very nature, privileges and naturalizes the dominant classes in the

society. Although the canons of objective journalism impose on journalists the

burden to reflect all sides to an issue, dissenting and oppositional views do not often

fit very easily into the prevailing frameworks of imagery and expression, and are

therefore heard and read by the mass audience as deviant, and as no more than

crackles of background noise, which further pushes their points of view to the fringes

and perpetrates the ruling classes’ interests. 22

The media, in spite of claims to practice

objective journalism, in the final analysis, serve ‘‘to reinforce a consensual viewpoint

by using public idioms and by claiming to voice public opinion.’’ 23

Therefore, in place

of objective journalism, which Merrill and Lowenstein have characterized as ‘‘too

staid, dull, pallid, and noncommitted for the new generation of audience members

being raised in a climate of instant confrontation, dissent, and permissiveness,’’ 24

critics have advocated the embrace of our lived subjectivities through alternative

models of journalistic practice. This consideration has led alternative journalistic

practices to luxuriate on the fringes of mainstream media practices. But what is

alternative journalism? What singularities of alternative journalism are now being

adopted by the mainline institutional media formation?

Conceptualizing Alternative Journalism

Relative to traditional, mainstream ‘‘professional’’ journalism, alternative journalism

has historically attracted little scholarly attention from both critical and administrative

52 F. A. Kperogi

researchers. 25

The last ten years, however, have witnessed a profusion of scholarly

interest in alternative journalism. 26

This is certainly partly a consequence of the

popularity and ubiquity of the Internet and the expansion of the discursive space that it

enables, evidenced in the unexampled blossoming of several web-based citizen and

alternative media, and the progressive decline in the centrality of ‘‘objectivity’’ in the

news business, what Hackett has called ‘‘the significant erosion of the regime of

objectivity’’ in mainstream news media practice. 27

But although many critical media

scholars have robustly and carefully captured the emergence, constraints, motives,

practices, prospects, singularities, and dominant thematic preoccupations of alternative

media, there is no universally agreed upon conception of what alternative journalism is. 28

As Atton has noted, 29

until relatively recently, the only definitive scholarly study of

alternative journalism was John Downing’s influential book on the subject. 30

For

Downing, the distinctiveness of alternative journalism lied in its self-conscious

subversion of the elaborate hierarchies typical of professional news organizations and

in its explicitly nonconformist and counterhegemonic political agenda. Downing drew

clear contrasts between alternative media and the mainstream media and maintained

that the operations of the mainstream media are animated by crass profit motive, are

organized according to predetermined, exclusive professional and routinized standards,

and are hallmarked by entrenched hierarchies. In other words, as Atton observed,

Downing’s conception of alternative media privileges ‘‘media that are written and run by

nonprofessionals, by groups that are primarily activists for progressive social change.’’ 31

As more critical media scholars became interested in the systematic study of

alternative media, however, conceptions of what constitutes alternative journalism

became much more complicated than Downing’s simplistic, if historically contingent,

binaries. Since the publication of Downing’s book, at least five other notable scholarly

books, among them another book by Downing that revises his earlier approach, have

been published, all of which have sought to more carefully capture the complexity of

alternative journalism. 32

Similarly, at least five journal issues have devoted exclusive

attention to the subject of alternative journalism. 33

As Gibbs and Hamilton have pointed out, part of the difficulty of providing an all-

encompassing definition of alternative journalism is that the term is often merely a

convenient label that encapsulates*or seeks to encapsulate*a variety of nonhege- monic media practices that are vastly diverse in aims, goals, and specificities, and that

replace or supplant ‘‘more specific designations such as the ‘labor press,’ ‘feminist

press,’ or ‘underground media.’’’ 34

Campbell agreed that terms like ‘‘alternative press’’

tend to be used as ‘‘broad-brush collective terms for a disparate body of practices,’’

although common themes can often be isolated from these practices. 35

Scholars who

want to remain faithful to the differential motivations that actuate the practices of

alternative media formations often distinguish between ‘‘oppositional’’ alternative

media and ‘‘advocacy’’ alternative media to take account of the dominant concerns

that inform several different alternative media practices. 36

While advocacy alternative

media often function as the mouthpieces of organized social movements, opposi-

tional alternative media are usually not wedded to any definite political cause or

social movement.

News with Views 53

However, even though the term ‘‘alternative media’’ would appear to dissolve

the singularities that characterize a wide variety of counterhegemonic, insurgent media

practices, Gibbs and Hamilton insist that ‘‘it is extremely useful to see them together

because such a move emphasizes their collective resistance to increasingly monolithic

commercialized media systems and products.’’ 37

In fact, Downing, in his later work on

alternative media, agreed with Campbell 38

that in spite of what might seem like the

vastly divergent goals of various categories of alternative media, they are actually

united by the dual functions they all perform: as ‘‘counterinformation institutions’’

and as ‘‘agents of developmental power.’’ 39

It is because of this dual function that some

scholars have broadly characterized this genre of journalism as ‘‘insurgent journal-

ism’’ 40

or ‘‘counterhegemonic journalism.’’ 41

In other words, alternative journalism’s

meaning can only be realized in opposition to the established, mainstream media.

Such a discursive delineation provides the conceptual justification for the customary

practice in media studies to conceive of ‘‘alternative’’ media in binary opposition to the

‘‘mainstream’’ media, with ‘‘‘mainstream’ seen as maximizing audiences by appealing

to safe, conventional formulas and ‘alternative’ foregoing the comfortable, depoliticiz-

ing formulas to advocate programs of social change.’’ 42

In other words, while the

mainline media embrace ‘‘objectivity’’ because of its capacity to attract eyeballs to the

consumer goods advertised in the their space and airtime, alternative media jettison it

for its tendency to stifle progressive social change. It is in the same vein that Haas

conceived of alternative media as ‘‘media devoted to providing representations of

issues and events which oppose those offered in the mainstream media and to

advocating social and political reform.’’ 43

This means, in essence, that alternative media define themselves*or are defined* only in contradistinction to the mainstream media. Where the mainstream media are

impersonal and professionally managed, alternative media are ‘‘self-managed.’’ 44

Where the mainstream media are formally structured, alternative media are ‘‘non-

hierarchical.’’ 45

Where the practices of the mainstream media are motivated by profit

motive, those of the alternative media are motivated by ‘‘collectivist-democratic’’

ideals. 46

By being radically different from the mainstream media in structure and

content, alternative media seek to comfort a broad range of subaltern populations

either that are pushed to the margins of the mainstream media or that are completely

excluded from them. 47

Most importantly, according to scholars of alternative media, while the main-

stream media impose on themselves the responsibility to create and nurture an

‘‘informed’’ citizenry, alternative media practitioners have as their goal the desire to

inspire a ‘‘mobilized’’ citizenry. 48

As Tomaselli and Louw put it, alternative media

practitioners perceive their role more as ‘‘facilitators of social communication’’ than

as ‘‘sources of information.’’ 49

This explains why scholars of alternative media

variously characterize the unequivocally political content of alternative journalism as

‘‘mobilizing information,’’ 50

‘‘information for action,’’ 51

‘‘action on action,’’ 52

or

simply ‘‘useful information.’’ 53

Other scholars locate the difference between alternative media and mainstream

media in terms of their differential conventions of news sourcing. While the

54 F. A. Kperogi

routinized professional practices of the mainstream media often predispose them to

take recourse to ‘‘the systematic accessing of powerful, resource-rich institutions and

their definition of events*and to the marginalization of resource-poor social groups and interests,’’

54 alternative media actively seek a ‘‘different cast of accessed ‘officials’

and other voices.’’ 55

They adopt a newsgathering practice that has been dubbed

‘‘native reporting,’’ which Atton defined as an alternative newsgathering practice

‘‘where social actors, instead of being subjects of the news, become their own

correspondents, reporting on their own experiences, struggles and ideas.’’ 56

This

nonconformist alternative media reportorial practice finds its most sophisticated

expression in what Couldry calls ‘‘active witnessing,’’ 57

which Peters described

elsewhere as a situation in which ‘‘one is a privileged possessor and producer of

knowledge in an extraordinary, often forensic, setting in which speech and truth are

policed in multiple ways.’’ 58

In other words, for the mainstream media, the primary definers of news are people

who occupy the upper end of the social scale, while for the alternative media the

voices of the voiceless take precedence. Predictably, this makes most ‘‘professional’’

news hardly more than the concerns, interpretations, and the cultural biases of the

privileged few in the society. The concerns of the lower rung of the social order are

highlighted only under special circumstances, only when ‘‘news hooks present

themselves.’’ 59

An additional consequence of this demotion of the concerns of

subalterns to the fringes and the elevation of the concerns of the upper classes to the

forefront is that the society is often burdened with a media formation in which

‘‘consumerism, the market, class inequality, and individualism tend to be taken as

natural and often benevolent, whereas political activity, civic values, and antimarket

activities tend to be marginalized or denounced.’’ 60

It is this media practice that

liberatory alternative media seeks to reverse and, in its place, inaugurate a media

system

where working people, sexual minorities, trade unions, protest groups*people of low status in terms of their relationship to elite groups of owners, managers and senior professionals*could make their own news, whether by appearing in it as significant actors or by creating news relevant to their situation.

61

This is possible because many people involved with alternative journalism, Harcup

reminded us, ‘‘see their journalism as ‘political activity’ . . ., a perspective that appears to be far from the norm among journalists in the wider industry.’’

62

Problematizing the Binary Opposition of Alternative and Mainstream Media

It is obvious from the foregoing that the germinal conceptions of alternative

journalism, which are still influential today, locate it in binary opposition to what has

been understood as the mainstream media. Perhaps this is not altogether surprising.

After all, the very notion of ‘‘alternativeness’’ presupposes not just an opposition to

something but, in fact, mutual exclusivity with the thing.

Lately, however, a few scholars of alternative media have begun to question the

ontological utility of this dualist conception of alternative media. In his later works,

News with Views 55

Downing 63

has conceded that the dualism of his earlier typology imposed

definitional and discursive burdens on the notion of alternative journalism. He has

identified two fundamental flaws with his earlier approach. He terms the first flaw

‘‘anti-binarism’’ and the second ‘‘binarism.’’ Downing has acknowledged that these

flaws prevented him from appreciating the subtleties and continuums that exist

between alternative media and mainstream media, and he ended up with an account

that ‘‘seriously simplified both.’’ 64

Many other scholars are recognizing the futility of an ‘‘either or’’ approach to

understanding alternative media. Atton for instance, following Downing’s self-

criticism, has argued that it is more useful to talk of the ‘‘hybridity’’ of reportorial

practices within ‘‘the contemporary media landscape,’’ and has pointed to ‘‘the

complex, hybrid nature of alternative media in relation to its mainstream counter-

parts.’’ 65

Harcup has also called attention to what he termed the ‘‘crossover

grouping,’’ that is, current mainstream media practitioners who were previously

alternative journalists and vice versa. 66

Similarly, the mainstream media have increasingly incorporated into their

professional repertoire media practices that were thought to be exclusive to

alternative media formations. Such mainstream media practices as public or civic

journalism, 67

which are becoming more and more fashionable, especially with the

popularity of online media, are borrowed from alternative media practices, as will be

shown in the next section of this paper. There are also many respects in which

alternative media practices borrow from the mainstream media.

Alternative Media Practices in Contemporary Mainstream Media

In the last few years, as I have prefigured in previous pages, the corporate media,

confronted by loss of credibility, the reality of increasing migration of advertising

dollars to the plethora of emergent Web-based news platforms, and an uncertain

future in view of the kaleidoscopic changes in the media landscape, have been

abandoning traditional conceptions of objectivity and adopting nonconventional

news practices that would have been dismissed as ‘‘unprofessional’’ generations ago.

In other words, the corporate media, for largely commercial reasons, have been

increasingly co-opting the time-honored reportorial practices of the alternative media

formation, broadly conceived.

For example, mainstream media organizations now maintain and support vibrant,

largely uncensored online citizen media that, in fact, provide more untrammeled

avenues to ventilate strong opinions than many forms of alternative media. A recent

‘‘State of the News Media’’ report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found

that, paradoxically, the mainstream media provide greater mechanisms for feedback

and critiques than do most citizen media, challenging the high ground on which

alternative journalism stood for a long time. 68

This trend did not begin with the

emergence of the Internet, however. Since 1993, according to Rosen, sections of the

corporate media birthed the notion of ‘‘public journalism’’ or ‘‘civic journalism,’’

which actively seeks the input of ordinary people in decisions about news gathering

56 F. A. Kperogi

and reporting. 69

It emerged as a reaction to ‘‘the deepening chasm between

journalism and the citizens it professes to serve on the one hand and between the

quotidian concerns of ordinary people and public life in general on the other.’’ 70

As

Nip pointed out,

Town hall meetings, citizen panels, and polls are common techniques used to tap the concerns of the community, which would then form the reporting agenda for the journalists. During the news-gathering process, professional journalists often report back to the citizens what they have found for generating discussion in search of solutions to the problems . . . . There have been cases where the citizens even partnered with the professionals in gathering the news.

71

This reportorial model, which attracted withering criticisms from many professional

journalists when it first emerged, is clearly a cooptation of alternative journalism’s

age-old ‘‘native reporting’’ concept, ‘‘where social actors, instead of being subjects of

the news, become their own correspondents, reporting on their own experiences,

struggles and ideas.’’ 72

However, unlike alternative journalism’s active witnessing, the

corporate media’s civic journalism is not inspired by progressive, emancipatory

ideals. Profit is its main motive force and, while it does empower ordinary people in

ways traditional reporting did not, it actually retains the ultimate narrative power

and agenda setting advantage in the hands of professional journalists. As Woodstock

pointed out, ‘‘traditional and public journalisms adopt similar narrative strategies to

effect essentially the same ends: placing the power of telling society’s stories in the

hands of journalists.’’ 73

Over the last few years, the commercialized media have conceded more of their

professional authority to ordinary citizens. Corporate media-enabled citizen journal-

ism projects have been sprouting luxuriantly since the emergence of Web 2.0.

A perfect instantiation of this move is CNN’s popular iReport.com, a ‘‘citizen

journalism experiment that gives ordinary people from everywhere in the world the

opportunity to contribute unedited, unfiltered, and uncensored user-generated video

and text-based news reports.’’ 74

In other words, it allows the people Rosen has called

‘‘the people formerly known as the audience’’ 75

to perform what Lasica called

‘‘random acts of journalism.’’ 76

The project’s popularity has compelled other big

media organizations to adopt that model of corporate-sponsored citizen journalism.

ABC News, for instance, has its own ‘‘i-Caught.com,’’ Fox News has ‘‘uReport.com,’’

MSNBC created ‘‘FirstPerson.com,’’ and so on. So it is catching on. This model of

journalism is clearly a repudiation of the ideal of ‘‘objectivity.’’ Ordinary citizens,

unencumbered by professional journalistic requirements of ‘‘objectivity,’’ ‘‘fairness,’’

and ‘‘balance’’ report the news from their own perspectives. In many cases, citizen

reports submitted to these sites end up in the main telecasts of the corporate media.

The CNN iReport model is obviously an alternative media reportorial practice, which

Couldry called ‘‘active witnessing.’’ 77

Similarly, almost all the major corporate media organizations in the United States

have inaugurated participatory, ‘‘crowdsourcing’’ platforms on their sites. The term

‘‘crowdsourcing’’ was neologized by Jeff Howe who defined it as ‘‘the act of taking a

job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and

News with Views 57

outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an

open call.’’ 78

In a journalistic context, crowdsourcing entails the solicitation of news,

video, photos, and audio clips from people who are not affiliated with any news

organization and who may not be professional journalists. For instance, in 2006, USA

Today, America’s most widely circulated newspaper, embraced the principle of

‘‘crowdsourcing of in-depth investigations into government malfeasance.’’ 79

Its

embrace of the newfangled practice*from the point of view of traditional journalism, that is*was inspired by the success that The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida, recorded with it. When citizens in the paper’s reader catchment area

complained to the newspaper’s editors about the suspicious and inexplicable hike in

the cost of connecting newly constructed homes to water and sewer lines, the

assignment editors did not assign the story to their investigative reporters; they

instead solicited the participation of citizens in the investigation of the story. As a

result, community members organized themselves into small citizen investigative

units: ‘‘Retired engineers analyzed blueprints, accountants pored over balance sheets,

and an inside whistle-blower leaked documents showing evidence of bid-rigging.’’ 80

The crowdsourced reportorial effort succeeded in reducing the exorbitant utility fees

by more than 30%, caused one official to resign, and contributed to making utility fee

the main issue in a city-council special election. This model of journalistic practice,

which borrows from the concept of ‘‘native reporting’’ and ‘‘active witnessing’’ in

alternative journalism, is now being mainstreamed in much of the corporate media

formation in the United States. Ten years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

What would have also been unthinkable in traditional journalism until a few years

ago is the mainstreaming of what Bell has called ‘‘the journalism of attachment’’*the idea that journalists can have impassioned and vigorous personal opinions about the

issues they cover; that they can give expression to their quotidian, experiential, and

emotional subjectivities in news* in contravention of the expectation of detachment that ‘‘objective journalism’’ imposes on them.

81 In the early days of the Internet,

traditional news organizations sanctioned journalists who had blogs or who blogged

about the news they covered. As Friend and Singer noted,

The list of reporters who have found themselves in trouble for expressing their opinion in blogs is fairly long. It includes, among others, a CNN correspondent whose bosses told him to stop blogging about his experiences covering the war in Iraq; a Hartford Courant columnist who lost his column along with his blog after editors declared the latter a conflict of interest; a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who resigned after being criticized for writing a blog in which he lambasted the paper; a Houston Chronicle bureau chief fired after using his blog to assess politicians he covered for the paper.

82

The gatekeepers in corporate news organizations had feared that the expressive

spontaneity that blogging permits and the blurring of the boundaries of news and

views it entails*precisely the reportorial rituals of alternative and other nondomi- nant forms of journalism*endangered the age-old strategic, procedural formalities of objective journalism. Interestingly, at the time journalists were being fired in

corporate news organization for imprinting their personal signatures in news

58 F. A. Kperogi

narratives, alternative media sites such as Indymedia (a network of alternative media

practitioners that grew out of the 1999 global protests against the World Trade

Organization) had institutionalized this reportorial practice, which invites what

Mikhail Bakhtin would call an ‘‘emotional-volitional tone’’ in news and commentary.

Today, ‘‘j-blogging,’’ which inscribes journalists’ personal signatures in news and

commentary, has rapidly become an integral part of the news operations of most

American news organizations. ‘‘Hundreds of American news organizations,’’ Friend

and Singer tell us, ‘‘are turning their journalists loose to blog.’’ 83

News reporters not

only write the news but also blog about it both in their personal spaces and in the

blogging platforms provided for them on their companies’ news websites. This model

of personalized journalism was the exclusive preserve of nondominant, marginal

news media concerns. To be sure, though, news and opinion have always coexisted in

traditional news practices. As Mark Deuze points out, ‘‘When journalists blog, they

do more of what they did when, for example, they were writing op-eds in newspapers,

doing columns on the radio, or providing interpretation and analysis as a

correspondent on television.’’ 84

However, explicitly opinion-driven, personalized

journalism of the sort that was pioneered and popularized by such news sites as

Indymedia is novel to the corporate news media. Its embrace is inspired by at least

two factors. The first is the growing thirst for expressive journalism by young people.

Cunningham, for instance, tells us that ‘‘In the January/February issue of [Columbia

Journalism Review] young journalists asked to create their dream newspaper wanted

more point-of-view writing in news columns.’’ 85

A whole generation of Americans

who came of age in the age of the Internet and fed on the staples of talk radio and

‘‘shout TV’’ on cable wanted more.

The emergence of ‘‘fact-checking’’ as a subgenre of journalism is also a testament

to the influence of alternative journalistic practice in the performance of corporate

media organizations. Fact-checking politicians*and the news media* was once the exclusive preserve of reportorial practices that fell outside the orbit of ‘‘objective’’

journalism: alternative journalism, right-wing blogging, and the news practices of a

whole host of nonconformist groups who have found themselves on the margins of

mainstream journalism. However, with the rising reach and importance of the

blogosphere and the shame it has put the mainstream media to (such as during the

Trent Lott affair and the Dan Rather scandal, among others) the corporate news

media, especially cable TV news, have jettisoned the traditional neutrality that

objective journalism demanded of journalists. This move started with the rise of such

corporate media reportorial practices as investigative journalism, interpretive

journalism, and precision journalism, but has found full realization in the

proliferation of ‘‘truth squads,’’ ‘‘truth-o-meters,’’ ‘‘Pinocchio trackers,’’ etc. in news

organizations where journalists are no longer mere detached, disinterested vessels

through which news passed or, as Ryan put it, people who present ‘‘only two sides of

an issue or event without assessing the veracity of each side,’’ 86

but engaged

commentators who call out distortions and intentional falsehoods by politicians.

In the same vein, many commercialized news media concerns, increasingly, now

make little effort to conceal their ideological biases in both news coverage and

News with Views 59

commentary. For instance, like early 19th-century American newspapers, the Fox

News Network has transmuted, for all practical purposes, into the unofficial media

organ of the Republican Party. The Republican Party sets the network’s agenda as

much as it sets the agenda of the party. David Frum, former President George W.

Bush’s one-time speechwriter, captured it best when he said, ‘‘Republicans originally

thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.’’ 87

Fox

News also actively promoted, supported, and recruited for the rightwing Tea Party

Movement and even called out other media organizations for not following in its

footsteps. The organization clearly stepped outside the bounds of merely

‘‘informing’’ its viewers to ‘‘mobilizing’’ them, from being a mere ‘‘source of

information’’ to being a ‘‘facilitator of social communication,’’ and from being a

detached conduit for the dissemination of information to being purveyors of

‘‘mobilizing information,’’ ‘‘information for action,’’ or ‘‘action on action’’*all hitherto the exclusive reportorial singularities of the alternative media formation.

Many media critics have also noted that MSNBC has positioned itself since 2007 as

the antithesis of Fox News and has been accused of being ‘‘an organ of the

Democratic National Committee.’’ 88

So in more ways than one, the mainstream

media are returning to their partisan roots while adopting key features of

alternative media practice in the process.

However, as I have pointed out earlier, the mimicking of alternative media

counterhegemonic reportorial practices by the corporate media is often actuated not

by benevolent, progressive motives but by the imperatives of hegemonic cooptation

of potentially threatening citizen media and by profit motive. The larger implication

of all this is that the relationship between alternative media and the mainstream

media in the age of the Internet will increasingly be one of symbiosis rather than

mutual exclusivity. Most online alternative media liberally use material from the

mainstream media (mostly for subversive purposes), just as the mainstream media

now increasingly utilize information from alternative citizen media for its profit-

driven broadcasts. 89

This signals the birth of postobjectivism in mainstream

reportorial practices and the erasure of the distinctiveness of alternative media

practices. Thus, we may very well be witnessing the most effective hegemonic

containment of the alternative media formation in history. This development has real

consequences for the role, conception, and future of journalism and for the nature,

contours, and strategic rituals of emancipatory politics.

With the increasing cooptation of the voices and wisdom of the crowd in the

newsgathering business*propelled in large part by the growth of a surfeit of citizen media outlets, the emergence of crowd-powered ‘‘social stories’’ and ‘‘social news

wires,’’ the progressive loss of the agenda-setting power of the traditional media to

social media actors and to communities of ‘‘intelligent contributors’’ to news sites* we may be witnessing the permanent reconfiguration of the role of the traditional

journalist. Journalism will no longer just be a record of the chaos of occurrences

around us; it will now increasingly be a conversation between the sources of news and

the audiences for news, but our habitual notion of ‘‘source’’ and ‘‘audience’’ will be

dislocated to take account of the progressively massive citizen input in newsgathering

60 F. A. Kperogi

and the blurring of the boundaries between the witness of the news and the reporters

of the news. As Lavrusik points out, in response to these changes, traditional

journalists may be reduced to being managers of news conversations or curators of

news for a ‘‘time-poor audience.’’ 90

This may signal the death of the professional

journalist as we know it.

Similarly, since the reportorial singularities that stood out alternative media

practices are now coopted and adopted by the corporate media, which were supposed

to be the antipode of alternative media, the alternative journalistic formation will

gradually be rendered indistinguishable from mainstream journalism. Alternative

media practitioners either have to infiltrate the increasingly more open discursive

spaces provided by the corporate media and subvert them from within or devise

alternative rhetorical and reportorial strategies to distinguish themselves from the

mainstream. Whatever it is, the in the era of postobjectivism, the thesis of traditional

journalism has merged with the antithesis of alternative journalism to produce a

synthesis that is both traditional journalism and alternative journalism. It will be

interesting to watch if this synthesis will constitute a new thesis that will fertilize the

germination of a new antithesis.

Notes

[1] See, for instance, David L. Altheide, Creating Reality: How TV News Distorts Events (Beverly

Hills, CA: Sage, 1976); Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from

Women’s Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Helen E. Longino, Science as

Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1990); Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message:

Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content (New York: Longman, 1991).

[2] See, for example, Michael Graham, ‘‘Election 2008: Objective Journalism the Loser,’’ The

Boston Herald, last modified October 28, 2008, http://www.bostonherald.com/news/

opinion/letters/view.bg?articleid�1128260&format�text. [3] Michael Ryan, ‘‘Journalistic Ethics, Objectivity, Existential Journalism, Standpoint

Epistemology, and Public Journalism,’’ Journal of Mass Media Ethics 6, no. 1 (2001), 6.

[4] Andrew Porwancher, ‘‘Objectivity’s Prophet: Adolph S. Ochs and the New York Times,

1896�1935,’’ Journalism History 34, no. 4 (2011): 186. [5] Michael Schudson, ‘‘The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism,’’ Journalism: Theory,

Practice and Criticism 2, no. 2 (2001): 149�70. [6] Charles E. Clark and Charles Wetherell, ‘‘The Measure of Maturity: The Pennsylvania

Gazette, 1728�1765,’’ William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 46 (1989): 292. [7] Schudson, ‘‘The Objectivity Norm.’’

[8] Ibid., 155.

[9] The Virginia Free Press, for instance, wrote on its front page: ‘‘It is stated in the New York

papers that CHARLES DICKENS, decidedly the most popular author of the day, intends

visiting the United States during the month of January next,’’ See Virginia Free Press

[Charlestown, WV], col. A, November 4, 1841 (Issue 41).

[10] Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (1842), ed. Patricia Ingham

(London: Penguin, 2000), 268.

[11] Ibid., 33.

[12] Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, ‘‘Are Watchdogs an Endangered Species?’’ Columbia

Journalism Review 40, no. 1 (2001): 50�53.

News with Views 61

[13] Richard Kaplan, ‘‘The News About New Institutionalism: Journalism’s Ethic of Objectivity

and Its Political Origins,’’ Political Communication 23 (2006): 173�85. [14] Ibid., 179.

[15] Porwancher, ‘‘Objectivity’s Prophet.’’

[16] For a detailed discussion, see Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of

American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Dan Schiller, Objectivity and the

News: The Public and the Rise of Commercial Journalism (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Gerald Baldasty and Jeffry Rutenbeck, ‘‘Money, Politics and

Newspapers: The Business Environment of Press Partisanship in the Late 19th Century,’’

Journalism History 15, no. 2/3 (1988): 60�69; Donald W. Curl, Murat Halstead and the Cincinnati Commercial (Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1980); Gerald

Baldasty, The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press, 1992); Ryan, ‘‘Journalistic Ethics.’’

[17] Daniel C. Hallin, ‘‘The Media, the War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the

Thesis of an Oppositional Media,’’ Journal of Politics 46, no. 1 (1984): 2�23. [18] Richard L. Kaplan, ‘‘The Origins of Objectivity in American Journalism,’’ in The Routledge

Companion to News and Journalism Studies, ed. Stuart Allan (New York: Routledge Press,

2010), 26.

[19] See, for instance, Altheide, Creating Reality; John C. Merrill, ‘‘Journalistic Objectivity is Not

Possible,’’ in Basic Issues in Mass Communication: A Debate, eds. Everette E. Dennis and

John C. Merrill (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 104�10; Robert Hackett, ‘‘Decline of a Paradigm? Bias and Objectivity in New Media Studies,’’ Critical Studies in Mass

Communication 1, (1984): 229�59; Meera Nanda, ‘‘The Epistemic Charity of the Social Constructivist Critics of Science and Why the Third World Should Refuse the Offer,’’ in A

House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science, ed. Noretta Koertge (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 286�311. [20] Nanda, ‘‘Epistemic Charity.’’

[21] Meenakshi G. Durham, ‘‘On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of

Journalism: The Case for ‘Strong Objectivity,’’’ Communication Theory 8 (1998): 125�26. [22] John Fiske, ‘‘British Cultural Studies and Television,’’ in Channels of Discourse, Reassembled,

ed. Robert C. Allen (London: Routledge, 1992), 290�95. [23] Janet Woollacott, ‘‘Messages and Meanings,’’ in Culture Society and the Media, eds. Michael

Gurevitch, James Curran and Janet Woollacott (London: Methuen, 1982), 109.

[24] John C. Merrill and Ralph L. Lowenstein, Media, Messages, and Men: New Perspectives in

Communication 2nd ed., (New York: Longman, 1979), 214.

[25] Tanni Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media, Public Journalism and the Pursuit of Democratization,’’

Journalism Studies 5 (2004): 115�21. [26] Jennifer Rauch, ‘‘Activists as Interpretive Communities: Rituals of Consumption and

Interaction in an Alternative Media Environment,’’ Media, Culture & Society 29, no. 6

(2007): 994�1013. [27] Robert Hackett, ‘‘Is Peace Journalism Possible?’’ Conflict and Communication Online 5, no. 2

(2006): 9.

[28] See Chris Atton, ‘‘Alternative Media in Scotland: Problems, Positions and ‘Product,’’’

Critical Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2000): 40�47; Chris Atton, Alternative Media (London: Sage, 2001); Villarreal V. Ford and Geneve Gil, ‘‘Radical Internet Use,’’ in Radical Media:

Rebellious Communication and Social Movements, ed. John D. Browning (Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage, 2001), 201�34; Chris Atton, ‘‘Towards a Cultural Study of Alternative Media on the Internet,’’ Southern Review 35, no. 3 (2002): 52�62; Chris Atton, ‘‘News Cultures and New Social Movements: Radical Journalism and Mainstream Media,’’ Journalism Studies 3,

(2002) 491�505; Chris Atton, ‘‘What is ‘Alternative’ Journalism?’’ Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 4, no. 3 (2003): 267�72; John D. Downing, ‘‘Audiences and Readers of Alternative Media: The Absent Lure of the Virtually Unknown,’’ Media, Culture & Society

62 F. A. Kperogi

25, (2003): 625�65; Sara Platon and Mark Deuze, ‘‘Indymedia Journalism. A Radical Way of Making, Selecting and Sharing News?’’ Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 4, (2003):

336�55; Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media’’; Chris Atton and Emma Wickenden, ‘‘Sourcing Routines and Representation in Alternative Journalism: A Case Study Approach,’’ Journalism Studies

6, (2005): 347�59; Eun-Gyoo Kim and James Hamilton, ‘‘Capitulation to Capital? OhmyNews as Alternative Media,’’ Media, Culture & Society 28, no. 4 (2006): 541�60.

[29] Atton, ‘‘Towards a Cultural Study.’’

[30] See John D. Downing, Radical Media: The Political Experience of Alternative Communication

(Boston: South End Press, 1984).

[31] Atton, ‘‘Towards a Cultural Study,’’ 492.

[32] See Atton, 2001, Alternative Media; Downing, Radical Media; DeeDee Halleck, Hand Held

Visions: The Impossible Possibilities of Community Media (New York: Fordham University

Press, 2002); Clemencia Rodriguez, Fissures in the Mediascape: An International Study of

Citizens’ Media (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2001); Rodger Streitmatter, Voices of

Revolution: The Dissident Press in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

[33] See Atton, ‘‘Alternative Media in Scotland’’; Patricia Gibbs and James Hamilton, ‘‘Special

Issue of Media History: Alternative Media,’’ Media History 7, no. 2 (2001): 117�18; Dorothy Kidd and Bernadette Barker-Plummer, ‘‘Social Justice Movements and the Internet,’’ Special

Issue, Peace Review 13, no. 3 (2001): 331�37; Graeme Turner, ed., ‘‘Citizens’ Media,’’ Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy (2002): 103.

[34] Gibbs and Hamilton, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 117.

[35] Vincent Campbell, Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context

(London: Arnold, 2004), 178.

[36] See Karol Jacubowicz, ‘‘Musical Chairs? The Three Public Spheres of Poland,’’ Media Culture

& Society 12, (1990): 195�212; David Sholle, ‘‘Access Through Activism: Extending the Ideas of Negt and Kluge to American Alternative Media Practice,’’ Javnost*The Public 2, no. 4 (1995): 21�35; Michael R. Evans, ‘‘Hegemony and Discourse: Negotiating Cultural Relationships through Media Production,’’ Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 3, no. 3

(2002): 309�29. [37] Gibbs and Hamilton, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 117.

[38] Campbell, Information Age Journalism.

[39] Downing, Radical Media, 45.

[40] James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: The Press, Broadcasting, and

New Media in Britain (London: Routledge, 2003), 16.

[41] Tony Harcup, ‘‘The Unspoken Said: The Journalism of Alternative Media,’’ Journalism 4, no.

3 (2003): 372.

[42] James Hamilton, ‘‘Alternative Media: Conceptual Difficulties, Critical Possibilities,’’ Journal

of Communication Inquiry 24, no. 4 (2000): 357/8.

[43] Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 115.

[44] Downing, Radical Media.

[45] Atton, Alternative Media.

[46] John Hochheimer, ‘‘Organizing Democratic Radio: Issues in Practice,’’ Media, Culture &

Society 15, no. 4 (1993): 473.

[47] Atton, Alternative Media.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Kenya Tomaselli and Eric Louw, ‘‘Alternative Press and Political Practice: The South African

Struggle,’’ in Communication for and against Democracy, ed. Marc Raboy and Peter Bruck,

(Montreal: Black Rose, 1990), 213.

[50] Haas, ‘‘Alternative Media,’’ 116.

[51] Atton, Alternative Media, 154.

[52] Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), 379.

News with Views 63

[53] Brian Whitaker, News Limited: Why You Can’t Read All about It (London: Minority Press

Group, 1981), 105.

[54] Simon Cottle, ‘‘Rethinking News Access,’’ Journalism Studies 1, no. 3 (2000): 433.

[55] Ibid., 434�35. [56] Chris Atton, ‘‘Ethical Issues in Alternative Journalism,’’ in Communication Ethics Today, ed.

Richard Keeble (Leicester: Troubadour, 2005), 22.

[57] Nick Couldry, The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses in the Media Age (London:

Routledge, 2000).

[58] John D. Peters, ‘‘Witnessing,’’ Media, Culture & Society 23, (2001): 707.

[59] Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times

(New York: New Press, 2000), 49.

[60] Ibid., 110.

[61] Atton, Alternative Media, 11.

[62] Tony Harcup, ‘‘‘I’m Doing This to Change the World’: Journalism in Alternative and

Mainstream Media,’’ Journalism Studies 6, no. 3 (2005): 362.

[63] Downing, Radical Media.

[64] Ibid., ix.

[65] Chris Atton, ‘‘Ethical Issues in Alternative Journalism,’’ Ethical Space: The International

Journal of Communication Ethics, 1 no. 1 (2003), 26�27. [66] Harcup, ‘‘‘I’m Doing This to Change the World,’’’ 362.

[67] Public or civic journalism is the kind of journalism that actively seeks the input of the

reading or viewing public in the newsgathering process.

[68] David Bauder, ‘‘Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism,’’ USA Today, last modified

March 17, 2008, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-17-3511532335_x.

htm.

[69] Jay Rosen, What Are Journalists For? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

[70] Farooq A. Kperogi, ‘‘Cooperation with the Corporation? CNN and the Hegemonic

Cooptation of Citizen Journalism through iReport.com,’’ New Media & Society 13, no. 2

(2011): 316.

[71] Joyce Nip, ‘‘Exploring the Second Phase of Public Journalism,’’ Journalism Studies 7, no. 2

(2006): 216.

[72] Atton, ‘‘Ethical Issues in Alternative Journalism,’’ 22.

[73] Louise Woodstock, ‘‘Public Journalism’s Talking Cure: An Analysis of the Movement’s

‘Problem’ and ‘Solution’ Narratives,’’ Journalism: Theory Practice and Criticism 3, no. 1

(2002): 37.

[74] Kperogi, ‘‘Cooperation with the Corporation?’’ 319.

[75] Jay Rosen, ‘‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience,’’ PressThink: Ghost of Democracy

in the Media Machine, last modified on June 27, 2006, http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/

weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

[76] J.D. Lasica, ‘‘Blogs and Journalism Need Each Other,’’ Nieman Reports 70�4, last modified September 8, 2008, http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/03-3NRfall/V57N3.pdf, 70.

[77] Couldry, The Place of Media Power:

[78] Jeff Howe, ‘‘The Rise of Crowdsourcing,’’ Wired, June 14, 2006, http://www.wired.com/

wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html.

[79] Jeff Howe, ‘‘Gannett to Crowdsource News,’’ Wired, November 3, 2006, http://www.wired.

com/software/webservices/news/2006/11/72067?currentPage�1. [80] Ibid.

[81] Martin Bell, ‘‘The Journalism of Attachment,’’ in Media Ethics, ed. Matthew Kieran

(London: Routledge, 1998), 15�22. [82] Cecilia Friend and Jane B. Singer, Online Journalism Ethics: Traditions and Transitions

(New York: ME Sharpe, 2007), 139.

[83] Ibid., 136.

64 F. A. Kperogi

[84] Quoted in Friend and Singer, Online Journalism Ethics.

[85] Brent Cunningham, ‘‘Rethinking Objectivity,’’ Columbia Journalism Review. July/August,

(2003), 5.

[86] Ryan, ‘‘Journalistic Ethics,’’ 7.

[87] David Schoetz, ‘‘David Frum on GOP: Now We Work for Fox,’’ ABC News, last modified

March 23, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2010/03/david-frum-on-gop-now-

we-work-for-fox/.

[88] Howard Kurtz, ‘‘MSNBC, Leaning Left and Getting Flak from Both Sides,’’ Washington Post,

last modified May 28, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/

05/27/AR2008052703047_pf.html.

[89] Tanni Haas, ‘‘From ‘Public Journalism’ to the ‘Public’s Journalism’? Rhetoric and Reality in

the Discourse on Weblogs,’’ Journalism Studies 6, no. 3 (2005): 387�96. [90] Vadim Lavrusik, ‘‘The Future of Social Media in Journalism,’’ Mashable.com, last modified

September 13, 2010, http://mashable.com/2010/09/13/future-social-media-journalism/.

News with Views 65

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NEWS CUlTURE

Second Edition

Stuart A I I a n

Open University Press

Open University Press

McGraw-Hill Education

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e-mail: [email protected]. uk

world wide web: w w w.openup.co.uk

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA

First published 1999

Reprinted 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003

Second edition 2004

Copyright © Stuart Allan, 2004

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism

and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

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Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed in the UK by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

• MAKING N[WS: TRUT�. ID[OLOGY AND N[WSWORK

The fundamental obligation of the reporter is to the truth. (Fergal Keane, BBC journalist)

News may be true, but it is not truth, and reporters and officials seldom see it the same way.

(James Reston, US journalist)

Truth, according to an old journalistic saying, is the news reporter's stock-in-trade. This principle was reaffirmed by Fergal Keane, a widely respected BBC foreign cor­ respondent, in a televised Huw Weldon Memorial Lecture (broadcast 20 October 1997 on BBC 1). In his words:

The art of the reporter should more than anything else be a celebration of the truth . . . The reason millions of people watch and listen is because we place the interests of truth above everything else. Trust is our byword. That is the unalter­ able principle. It is our heritage and our mission, and I would rather sweep the streets of London than compromise on that . . . The fundamental obligation of the reporter is to the truth. Start messing with that for any reason and you become the moral accomplices of the secret policemen.

These are powerful words, eloquently spoken. At one level, it seems to me, the implica­ tions of Keane's argument are clear: a journalism resolutely committed to 'the truth' must never hesitate to uncover and expose lies, deceit and misrepresentation regardless of the consequences.

At another, more subtly complex level, however, the implications of Keane's declar­ ation quickly prove to be much more challenging to discern. This reference to 'the truth' begs a rather awkward question: namely, whose definition of what is true is being upheld as 'the truth' ? The answer to that question goes to the heart of ongoing debates over whether or not the news media 'reflect' social reality truthfully, or the

MAKING NtWS: TRUTH, !OtOlOGY AND NtWSWORK I •

extent to which journalists can produce a truthful news account. These debates typic­ ally restrict the discussion to one regarding how best to separate 'facts' from 'values'. The assumption that 'the truth' resides entirely in the former leaves to one side the problem of whether or not such a separation is actually possible in the first place. In light of these types of issues, then, this chapter will examine how the news media work to define the ideological limits of 'truth' by exploring how journalists produce news accounts which claim to be 'objective' reflections of reality.

In the first instance, our attention turns to consider two competing perspectives on the role the news media play in structuring public awareness and debate about social problems. Specifically, the 'liberal pluralist position' will be counterpoised against the 'political economy position' so as to identify several factors pertinent to the larger social context within which journalists operate. Next, we examine a range of insights generated by researchers attempting to explore the ideological dynamics of newswork practices, that is, the day-to-day routines of news production which inform the cultural construction of news as an 'impartial' form of social knowledge. Here the focus is on the extent to which the codified conventions of newswork contribute to the naturaliza­ tion of the various social divisions and inequalities indicative of modern society, prin­ cipally by helping to reaffirm these inequalities as being appropriate, legitimate or inevitable in ideological terms.

Structuring public debate

The conviction that the citizen's right to freedom of speech is best protected by a mar­ ket-based mass media system is at the core of the liberal pluralist conception of the journalist's role in modern society. Many of its advocates, who arguably include most journalists themselves, maintain that the news media represents a fourth estate (as distinguished, in historical terms, from the church, the judiciary and the commons). Journalism, as a result, is charged with the crucial mission of ensuring that members of the public are able to draw upon a diverse 'market place of ideas' to both sustain and challenge their sense of the world around them. This responsibility for giving expres­ sion to a richly pluralistic spectrum of information sources places the journalist at the centre of public life. Thus it is the news media, to the extent that they facilitate the formation of public opinion, which are said to make democratic control over governing relations possible.

The performance of this democratic function is contingent upon the realization of 'press freedom' as a principle safeguarded from any possible impediment associated with power and privilege. The news media, according to the liberal pluralists, must carry out the crucial work of contributing to the 'system of checks and balances' popularly held to be representative of democratic structures and processes. More spe­ cifically, by fostering a public engagement with the issues of the day, they are regarded as helping to underwrite a consensual (albeit informal) process of surveillance whereby

• I N[WS CUlTUR[

the activities of the state and corporate sectors are made more responsive to the dic­ tates of public opinion. As arenas of arbitration, the news media are said to allow for clashes over decision making to be expressed, adjudicated and ultimately reconciled in such a way as to ensure that neither cumulative nor continuous influence is accorded to a single set of interests (see also McQuail 1992; O'Neill 1992; Carper 1997; Wheeler 1997). Liberal pluralist researchers insist that the capacity of a particular news organ­ ization to present the necessary 'plurality of viewpoints' is preserved 'by virtue of the clash and discordancy of interests which exist between owners, managers, editors and journalists' (Bennett 1982: 41; see also Golding and Murdock 1996).

Opposition to the liberal pluralist position, despite its continued salience in public debates about the news media, has been advanced from a number of different angles by researchers adopting a much more critical stance. For these alternative approaches, many of which rely on a political economy framework for their analyses, the basic tenets of liberal pluralism are in need of serious revision. T he writings of Karl Marx have provided an important starting point for several of these lines of critique, includ­ ing a celebrated passage which he co-wrote with Frederick Engels in The German Ideology around 1845:

T he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. T he class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subjec� to it . . . In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they . . . among other things . . . regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.

(Marx and Engels 1970 [1845]: 64-5)

T his passage clearly challenges several of the assumptions underlying liberal pluralist arguments. T he 'ruling ideas of the epoch', to be loosely understood as the representa­ tions of a 'dominant ideology', are not forced on the subordinate classes, nor are they to be reduced (conspiratorially) to 'useful fictions'. Rather, the Marxist position main­ tains that the capitalist ruling class must work to advance its particular class-specific interests by depicting its ideas, norms and values in universal terms. T hat is to say, these 'ruling ideas' need to be mobilized as being consistent with the beliefs of ordinary people, as being the only correct, rational opinions available to them (Marx and Engels 1970 [1845]: 65-6). Mass media institutions, whether publicly or privately owned, are controlled by members of this ruling class (see Figure 3.1). Each one of these institu­ tions reproduces these 'ruling ideas', to varying degrees, so as to lend justification to the class inequalities engendered by capitalist society as being reasonable or common­ sensical. In this way, the media help to ensure that the danger of radical protests emerging to disrupt the status quo is sharply reduced.

Figure 3.1 News Corporation

NEWSPAPERS

United States New York Post

United Kingdom The Times

The Sunday Times

The Sun

News of the World

TSL Education

Australia More than 100 national, metropolitan, suburban, regional and Sunday titles, including the following:

The Australian

The Weekend Australian

The Daily Telegraph

The Sunday Telegraph

Herald Sun

Sunday Herald Sun

The Courier-Mail (42 per cent) Sunday Mail (Brisbane) (42 per cent) The Advertiser

Sunday Mail (Adelaide)

The Mercury

Sunday Tasmanian

The Sunday Times

Northern Territory News

Sunday Territorian

Fiji The Fiji Times

Sunday Times

Nai Lalakai

Shanti Dut

Papua New Guinea Post-Courier (63 per cent)

MAKING N[WS: TRUT�. ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWORK I •

FILMED ENT ERTAINMENT

United States Fox Filmed Entertainment'�

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Fox 2000 Pictures Fox Searchlight Pictures Fox Music Twentieth Century Fox Home

Entertainment Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and

Merchandising Twentieth Century Fox Television Fox Television Studios Twentieth Television Regency Televisiont (50 per cent) Blue Sky Studios

Australia Fox Studios Australia

Latin America Fox Studios Baja'� Canal Fox'�

T ELEVISION

United States Fox Broadcasting Company'� Fox Television Stations'�

WNY W New York, NY WWOR New York, NY KT T V Los Angeles, CA KCOP Los Angeles, CA WFLD Chicago, IL W PW R Chicago, IL WTXF Philadelphia, PA KDFW Dallas, TX KDFI Dallas, TX WFXT Boston, MA WT TG Washington, DC

• I N[WS CUlTUR[

Figure 3.1 continued

WDCA Washington, DC WAGA Atlanta, GA WJBK Detroit, MI KRIV Houston, TX KTXH Houston, TX KMSP Minneapolis, MN WFTC Minneapolis, MN W TVT Tampa, FL KSAZ Phoenix, AZ KUTP Phoenix, AZ WJW Cleveland, OH KDVR Denver, CO W RBW Orlando, FL WOFL Orlando, FL KTVI St. Louis, MO WITI Milwaukee, WI WDAF Kansas City, MO KSTU Salt Lake City, UT WBRC Birmingham, AL WHBQ Memphis, TN WGHP Greensboro, NC KTBC Austin, TX WUTB Baltimore, MD WOGX Gainesville, FL

Europe Balkan News Corporation

Asia STAR STAR Plus

STAR News STAR Movies STAR Mandarin Movies STAR World STAR Gold STAR Chinese Channel ESPN STAR Sports (50 per cent) Channel [V] Xing Kong Wei Shi Vijay Television (51 per cent)

Latin America Cine Canal Telecine

Australia and New Zealand Premium Movie Partnershipt

(20 per cent)

CABLE NETWORK PROGR AMMING

United States Fox News Channel':- Fox Cable Networks Group':­

FX Fox Movie Channel Fox Regional Sports Networks

(13 owned and operated):f Regional Programming Partnerst

(40 per cent) Fox Sports World SPEED Channel Fox Pan American Sportst

(38 per cent) Rogers Sports Nett (20 per cent) National Sports Partnerst (50 per cent) National Advertising Partnerst

(50 per cent) National Geographic Channel -

Domestict (67 per cent) National Geographic Channel ­

Internationalt (50 per cent) Los Angeles Dodgers STAPLES Centert (40 per cent)

Australia Fox Sports Australia (50 per cent)

DIRECT BROADCAST SATELLITE TELEVISION

Europe Sky Italia (80 per cent)

Sky Sport

Figure 3.1 continued

Calcio Sky Sky Cinema Sky TG 24

British Sky Broadcasting (35 per cent) Sky News Sky Sports Sky Travel Sky One Sky Movies

Latin America Sky Latin America DTH Platforms

Mexico - Innova (30 per cent) Brazil - NetSat (49 per cent) Sky Multi-Country Partners

(30 per cent)

Australia F OXTEL (25 per cent)

Asia Phoenix Satellite Television

(45 per cent) Hathway Cable and Datacom

(26 per cent) China Network Systems

(18 Affiliated Cable Systems) (20 per cent)

Sky Perfect TV! (8 per cent)

MAGAZINEs· AND INSERTS

United States and Canada News America Marketing

In-Store FSI (SmartSource Magazine)

Notes

MAKING N[WS: TRUTU, ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWORK I •

SmartSource iGroup News Marketing Canada

The Weekly Standard Gemstar-TV Guide International

(43 per cent)

Australia InsideOut donna hay

BOOK PUBLISHING

United States, Canada, Europe and Australasia HarperCollins Publishers

OTHER

Europe NDS (78 per cent) Broadsystem Ventures The Wireless Group (19 per cent) Convoys Group Sky Radio (93 per cent) News Outdoor Group (75 per cent)

Australia and Asia National Rugby League (50 per cent) News Interactive Festival Records Newspoll (50 per cent) UTV Software Communications

(20 per cent)

::- Held by News Corporation's 81 per cent owned Fox Entertainment Group (FEG).

t Reflects percentage held by News Corporation's 8 1 per cent owned FEG.

:j: Fox Regional Sports Networks are all 100 per cent owned except Fox Sports Net South, which is

88 per cent owned, and Sunshine Network which is 94 per cent owned.

Source: News Corporation Annual Report 2003. Figures as of 30 June, 2003

• I N[WS CULTUR[

Marx's personal knowledge of journalism was shaped by the ten years he spent, while living in London, as a European correspondent for the New York Tribune. An impassioned advocate of a free press, who regarded it as a means to counter forces of oppression for the greater welfare of society, he nevertheless did not write at length about the news media. For political economists engaged with these issues today, then, Marx's preliminary insights need to be recast in relation to journalistic institutions the likes of which he could not have even anticipated in the nineteenth century. Broadly speaking, modern political economists have retained Marx's focus on class power as a determinant factor of social control in order to document the impact of changing patterns of news media power and influence within local, national and (increasingly) global contexts. Of particular concern are the growing levels of concen­ tration, conglomeration and integration of ownership in this sector, for these dynam­ ics are directly linked to a range of issues associated with control over journalistic content.

For example, many political economists argue that news media power is being restricted to an ever smaller number of (usually white and male) hands; that the corporate priority of profit maximization is leading to increasingly superficial news formats where content becomes evermore uniform and the spaces available to report on controversial issues sharply reduced; and, that corporate fears over 'the bottom line' are reshaping judgements about newsworthiness in ways which frequently all but silence alternative or oppositional voices. Such voices - including those in the labour movement, trade unions, feminists, anti-racists, environmentalists, anti-poverty activ­ ists and other groups committed to progressive social change- are routinely character­ ized as representing a threat to the interests of 'market sensitive' news organizations. Thus the implications of reducing news to just a commodity form like any other are profound, particularly when these types of critical voices are struggling just to be heard within the confines of ideological parameters conditioned by the drive for 'efficiency gains' (and with them greater advertising profits). It is with these kinds of concerns in mind that political economists continue to channel their research into campaigns aiming to bring about a fundamental reorganization of the current dynamics of media ownership and control, a process to be achieved primarily through the radical restructuring of state regulatory policies.

In seeking to provide a conceptual framework to account for the interrelation of these types of dynamics at the level of news content, Herman and Chomsky (1988) have developed a 'propaganda model'. Writing from a US perspective, they argue that there exists within that country's commercial news media an institutional bias which guarantees the mobilization of certain 'propaganda campaigns' on behalf of an elite consensus (propaganda is deemed to be broadly equivalent with dominant ideology in this analysis). Notwithstanding this 'guarantee', however, the economic power of owners of capital over the media does not culminate in the creation of a political vacuum. Rather, in their view, the news media 'permit - indeed, encourage - spirited debate, criticism and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system

MA�ING N[WS: TRUT�. ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWOR� I •

of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus' (Herman and Chomsky 1988: 302). Liberal pluralist treatments of the news media as autonomous institutions are thereby to be countered by examining the systematic subordination of the media vis-a-vis the functional requirements of dominant classes. To the degree that the powerful are able to coordinate the fluctuating boundaries of public opinion through the exercise of control over what will be found in media content, class power will be successfully reproduced.

Liberal pluralist notions of a 'free', 'independent' and 'objective' news media are thus countered by Herman and Chomsky's (1988: 298) contention that if the news media perform a societal purpose at all, it is to 'inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state'. Propaganda campaigns may be instituted either by the state itself or by one or more of the top media firms (or even in unison), but in all instances the collaboration of the mass media is a prerequisite (1988: 33). In order to specify the 'secret' at work behind the 'unidirectionality of propaganda campaigns', Herman and Chomsky (1988: 33) define its effectivity in terms of a 'multiple filter system'. By drawing attention to these respective 'filters', they are seeking to demonstrate the extent to which journalists reiterate uncritically official positions of the state while, simultaneously, adhering to its political agenda. The resultant news product, they maintain, ultimately makes for 'a propaganda system that is far more credible and effective in putting over a patriotic agenda than one with official censorship' (1988: xiv).

Briefly, five component 'filters' of this model, each of which interact with and reinforce one another, are identified by Herman and Chomsky (1988: 3-31) as follows:

1 The first filter to be accounted for concerns the commercial basis of the dominant news organizations: specifically, the size and the scale of the investment required to run major news outlets, the concentration and conglomeration of ownership and cross-ownership patterns, and the power and wealth of the proprietors and their managers. Close ties between the media elite and their political and corpor­ ate counterparts ensure that an 'establishment orientation' is ordinarily main­ tained at the level of news coverage (here issues of placement, tone, context and fullness of treatment are particularly important). It is this top tier of major news companies which, together with the government and wire services, 'defines the news agenda and supplies much of the national and international news to the lower tiers of the media' (Herman and Chomsky 1988: 4-5). At the same time, the resultant 'profit orientation' of these organizations, many of which are under intense pressure from stockholders, directors and bankers to focus on 'the bottom line', is a further key aspect of this filter shaping news coverage.

2 The second filter pertains to the influence of advertising, the principal income source for commercial news organizations, on media content. 'With advertising,' Herman and Chomsky (1988: 14) write, 'the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The adver tisers' choices influence

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media prosperity and survival.' Historically, media relying on revenue from sales alone have found it very difficult to compete with the resources available to their advertising-subsidized rivals. This dynamic typically leads to such outlets being pushed to the margins, where eventually many are forced to close down. Herman and Chomsky also point out that advertisers are primarily interested in affluent audiences due to their 'purchasing power', and thus are less inclined to support forms of news and public affairs content which attract people of more modest means. Moreover, there is a strong preference for content which does not call into question their own politically conservative principles or interferes with the 'buying mood' of the audience.

3 The news media's over-reliance on government and corporate 'expert' sources is cited as the third filter. Herman and Chomsky (1988: 18) describe the symbiotic relationship that journalists have with their information sources, arguing that it is driven both by economic necessity and a reciprocity of interests. These powerful establishment sources provide journalists with a steady, reliable flow of 'the raw material of news', thereby allowing news organization to expend their resources more 'efficiently'. The relative authority and prestige of these sources also helps to enhance the credibility of the journalist's account. The routine inclusion of such 'experts' not only shapes the news agenda, but simultaneously makes it much more difficult for independent, non-official sources to gain access. 'By giving these purveyors of the preferred view a great deal of exposure,' Herman and Chomsky (1988: 24) maintain, 'the media confer status and make them the obvious candi­ dates for opinion and analysis.'

4 Filter number four addresses the role of 'flak' or negative responses to media content as a means of disciplining news organizations. Complaints, including threats of punitive action, 'may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and bills before Congress' (Herman and Chomsky 1988: 26). 'Flak' can be produced either by individuals, state officials in their ceaseless efforts to 'correct' news coverage, or by various advocacy groups, includ­ ing politically motivated 'media monitoring' campaigns or 'think tank' oper­ ations. Such forms of 'flak' can prove costly for news organizations, not only at the level of legal disputes but also in terms of the potential withdrawal of pat­ ronage by advertisers due to organized consumer boycotts. Still, Herman and Chomsky (1988: 28) suggest that these makers of 'flak' receive respectful attention by the media, only rarely having their impact on news management activities explicitly acknowledged.

5 The final filter is the role of the 'ideology of anti-communism' as a 'political­ control mechanism'. 'This ideology', in Herman and Chomsky's (1988: 29) words, 'helps mobilize the populace against an enemy, and because the concept is fuzzy it can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten property interests or support accommodation with Communist states [such as China or Cuba in the 1990s] and radicalism.' This 'national religion' of 'anti-communism', they argue,

MAKING N[WS: TRUT�. ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWORK I 0

has served to fragment the political left and the labour movements, as well as ensured that liberals and social democrats are kept on the defensive. Its corres­ ponding influence on the news media has also had far-reaching implications: 'In normal times as well as in periods of Red scares, issues tend to be framed in terms of a dichotomized world of Communist and anti-Communist powers, with gains and losses allocated to contesting sides, and rooting for "our side" considered an entirely legitimate news practice' (1988: 30-1).

Overall, then, only the 'cleansed residue', having passed through these successive filters, is pronounced 'fit' to call news. This is not to suggest, however, that the news media are monolithic in their treatment of controversial issues. Rather, Herman and Chomsky (1988: xii) state: 'Where the powerful are in disagreement, there will be a certain diversity of tactical judgments on how to attain generally shared aims, reflected in media debate.' Nevertheless, views which contest the underlying political premises of the dominant state discourse, especially with regard to the exercise of state power, will almost always fall outside of the parameters demarcated by the limits of elite disagreement. The 'filters' identified above are deemed to be working to reinforce these parameters in ways which make alternative news choices difficult to imagine. This process, they contend, 'occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operat­ ing with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of professional news values' (1988: 2).

News values and frames

The 'propaganda model' briefly mapped out above usefully highlights a range of important issues. Here, though, it is important to bear in mind that it not be interpreted so narrowly as to suggest that the news media are to be viewed strictly as purveyors of propaganda coincidental with the interests of ruling class domination. Some interpretations of Herman and Chomsky's approach risk reducing the news media to tired ideological machines confined to performing endlessly, and unfailingly, the overarching function of reproducing the prerogatives of an economic and political elite through processes of mystification. Journalists would then become little more than well-intentioned puppets whose strings are being pulled by forces they cannot fully understand. Meanwhile the news audience - admittedly an unexplored given in this model - would then appear to be composed of passive dupes consistently fooled into believing such propaganda is true.

Any conflation of news with propaganda is, in my view, unsustainable. The propa­ gandist, unlike the journalist (at least under ordinary circumstances), sets out with the deliberate intention of deceiving the public, of concealing 'the truth' so as to direct

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public opinion in a particular way through manipulative tactics, devices and strategies. To make the point bluntly, then, journalists are not propagandists. 'A journalist who intentionally fabricates or misleads', writes Newkirk (1998), 'is as ill equipped for journalism as a doctor who intentionally mistreats patients is for medicine'. This is not to deny, however, that the factors Herman and Chomsky attribute to 'propaganda' with their notion of 'filtering' are crucial determinants shaping the operation of the news media. Their study is also rich with startling evidence of how the US news media have been implicated in official propaganda campaigns at the level of 'foreign' news (examples of reporting examined range from Central America to Indo-China). I wish to suggest, however, that its more compelling insights regarding the determinants of news coverage need to be further developed, in the first instance by taking account of the everyday practices journalists engage in when constructing news accounts as truthful 'reflections' of reality.

For many of the critical researchers focusing squarely on the dynamics of news production, it is the culture of routine, day-to-day interactions within specific news institutions which has warranted particular attention. From a variety of different conceptual perspectives, notably those associated with cultural and media studies, sociology, criminology and ethnomethodology among others, they have sought to investigate the ideological imperatives embedded in the work of constructing news as a truthful representation of reality. An effort is made by these researchers to problematize or 'make strange' the everyday activities of journalists, or newsworkers as they are often called in these studies, as they go about performing their job. Drawing upon a range of research strategies, including questionnaires, in-depth interviews, participant observation and ethnography, these investigations have endeavoured to document the fluidly contingent means by which the ideological character of news is encoded through the professionalized norms and values of reporting.

Even a glance at the front pages of different national newspapers on a given day, or the national news broadcasts on rival networks, typically reveals a broad similarity in the 'stories' being covered, and the hierarchical order in which they have been organ­ ized. Journalists, as well their editors and all of the other individuals involved in the work of processing news in a particular news organization (hereafter the term 'news­ workers' will be used to encompass all of these different roles), bring to the task of making sense of the social world a series of 'news values'. These news values are operationalized by each newsworker, as Hall (1981) suggests, in relation to her or his 'stock of knowledge' about what constitutes 'news'. If all 'true journalists', he argues, are supposed to know instinctively what news values are, few are capable of defining them:

Journalists speak of 'the news' as if events select themselves. Further, they speak as if which is the 'most significant' news story, and which 'news angles' are most salient, are divinely inspired. Yet of the millions of events which occur every day in

MAKING NfWS: TRUT�. IDfOlOGY AND NfWSWORK I •

the world, only a tiny proportion ever become visible as 'potential news stories': and of this proportion, only a small fraction are actually produced as the day's news in the news media.

(Hall 1981: 234)

Hence the need to problematize, in conceptual terms, the operational practices in and through which news values help the newsworker to justify the selection of certain types of events as 'newsworthy' at the expense of alternative ones. To ascertain how this process is achieved, researchers have attempted to explicate the means by which certain 'news values' are embedded in the very procedures used by reporters to impose some kind of order or coherence on to the social world. After all, the world has to be rendered 'reportable' in the first place, a point succinctly made by Barthes (1973) who once observed: 'What is noted is by definition notable'.

There is an extensive research literature concerned with 'news values', much of which elaborates upon an innovative study conducted in the mid-1960s by Galtung and Ruge (1981) on the structure of foreign news in the Scandinavian press (see, for example, Epstein 1973; Roshco 1975; Tuchman 1978; Gans 1979; Fishman 1980; Hartley 1982; Ericson et al. 1987; A. Bell 1991; Dayan and Katz 1992; Zelizer 1992). In selectively drawing upon these attempts to specify the informal (largely unspoken) rules or codes of newsworthiness, the following factors may be regarded as being significant:

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Conflict: 'balanced' journalism dictates that 'each story has two sides'; when these 'sides' are in dispute, a sense of immediacy is likely to result at the same time that potential interest is enhanced through dramatization. Relevance: the event should be seen to impinge, however indirectly, on the news audience's lives and experiences. The proximity of the event is a related factor. Timeliness: recent events are favoured, especially those that have occurred in the previous 24 hours and which can be easily monitored as they unfold in relation to institutional constraints and pressures. Simplification: the significance of an event should be relatively unambiguous; the diversity of potential interpretations may then be kept to a minimum. Personalization: an emphasis on human actors 'coping with life on the ground' is preferred over abstract descriptions of 'faceless' structures, forces or institutions. Unexpectedness: an event which is 'out of the ordinary' is likely to be 'novel' or 'new', thereby enhancing its chances of being caught in the news net. As an old cliche goes: 'Dog bites man isn't news; man bites dog is'. Continuity: an event should allow for the projection of a sense of where it 'fits in' so as to allow for prescheduling, a significant consideration for a news organiza­ tion allocating its resources. A related factor is its consonance or conformity to the newsworker's (and audience member's) preconceptions about what type of 'news story' it is likely to resemble. Composition: a mixture of different types of events must be processed on any given day, thus events are chosen in relation to fluctuations in the 'news hole' to be

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filled. Divisions between, for example, international, national and local news are usually clearly marked in regional newspapers and newscasts.

• Reference to elite nations: a hierarchy is often discernible here which gives priority to events in those countries which are regarded as 'directly affecting the audience's well-being', such as the USA and other members of the 'first world'. This is at the expense of those events taking place in other places, particularly developing or 'third world' countries which only infrequently receive newsworthy status (and then only under certain terms: see Chapter 7).

• Reference to elite persons: activities performed by politicians, members of the monarchy, entertainment and sporting celebrities, corporate leaders, and so forth, are far more salient in news terms than those of 'ordinary people'.

• Cultural specificity: events which conform to the 'maps of meaning' shared by newsworker and news audience have a greater likelihood of being selected, a form of ethnocentrism which gives priority to news about 'people like us' at the expense of those who 'don't share our way of life'.

• Negativity: 'bad news' is ordinarily favoured over 'good news', namely because the former usually conforms to a higher number of the above factors. As the celebrated media theorist Marshal McLuhan once remarked, advertisements constitute the only 'good news' in the newspaper.

The news culture indicative of one news organization will be at variance with that of others, of course, but researchers have been able to identify a variety of shared assump­ tions which recurrently underpin these daily negotiations. Thus while news values are always changing over time and are inflected differently from one news organization to the next, it is still possible to point to these and related news values as being relatively consistent criteria informing these assignments of significance.

News accounts, then, may be deconstructed in ideological terms so as to elucidate how these news values help to rule in certain types of events as 'newsworthy' while, at the same time, ruling out alternative types. At the heart of these processes of inclusion and exclusion are certain 'principles of organization' or 'frames' (Goffman 1974) which work to impose order on the multiple happenings of the social world so as to render them into a series of meaningful events. Precisely how a particular news event is 'framed' by the journalist claiming to be providing an 'objective' or 'balanced' account thus takes on a distinct ideological significance. Gitlin (1980) extends this ethno­ methodological notion of 'frame' to argue for a consideration of how the daily rou­ tines of journalism strive to naturalize the social world in accordance with certain discursive conventions. News frames, he argues, make the world beyond direct experi­ ence look natural; they are 'principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation com­ posed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters' (Gitlin 1980: 6; see also Allan 2002).

The subject of often intense negotiation between journalists and their editors, as well as their sources, frames help to render 'an infinity of noticeable details' into practicable

MHING N[WS: TRUTH, ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWOR� I •

repertoires. Frames thereby facilitate the ordering of the world in conjunction with hierarchical rules of inclusion and exclusion. As Gitlin (1980) contends:

largely unspoken and unacknowledged, [frames] organise the world both for journalists who report it and, in some important degree, for us who rely on their reports. Frames enable journalists to process large amounts of informa­ tion quickly and routinely: to recognise it as information, to assign it to cognitive categories, and to package it for efficient relay to their audiences. Thus, for organ­ isational reasons alone, frames are unavoidable, and journalism is organised to regulate their production.

(Gitlin 1980: 7)

Once a particular frame has been adopted for a news story, its principles of selection and rejection ensure that only 'information' material which is seen to be legitimate, as appropriate within the conventions of newsworthiness so defined, is to appear in the account. 'Some of this framing', Gitlin (1980: 28) argues, 'can be attributed to trad­ itional assumptions in news treatment: news concerns the event, not the underlying condition; the person, not the group; conflict, not consensus; the fact that "advances the story", not the one that explains it.'

The invocation of a news frame is not to be viewed, however, as a means to preclude the encoding of 'information' which might explicitly politicize the seemingly impartial definitions of social reality on offer. Rather, the very authoritativeness of the frame is contingent upon its implicit appeal to 'objectivity', which means that it needs to regu­ larly incorporate 'awkward facts' or even, under more exceptional circumstances, voices of dissent. The news frame's tacit claim to comprehensiveness dictates that it must be seen as 'balanced' and 'fair' in its treatment of counter-positions: indeed, after Gitlin (1980: 256), 'only by absorbing and domesticating conflicting values, definitions of reality, and demands on it, in fact, does it remain hegemonic.' Accordingly, it is through repetition, through the very everydayness of news discourse, that the prevail­ ing frames (once again, neither arbitrary nor fixed) acquire an ostensibly natural or taken-for-granted status.

Routinizing the unexpected

In discussing the day-to-day activities of reporting, journalists and their critics alike often draw upon the metaphor of a 'mirror' to describe how the social world is 'reflected' in news accounts. The pioneering US broadcast reporter Edward R. Murrow once famously stated, for example, that journalism 'must hold a mirror behind the nation and the world' and that, moreover, 'The mirror must have no curves and must be held with a steady hand' (cited in MacDonald 1979: 310). This language of reflection is similarly employed in critiques of news coverage to pinpoint evidence of 'bias', that is, to question whether journalists have mirrored reality in an 'objective' manner or,

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failing that, the extent to which they have allowed certain 'distortions' to creep into the reporting process.

Not surprisingly in light of the issues raised in the discussion above, many critical researchers have dismissed the 'mirror' metaphor for being too simplistic. Even its advocates, they point out, have to acknowledge the vast number of 'blind-spots' which render certain types of events virtually invisible. The mirror metaphor is also difficult to sustain due to its inability to account for the ideological dynamics embedded in the newsworker's mediation of the social world. This process of mediation involves not only a series of procedures for knowing the world but, equally importantly, for not knowing that world as well. As Hallin (1994) writes of the 'mirroring' qualities of so-called 'objective reporting' of governmental affairs in the USA:

A form of journalism which aims to provide the public with a neutral record of events and which, at the same time, relies primarily on government officials to describe and explain those events obviously has the potential to wind up as a mirror not of reality, but of the version of reality government officials would like to present to the public.

(Hallin 1994: 52)

In light of these types of criticisms, Tuchman's (1978) concept of a 'news net' has been widely regarded as a much more suitable metaphor than that of a reflective 'mirror'. Introduced following her research into newswork practices, the idea of a news net is a more useful way of conceptualizing this imposition of order on the social world. News, in her analysis, is a social resource which, through its very construction, implies a series of particular constraints or limits on the forms of knowledge which can be generated and called 'reality'.

Tuchman's study, which draws on data gathered by participant obser vation and interviews with newsworkers over a ten year period in the USA, documents how news organizations disperse a news net that intertwines time and space in such a way as to allow for the identification of 'newsworthy' events. If the news net is intended for 'big fish', as she argues, then at stake in conceptual terms is the task of unravelling this 'arrangement of intersecting fine mesh (the stringers), tensile strength (the reporters), and steel links (the wire services) supposedly provid [ing] a news blanket, ensuring that all potential news will be found' (Tuchman 1978: 22). That is to say, the bureaucratic threads of the news net are knitted together so as to frame certain preferred types of occurrences as 'news events' while, concurrently, ensuring that others slip through unremarked.

A news net stretched to encompass certain centralized institutional sites, ones where news is 'likely to be made today', reinforces a myriad of normative assumptions about what should constitute the public agenda. The problem of defining what counts as an 'appropriate news story' is directly tied to journalistic assumptions about what the news audience is interested in knowing. Tuchman's (1978: 25) study discerned three general premises incorporated into the news net: first, readers are interested in occur-

MAKING NtWS: TRUTH, !OtOlOGY AND NtWSWORK I •

rences at certain localities and not others; second, readers are concerned with the activities of only specific organizations; and third, readers find only particular topics to be worthy of attention.

In light of this set of working assumptions, Tuchman (1978: 25-31) maintains that three interrelated methods of dispersing reporters can be described using the following criteria: geographic territoriality, organizational specialization and topical specialization.

First, 'geographic territoriality' is the most important of the three methods basic to the news net. Each news organization divides the social world into distinct areas of territorial responsibility so as to realize its respective 'news mission'. Assessments can then be made as to where news is most likely to happen - in effect, as McQuail (1992) notes, a self-fulfilling tendency - thereby allowing for a considerable degree of pre-planning. The news mission is a double-sided dynamic: on the one hand, it con­ forms to certain presumptions regarding what the audience 'wants to know' while, on the other hand, it sets these presumptions against pre-given financial and technological constraints (on the importance in this regard of the international news agencies, such as Reuters, Associated Press, United Press International and Agence France Presse, see Wallis and Baran 1990; G. Reeves 1993; Herman and McChesney 1997; Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen 1998; van Ginneken 1998).

Second, 'organizational specialization' is another method for dispersing reporters. Beats and bureaux need to be set up in connection with the numerous organizations that are regularly 'making news' in that specific territory. Examples range from the 'crime beat', including such places as the police station, courts or prisons, to other sites routinely generating news like the city council, the fire and rescue services, the health authority, and so forth. Due to their formal status as sources of centralized informa­ tion, these sites are legitimized as the preferred places for newsworkers to collect the 'facts' they require. The coding of a given news item as 'belonging' to a- particular site is not always a straightforward decision, however, and can lead to conflict within the news organization (see Roshco 1975; Gans 1979; Fishman 1980; Zelizer 1992; J.L. Reeves and Campbell 1994; Glover 1999).

Third, 'topical specialization' is the final method; at issue here is the extent to which topical specialities, such as consumer affairs, finance, education, environment, health, arts, science, the 'women's page' (see Chapter 6), travel, gardening, motoring or sports, bypass the territorial desks. Usually each topic is associated with its own department which will possess a budget to be spent on the preparation of material. A decision on the quantity of material can be made only after the territorial editors announce how much space has been left over for each of them to use (see also Epstein 1973; Norris 1997a, b; Gavin and Goddard 1998; van Zoonen 1998; Allan et al. 2000; Allan 2002).

Evidently, the amount of movement in and across the three methods involves considerable negotiation, and thus flexibility, as each pulls the news net in different directions. Attention may then shift to consider, among other concerns, the following:

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• The economic pressure to maintain a cost-efficient, profitable news organization, in part by avoiding expenses which may not result in a final news story, means that investigative reporting is often disallowed on these terms (see G. Williams 1996; Bagdikian 1997; Franklin and Murphy 1998; Hackett and Zhao 1998; Pilger 1998, de Burg 2000, Marjoribanks 2000).

• There is a need to conform to the news organization's daily production schedule, especially where deadlines are concerned. Schlesinger (1987) uses the phrase 'stop­ watch culture' to pinpoint how these relations are interwoven throughout the production process (see also Gans 1979; Curran 1990; A. Bell 1991, 1998; Willis 1991; Steiner 1998).

• Being able to routinize the uncertainty of future happenings is considered to be of critical importance as the newsworker's obligation to produce sufficient copy to fulfil 'story quotas' must be met. In contrast with 'hard' news, so-called 'soft' news or 'human interest' stories are usually less dependent on notions of 'timeliness' (see Tiffen 1989; Jacobs 1996; Kitzinger 1998; Skidmore 1998).

• This practical need to anticipate or pre-plan news-as-events, Tuchman (1978) argues, leads to the further sub-classification of three types of 'hard' news: namely, 'spot' news, 'developing' news and 'continuing' news. 'Continuing' news usually revolves around events which are prescheduled well in advance, thereby making them highly sought after by reporters and editors alike (see Fishman 1980; Dayan and Katz 1992; Miller 1993, 1994; K. Becker 1995).

• The implementation of new technologies (each have their own varying 'time­ space rhythms') to enhance speed, flexibility and, thereby, professionalism (see Cottle 1995; Schudson 1995; Tunstall 1996; McNair 1998; Shingler and Wieringa 1998).

Professional ideals, such as those of 'impartiality' and 'objectivity', are thus likely to be operationalized in ways which privilege the (largely internalized) 'journalistic stand­ ards' appropriate to the news organization's ethos and its priorities.

A hierarchy of credibility

The very basis upon which the journalist is able to detect 'news events', according to Fishman (1980: 51), rests on a commonsensical understanding that society is bureau­ cratically structured. It is this perspective which provides specific procedures for locating knowledge of occurrences. Specifically, it furnishes the reporter with a 'map of relevant knowers' for newsworthy topics. A journalist covering a story concerning, say, the possible effects of a nuclear power plant on the health of children in a local community, knows that information officers at the plant, as well as politicians, scien­ tists, nuclear energy lobbyists, health officials, social workers and environmental groups, among others, will be positioned to offer their viewpoints (see also Anderson

MAKING N[WS: TRUT�. ID[QlOGY AND N[WSWORK I •

1997; Campbell 1999; Allan 2002). 'Whatever the happening,' writes Fishman (1980: 51), 'there are officials and authorities in a structural position to know.' This 'bur­ eaucratic consciousness', to employ his phrase, indicates to newsworkers precisely where they will have to position themselves to be able to follow the time-line or 'career path' of events as they pass through a series of interwoven, yet discernible phases.

To clarify, H.S. Becker (1967) employs the notion of a 'hierarchy of credibility' to specify how, in a system of ranked groups, participants will take it as given that the members of the highest group are best placed to define 'the way things really are' due to their 'knowledge of truth'. Implicit in this assumption is the view that 'those at the top' will have access to a more complete picture of the bureaucratic organiza­ tion's workings than members of lower groups whose definition of reality, because of this subordinate status, can be only partial and distorted. As H.S. Becker (1967: 241) writes, 'any tale told by those at the top intrinsically deserves to be regarded as the most credible account obtainable . . . Thus, credibility and the right to be heard are differentially distributed through the ranks of the system.' By this rationale, then, the higher up in this hierarchy the news source is situated, the more authorita­ tive his or her words will be for the newsworker processing the bureaucratic account. Newsworkers are thus predisposed to treat these accounts as factual, according to Fishman (1980: 96), 'because journalists participate in upholding a normative order of authorized knowers in society [and] it is also a position of convenience.' After all, the 'competence' of the source should, by this logic, translate into a 'credible' news story.

Of interest in this context is Hallin's (1986, 1994) analyses of how the dictates of 'objective' reporting serve to ratify a normative order of 'credible' sources, especially when challenges to the status quo are being mobilized. The journalist's world, he argues, can be usefully characterized as being divided into three regions, each governed by different standards of reporting (1986: 116-18). These regions may be represented as concentric circles (see Figure 3.2).

1 Sphere of consensus: this sphere, Hallin (1986) proposes, can be defined as repre­ senting 'motherhood and apple pie'. That is to say, it encircles those social issues which are typically regarded by journalists (and, they are likely to assume, most members of the public) as being beyond partisan dispute and, as such, non­ controversial. Consequently, ' [ w ]ithin this region journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers. On the contrary, the journalist's role is to serve as an advocate or celebrant of consensus values' (Hallin 1986: 116-17).

2 Sphere of legitimate controversy: in this sphere, there are a range of social issues which are framed by journalists as being the appropriate subject of partisan dis­ pute. The typical types of controversies which unfold during electoral contests or legislative debates, for example, are situated here, the ideological parameters of

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Sphere of consensus

Sphere of ---t-- legitimate controversy

---- Sphere of deviance

Figure 3.2 Spheres of consensus, controversy, and deviance Source: Hallin 1986: 117

which are represented by the positions articulated between and within the main political parties (as well as the bureaucracies of the state or civil service). 'Within this region,' Hallin (1986: 116) writes, 'objectivity and balance reign as the supreme journalistic values.'

3 Sphere of deviance: the realm located beyond the above sphere is occupied, according to Hallin (1986: 117), by 'those political actors and views which journal­ ists and the political mainstream of the society reject as unworthy of being heard.' Virtually any pretence of journalistic 'neutrality' falls away, he argues, as news organizations perform the work of boundary maintenance. In this sphere, journal­ ism 'plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda those who violate or challenge the political consensus. It marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conflict' (Hallin 1986: 117).

These respective spheres, Hallin is quick to acknowledge, each contain internal grad­ ations, and the boundaries distinguishing them are relatively fluid and changeable. Nevertheless, this model suggests that 'gut instincts' about source credibility are politi­ cized, as the further away a potential source is from the political consensus the less likely it will be that the source's voice will gain media access.

One of the most noteworthy attempts to document the importance of these types of dynamics in Britain was a project co-authored by Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke and Roberts (1978), entitled Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. Their investigation examines how journalistic conceptions of 'competence' and 'credibility' help to ensure that news statements are almost always dependent upon

MAKING N[WS: TRUT�. ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWORK I •

'objective' and 'authoritative' statements from 'legitimate' institutional sources. For newsworkers, Hall et al. (1978) write:

This means constantly turning to accredited representatives of major social institutions - M.P.s for political topics, employers and trade-union leaders for industrial matters, and so on. Such institutional representatives are 'accredited' because of their institutional power and position, but also because of their 'repre­ sentative' status: either they represent 'the people' (M.P.s, Ministers, etc.) or organised interest groups.

(Hall et al. 1978: 58)

It follows that the 'professional rules' indicative of the routine structures of news production are typically serving to represent the 'opinions of the powerful' as being consistent with a larger 'public consensus'. Here Hall et al. (1978: 58) proceed to note the irony that 'the very rules which aim to preserve the impartiality of the media, and which grew out of desires for greater professional neutrality, also serve powerfully to orientate the media in the "definitions of social reality" which their "accredited sources"- the institutional spokes[persons] - provide.'

The journalist's daily struggle to negotiate the professional demands of newswork, with all of the attendant pressures, produces in Hall et al. 's (1978: 58) view 'a system­ atically structured over-accessing to the media of those in powerful and privileged institutional positions.' It is precisely this issue of how the definitions of certain sources are routinely 'over-accessed' to the detriment of alternative viewpoints which is crucial. Sources who enjoy high status positions in society can assume, in turn, that they are much more likely to become what Hall et al. (1978) call 'the primary definers' of controversial topics.

Accordingly, the structured relationship between the news media and this hierarchy of institutional definers permits the most powerful of the latter to set down the initial definition or primary interpretation of the news topic to be processed. It is recurrently the case that this interpretation will then be mobilized to 'command the field' with the likely result that it will, in turn, establish the terms of reference within which all further coverage (as well as any subsequent 'debate') takes place. 'Arguments against a primary interpretation', Hall et al. (1978: 58) stress, 'are forced to insert themselves into its definition of "what is at issue" - they must begin from this framework of interpretation as their starting-point.' Moreover, this 'initial interpretative framework is extremely difficult to alter fundamentally, once established' (Hall et al. 1978: 58-9). In this way, then, the news media are regarded as playing a vital ideological role in reaffirming the iniquitous power relations underlying society's institutional order.

Challenges to the concept of 'primary definition' have emerged from a variety of different perspectives. For many liberal pluralists, for example, Hall et al. (1978) are guilty of overemphasizing the capacity of the news media to structure public debate in ways consistent with the interests of the powerful. In their view, journalists almost always enjoy a sufficient degree of autonomy from these types of influences, thereby

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ensuring that their reportage I S 'balanced' and 'objective'. More usefully, other researchers have sought to extend the approach introduced by Hall et al. through a more rigorous assessment of the institutional imperatives of source competition.

One such intervention has been advanced by Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) in their book Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice. Although they endorse the general argument that newswork practices typically promote the views of authori­ tative sources, they proceed to provide six specific points of criticism (Schlesinger and Tumber 1994: 17-21). These points, together with illustrative references to other studies, may be briefly outlined as follows.

First, the notion of 'primary definition' fails to recognize possible disputes between official sources struggling to influence the production of a news account. In the course of such a conflict it may not always be clear who is actually the primary definer (or by which criteria such primacy is to be defined) in a given instance.

A telling illustration of this point is documented in Hallin's (1986, 1994: 55) investi­ gations into US news coverage of the Vietnam War: 'the case of Vietnam suggests that whether the media tend to be supporting or critical of government policies depends on the degree of consensus those policies enjoy, particularly within the political estab­ lishment.' It then follows, he suggests, that although news content 'may not mirror the facts', media institutions 'do reflect the prevailing pattern of political debate: when consensus is strong, they tend to stay within the limits of the political discussion it defines; when it begins to break down, coverage becomes increasingly critical and diverse in the viewpoints it represents, and increasingly difficult for officials to control'.

Second, the extent to which official sources engage in tactics to pass privileged but unattributable information to journalists under a cloak of confidentiality, such as through the use of 'off-the-record' briefings, is not sufficiently recognized.

Typical examples of statements from non-attributable sources, frequently presented to reporters as 'for background only' comments, include: 'according to a well-placed government source', 'sources close to the Prime Minister say', 'a trusted source has revealed', 'as leaked by an inside source', and so forth. In Britain, a decision made by the Labour government shortly after taking office in May 1997 to formally place lobby briefings by government spokespeople 'on the record' (along similar lines to the US custom) has by no means eliminated the practice. It is often described as a key element of 'spin doctoring' (see also Glover 1999; Palmer 2000).

Third, important questions are being obscured with regard to the means by which the boundaries of primary definition are being drawn, and redrawn, as official sources compete amongst themselves (using different media strategies) over access to the discursive field of debate.

As Deacon and Golding (1994: 201-2) argue in their study of British media coverage of the 'poll tax' disputes, 'the ideological advantages of primary definition can be eroded by political vulnerability, so that an "accredited" source becomes largely "discredited" - consistently on the defensive and increasingly unable to control the

MAKING N[WS: TRUTU, ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWORK I •

direction of public and media debate.' They then proceed to make a further crucial point: 'not only does primary definition have to be won, it must also be sustained interpretatively and evaluatively through a series of battles, in which its political vulnerability may progressively increase' (Deacon and Golding 1994: 202).

Fourth, the apparent atemporality of Hall et al.'s (1978) formulation needs to be highlighted, that is, its inattention to how the structure of access changes over time as new forces, and their representatives, emerge.

This point is underscored by Hansen's (1993b: 151) investigation of the strategies employed by environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, to secure access to media debates (see also Allan et al. 2000). In his words: 'It is one thing for environmental groups to achieve massive media coverage for a short period of time and in relation to specific issues. It is quite a different task to achieve and maintain a position as an "established", authoritative and legitimate actor in the continuous process of claims-making and policy-making on environmental matters.'

Fifth, it is the need to account for the ways in which journalists challenge official sources, even to the extent of pursuing campaigns, which is at issue. Schlesinger and Tumber (1994: 19) criticize Hall et al.'s (1978) approach for tending to 'overstate the passivity of the media as recipients of information from news sources: the flow of definitions is seen as moving uniformly from the centres of power to the media'. They point out that there are significant variations between different news media which need to be addressed, both in terms of the respective medium (such as between television and the press) and at the level of rival news outlets (such as different newspapers).

An illustration of this point is found in Miller's (1993, 1994) research into media portrayals of the conflict in Northern Ireland during 'the Troubles', where he argues that current affairs and documentary programmes were frequently regarded by government officials as the most difficult to manage:

It is precisely for this reason that official agencies attempt to elucidate the exact nature of queries and even of proposed programmes before permitting access. The access that is granted is heavily bounded by the interests of the sources, but in the end they are betting on slightly longer odds than with hard news stories, which have less space and time and are less likely to do investigative reports.

(Miller 1994: 109-10)

A final criticism renders explicit Schlesinger and Tumber's (1994) commitment to introducing an alternative logic to Hall et al.'s (1978) mode of inquiry. Specifically, they contend that most researchers have been media-centric in their approach to ana­ lysing source-media relations, a problem which can be overcome only by granting equal priority to the perspectives of the sources themselves as they work to generate 'counter-definitions'. These complex processes of negotiation or brokerage between power-holders and their opponents need to be brought to the fore.

Overall, then, it is Schlesinger and Tumber's (1994: 20) contention that the approach

• I NfWS CULTURf

advocated by Hall et al. (1978) is insufficiently curious about 'the processes whereby sources may engage in ideological conflict prior to, or contemporaneous with, the appearance of "definitions" in the media.' Hence the importance of centring the contested dynamics within and between source organizations as they struggle to 'get their message out' through news media which are far from monolithic in their reporting.

Analyses have much to gain, it follows, by examining the precise methods employed by news sources in their efforts to shape media agendas. News promoters anxious to have their voice articulated across the field of the news media are often only too willing to openly cater to the practical needs of newswork. Drawing upon findings derived through an extensive series of interviews with news sources situated across the British criminal justice system, Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) proceed to dis­ tinguish a number of conditions typically involved in a source's attempts to realize its goals:

1 that the source has a well-defined message to communicate, framed in optimal terms capable of satisfying news values

2 that the optimal locations for placing that particular message have been identified, as have the target audiences of the media outlets concerned

3 that the preconditions for communicative 'success' have been assured so far as possible by, for instance, cultivating a sympathetic contact or fine-tuning the timing of a leak

4 that the anticipated strategies of others (which may include support as much as opposition) are incorporated into ongoing media strategies. Support may be har­ nessed by coalition-building. Opposition may, for instance, be countered by astute timing or discrediting its credibility

5 that means exist for monitoring and evaluating the impact of a given strategy or tactic and for adjusting future action in the light of what is reflexively learned

6 that some messages may be as much intended for private as public communica­ tion, thus operating on at least two levels.

(Schlesinger and Tumber 1994: 39)

The relative success enjoyed by a potential news source in 'getting its message out' is thus likely to be directly tied to its capacity to routinize its own activities, especially with respect to preparing 'copy ready' information materials with an eye to the needs of the time-pressured journalist.

Bell's (1991) examination of the principal sources drawn upon by newspaper jour­ nalists in New Zealand similarly highlights the significant role played by 'pre-existing text' in newsworkers' judgements. 'A story which is marginal in news terms but written and available', he argues, 'may be selected ahead of a much more newsworthy story which has to be researched and written from the ground up' (1991: 59). His observation that most news copy consists of reported speech (even though it is often not attributed

MAKING NfWS: TRUTH, IDfOLOGY AND NfWSWORK I •

as such) underscores the extent to which newsworkers regularly rely on reprocessing or repackaging source material as news. Specifically, Bell (1991: 57) identifies the follow­ ing 'input sources' (types of contact journalists have with sources) as being the most salient:

• interviews, either face to face or by telephone • public addresses • press conferences • written text of spoken addresses • organizationally produced documents of many kinds: reports, surveys, letters,

findings, agendas, minutes, proceedings, research papers, etc. • press releases • prior stories on a topic, either from own or other media (newsworkers, as Bell

writes, 'feed voraciously off each other's stories') • news agency copy • the journalist's notes from all the above inputs, especially the spoken ones.

Forms of text-based contact such as these ones encourage journalists to see the world through the eyes of their sources, if only because it makes their work that much easier to manage.

Similar types of source-media research provide further examples of some of the preferred tactics employed by news sources or event promoters (see Tiffen 1989; Eldridge 1993; Keeble 1994; Negrine 1996; Niblock 1996; J. Wilson 1996; Franklin 1997; McNair 1998; Manning 200 1; Varley and Tapsall 200 1; Cottle 2003). These tactics include:

•

•

•

•

•

handing out to newsworkers advance copies of talks or speeches the scheduling of press conferences at convenient hours (safely before deadlines) news releases in 'ready-to-go' format, including an 'inverted pyramid style' narra- tive structure prompt access to bureaucratic personnel with pertinent information the opportunity to attend 'informal chats' or 'pseudo-events' .

Needless to say, source strategies such as these ones do not guarantee that newsworkers will 'stay on message', but they do , enhance the likelihood that the source in question will be accorded with a privileged place in the hierarchy of access. This is no small achievement: 'The right to be considered the primary source of authoritative information about world events', as Hallin (1994: 49-50) suggests, 'should probably be considered a central component of the legitimacy of modern political institutions.' This power, he continues, is 'comparable in a secular age to the right of the church in medieval Europe to interpret the scriptures' (Hallin 1994: 50).

Figure 3.3 Source: Gabriel Thomson in The Independent 1 September 1997.

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Issues of access

When asked to reflect on how they go about their daily work of identifying those 'newsworthy' sources deserving to be included in a news account, journalists will often claim that they simply follow their 'gut feelings', 'hunches' or 'instincts'. Many insist that they have a 'nose for news', that they can intuitively tell which sources are going to prove significant and which ones are bound to be irrelevant to the news frame. Drawing upon an extensive range of interviews with Canadian newsworkers, Ericson, Baranek and Chan (1987, 1989, 1991) suggest that what guides the journalist in the course of these encounters is a 'vocabulary of precedents'. That is to say, the journalist's previ­ ous experience of the rules and organizational constraints characteristic of newswork interactions with sources directs them to visualize the social world in terms of specific types of knowledge.

The ongoing articulation of precedent in the working culture of journalists pro­ vides them with recognition knowledge (that this is a story of a particular type), procedural knowledge (how to get on with contacting and using human and documentary sources), and accounting knowledge (how to frame and formulate the story; how to justify the chosen approach to others).

(Ericson et al. 1987: 348)

This 'vocabulary of precedents' therefore profoundly shapes who journalists speak to, what they talk about, and how that discussion is represented. As noted above, journal­ ists typically rely on sources to furnish them with a verbal or written account of their institution's stance or position, thereby saving them the effort of having to undertake an investigation themselves. 'Moreover, even on the rare occasions when journalists do get close to the original source,' write Ericson et al. (1987: 352), 'they are usually required to obtain a constructed account from an authorized source rather than be able to provide their own direct interpretation.'

If newsworkers are generally predisposed to accept the words of authorized sources as being factual, then it follows that statements which differ from one another must be handled in certain prescribed ways. Newsworkers anxious to avoid potential criticism for anchoring their account on 'biased' sources must take care to frame any conflict outside of the realm of competence by foregrounding the interested perspectives of the sources. 'Precisely by conceiving of interested perspectives in social structural terms,' Fishman (1980: 124) writes, 'the reporter is able both to identify a set of competent and relevant interests and to trust that their differing accounts reveal differing factual aspects of the event.' Supplementary evidence may thus be mobilized in the form of conflicting truth-claims. For a news source to be included as part of the constellation of interests being constructed around an event, it must either explicitly or implicitly reaffirm the terms being employed by the newsworker in the initial framing of the event itself. To speak 'off topic', or to stray from the perceived area of competence (and thus

MAKING N[WS: TRUTH, ID[OlOGY AND N[WSWORK I •

be demonstrating 'personal bias'), is to risk being positioned outside the ideological limits of newsworthiness.

Accessed voices, as Cottle (1993) found in his study of regional news, must be seen to be 'appropriate', 'articulate' and 'represent a clear point of view' to be deemed relevant. This sense of relevancy, he points out, tends to be 'construed in terms which reflect the programme's bid for popular appeal, typically involving the professional pursuit of immediacy, drama and general human interest' (1993: 89). At the same time, as the study by Deacon and Golding (1994: 202-3) confirms, a key distinction needs to be recognized between sources approached as 'advocates' (associated with a particular position) and those made to serve as 'arbiters' (regarded as non-aligned providers of information):

Although all news sources can be thought of as 'advocates' - who each have a preferred image or message they would like to convey in the media - some are selected by journalists to act as 'arbiters' on particular issues. The views and opinions of these arbiters - provided they are comprehensible to journalists and, crucially, can be broadly assimilated within their inferential framework - are treated with greater deference than those of even the most senior 'advocates' and play a very important part in shaping media evaluations of the issues upon which they are invited to comment.

(Deacon and Golding 1994: 202-3)

The 'arbiters' of a specific field of discourse, to the extent that their views guide the journalist's engagement with sources explicitly adopting a position of advocacy, are thereby performing a 'legislator' function (Deacon and Golding 1994: 16). In other words, they are helping to establish the (ostensibly non-partisan) criteria by which certain 'advocates' will be granted access to be heard on matters of controversy and, moreover, what aspect of the topic they will be encouraged to address.

Elsewhere I have described these source dynamics in relation to what I have termed the 'will to facticity' (Allan 1995, 1998b). Once it is recognized that the truly 'objective' news account is an impossibility, critical attention may turn to the strategies and devices used by journalists to lend to their accounts a factual status. Given that this factual status can never be entirely realized, the notion of a 'will to facticity' pinpoints the necessarily provisional and contingent nature of any such journalistic appeal to truth. Newsworkers must know, for example, what questions to ask the source in order to get at the right 'facts'. Here the news frame comes back into play, for as Tuchman (1978: 81) contends, 'knowing what to ask influences whom one asks: The choice of sources and the search for "facts" mutually determine each other.' As a general rule, Fishman (1980) maintains, journalists will usually take care when first setting up interviews with a source to inform him or her about what they are to talk about:

Journalists orient their sources toward a certain way of looking at an event: as a legal-bureaucratic entity, as a moral issue, as a part of a historical trend, and so

• I N[WS CUlTUR[

forth. Thus, they define for their sources the terms of an acceptable account, the terms in which all the various accounts will be framed, and the terms in which the event eventually will be described in the news story.

(Fishman 1980: 131)

During the actual interview, then, this shared narrative framework becomes, in effect, an organizing principle of inclusion and exclusion. The newsworker, according to Fishman, sets down the rules which must be obeyed if facticity and newsworthiness are going to intermesh.

A number of research studies show that in order to achieve the recognized 'cred­ ibility' required to be a legitimate or trustworthy candidate for the purpose of appropriation within the news net, individuals or groups attempting to mobilize alternative definitions of the situation are often forced to accommodate or adapt to the narrow confines of legitimized topic parameters. Attention has also been directed to how the tempo or rhythm of newswork serves, in turn, to place an enhanced emphasis on 'events', not 'issues'. Where the former have a beginning, a middle and an end, and are therefore easily processed as derivative of the factual, the latter implies that the line of demarcation separating the realm of facts from the realm of interpretation and explanation has been crossed. This when objective reporting dictates that this line always be respected. Hence the structural dependence on reliable institutional sources who produce consequential events. These sources, as argued above, allow for certainty to be built into the reporting process, principally through the imposition of predictability (even a certain rationality) vis-a-vis the confusion of the social world.

Consequently, those individuals or groups who lack regular access to the news frame (their definitions rarely getting entangled in the news net) have the option of resorting to 'disruptive access'. At stake is the need to force the temporary suspension of the routinized, habitual access enjoyed by others so as to create opportunities for their voices to be processed as newsworthy. As Molotch and Lester (1974: 108) write, these voices 'must "make news" by somehow crashing through the ongoing arrangements of newsmaking, generating surprise, shock, or some more violent form of "trouble"'(see also Gitlin 1980; McLeod and Hertog 1992; Liebes and Curran 1998). Specific investi­ gations of the interventions mobilized by various individuals, groups and movements to secure access through 'disruptive' means include the following studies concerning news coverage of:

• the women's movement (Tuchman 1978; van Zoonen 1994; Barker-Plummer 1995; Meyers 1997; Norris 1997a; Bradley 1998; see also Carter et al. 1998, Gallagher 2001)

• campaigns against racism (Hollingsworth 1986; Gordon and Rosenberg 1989; van Dijk 1991; C.C. Wilson and Gutierrez 1995; Dennis and Pease 1997; Gabriel 1998)

• the anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons and peace movements (Halloran et al. 1970; Gitlin 1980; Hackett 1991; A. Young 1991; Jeffords and Rabinovitz 1994; Eldridge 1995)

•

MAKING N[WS: TRUTH, ID[O lOGY AND N[WSWORK I •

the environmental and ecological movements (see Hansen 1993a; Neuzil and Kovarik 1996; A. Anderson 1997; Chapman et al. 1997; Adam 1998, Campbell 1999; Allan et al. 2000)

• campaigns over issues of sexuality, including how they pertain to lesbian and gay rights (see Dickey 1987; Gross 1989; Moritz 1992; Stratford 1992; Fejes and Petrich 1993) as well as the media politics around HIV and AIDS (Watney 1987; Lupton 1994; Miller et al. 1998; Allan 2002; Critcher 2003)

• anti-poverty, anti-crime and community rights campaigns (see Curran et al. 1986; Cottle 1993, 1994; Deacon and Golding 1994; Meinhof and R ichardson 1994; J.L. Reeves and Campbell 1994; Devereux 1998; Knight 2001).

News interest is certainly not an end in itself, however, as the ensuing coverage may actually be the antithesis of that which had been initially desired by those individuals or groups struggling to articulate a counter-interpretation of the situation. All too frequently efforts to dislodge primary definitions are ignored, dismissed as 'soft news' novelties, or trivialized in other ways. As several of the above studies suggest, it is recurrently the case that the news frame is organized around the question of how quickly order can be restored to the social world, thereby ensuring that little, if any, attention is directed to the ethical implications of the issues raised through 'disruptive access' (see Belsey and Chadwick 1992; Chaney 1994; Tester 1994; Brants et al. 1998; Kieran 1998; K. Thompson 1998; Berry 2000). This chapter thus comes to a close by posing several points of inquiry to be addressed in subsequent chapters:

• What are the prerequisites to be met before a voice 'deserves' inclusion in media debate as an 'authoritative', 'newsworthy' source?

• In what ways have various alternative or oppositional voices been made to cater their interventionist strategies so as to conform to the routinized imperatives of newswork ?

• In what ways do these journalistic inflections of 'respectability', 'competence' and 'prestige' mark the limits of 'acceptable' dissent?

• To what extent does this constant threat of marginalization, of being defined as 'deviant' vis-a-vis 'the consensus', condition what can and cannot be said by these critical voices ?

Informing the dynamics which underlie each of these points are relations of power and resistance, relations which are constitutive of a cultural politics of hegemony whereby the parameters of truth are invoked, reaffirmed and, on occasion, contested. It is to this question of 'hegemony' as it is embedded in the textuality of news discourse that our attention turns in the next chapter.

• I N[WS CUlTUR[

Further reading

Allan, S. (2002) Media, Risk and Science. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Allan, S., Adam, B. and Carter, C. (eds) (2000) Environmental Risks and the Media. London and

New York: Routledge.

Anderson, A. ( 1 997) Media, Culture and the Environment. London: UCL Press.

Bagdikian, B.H. ( 1 997) The Media Monopoly, 5th edn. Boston, MA: Beacon.

Bell, A. ( 1 991) The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cottle, S. (ed . ) (2003a) Media Organization and Production. London: Sage.

de Burg, H . (2000) Investigative Journalism : Context and Practice. London and New York:

Routledge.

Ericson, R.V., Baranek, P. M. and Chan, J.B.L. ( 199 1 ) Representing Order: Crime, Law, and

Justice in the News Media. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Franklin, B. ( 1 997) Newszak and News Media. London: Arnold.

Glover, S. (1999) The Penguin Book of Journalism: Secrets of the Press. London: Penguin.

Hackett, R.A. and Zhao, Y. ( 1998) Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Object-

ivity. Toronto: Garamond.

Hamilton, J.T. (2004) All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information

into News. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Palmer, J. (2000) Spinning Into Control: News Values and Source Strategies. London: Leicester

University Press.

Schlesinger, P. ( 1 987) Putting 'Reality' Together: BBC News. London: Methuen.

Schudson, M. (2003) The Sociology of News. New York: W.H. Norton.

Tuchman, G. ( 1 978) Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: The Free

Press.

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O

CONCLUSION

CHINA’S LONG REVOLUTION

nline activism appeared in China in the mid-1990s, at a time when the revolutionary spirit of the student movement in 1989 had been sapped. It has become increasingly frequent and influential since its appearance. I have examined more than seventy cases in this book, involving hundreds of civic groups, online communities, and Web sites, and numerous people. Some of

these cases were sustained struggles; others were episodic. Some involved large-scale, spontaneous protest activities; others were organized or took moderate or surreptitious forms. The issues ranged broadly, from the most horrific forms of human exploitation to controversies about single parenthood and sexual mores. All this adds up to an image of a restive society alive with conflict and contention. Together with the larger currents of popular contention in contemporary China, online activism marks the palpable revival of the revolutionary spirit.

At the macro level, Chinese online activism is a generalized response to the consequences of Chinese modernity. It is a countermovement rooted in material grievances and an identity movement born out of the identity crisis associated with dramatic change. In reality, most cases of activism involve overlapping concerns. Thus the antidiscrimination struggles by diabetes patients and hepatitis-B carriers discussed in

are rooted in concerns about individual dignity. Yet they also involve practicalchapter 1 matters of job placement or educational opportunities. In the same chapter, the cases of Sun Zhigang and Wei Wenhua represent protests against a form of political oppression that has become prevalent only in the past decade. This is the random and ruthless use of violence against citizens. In Sun Zhigang’s case, the perpetrators were the police. In Wei Wenhua’s case, they were city inspectors. Both groups of persecutors were law-enforcement personnel. These cases indicate the cancerous conditions of the law-enforcement authorities. If the conditions of rapid change and dislocation heighten1

identity concerns and intensify yearnings for recognition and belonging, the conditions of political oppression are the soil for rebellion.

At the meso and micro levels, online activism reflects Chinese citizens’ struggles in dynamic interaction with political, cultural, social, economic, and global conditions. Dynamic and multidimensional interaction reflects the condition of growing complexity in the age of globalization. Social activism in China responds to these complex conditions.

First, the issues and forms of online activism reflect the ways in which citizens creatively negotiate political power. That the Internet is under strict control is well known. Much less is known about the varieties of citizen activism online. In , I showed that issuechapter 2 resonance and issue-specific political opportunity are important factors in influencing which contentious issues enter the public sphere. I identified three ways in which citizens creatively respond to Internet control—rightful resistance, artful contention, and digital hidden transcripts. As the forms of domination change, so do the forms of resistance. The

Co py ri gh t @ 20 11 . Co lu mb ia U ni ve rs it y Pr es s.

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simple truth is that domination is always met with resistance. But simple truths are often forgotten.

The second factor in the multi-interactionism model of online activism is culture. I have shown that the expression of contention in cyberspace depends on cultural tools and symbolic resources. It relies on language, symbols, imagery, sounds, and rhetorical conventions of expression. Even using the Internet to mobilize street demonstrations is a cultural activity. The culture of online activism is informed by history and tradition. Time-honored rituals and genres of contention have persisted in the Internet age. Like mental structures, they provide contemporary activism with cultural schemas. Both verbal2

and nonverbal rituals in Chinese contentious culture have been extended to cyberspace. The traditional practice of linking up as a form of petition journey is replicated online with the new kinds of linkages made possible by the Internet networks. Among the verbal rituals and genres I discussed are sloganeering, wall posters, and verse. These are perennial elements of popular protest in modern China. Yet they have taken on new forms and power in cyberspace because of the speed and scope of diffusion and the ease of publication. Political satire in the form of “slippery jingles,” for example, is among the most popular e-mail and text-messaging forwards; there is now a veritable electronic folklore exposing various social problems.

At the same time, online activism demonstrates enormous cultural creativity and innovation. Existing cultural forms are given new energy. New forms and practices have multiplied. Among the new practices I analyzed in are contention in BBS forums,chapter 3 text messaging, blogging, hacktivism, the hosting of campaign Web sites, and online signature petitions. Some newer forms, such as blogs, bear the imprints of the tradition of text-based communication. Others are multimedia, blending text with image, sound, and video files. Among the most innovative genres and practices used in online activism are Flash films, digital photographs, and digital videos. Like traditional texts, they are produced by individuals or groups, but they require a different kind of creativity—the facility to handle creative software and other digital technologies. Their power derives from both their direct visual and aural appeal and the ease and speed of dissemination.

Compared with earlier social movements, online activism manifests a different style. It is at once more playful and more prosaic, whereas earlier social movements often had an epic style suited to the expression of apocalyptic visions. Parodic forms are prevalent in online contention, facilitated by the ease and creative potential of new media technologies. The prosaic side of the new style is evident in the sometimes matter-of-fact approaches to claims making, such as the meticulous calculation of real-estate prices that the blogger in

provided in his call for a movement to boycott home buying. As I will note below,chapter 4 the new styles of online activism are symptomatic of other changes in Chinese society.

Third, online activism has a business dimension. As if to keep up with the marketization of Chinese society, activism has attained market value. Some activists adopt marketing strategies to push their causes. Consumer activist Wang Hai, among others, used his Web site to expose counterfeit products while charging customers for the legal-aid services he provides. More importantly, Internet businesses have an vested interest in online contention, because contentious activities increase Web traffic. Major Web sites therefore welcome and embrace controversial media events and encourage their users to participate. This was true in the early history of the Chinese Internet, but it has become all the more so in recent years. My analysis of the “South China tiger” case in illustrates one Webchapter 5 company’s business strategies when a contentious event occurs. Government regulations allow commercial Web sites to carry news only from official news agencies and forbid them to produce their own news. Yet the business firm bypassed this rule through a nominal partnership with a provincial official Web site. At the same time, the firm promoted user participation and discussion through its “response to news” feature. As I also indicated in C

op yr ig ht @ 2 01 1. C ol um bi a Un iv er si ty P re ss .

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, however, business interests in online contention may result in manipulativechapter 5 practices, thus damaging public debate. The business of contention must be viewed critically, but it does not negate the significance of this new phenomenon. Despite critiques of media commercialization, the market has a more ambivalent relationship to politics than is acknowledged. Under specific historical circumstances, it may provide the conditions for more open political participation.

The fourth factor is civil society, of which I examined two main components. Urban civic associations, the more formal of the two components, make active use of the Internet despite resource shortage. Clearly, a web of civic associations has emerged. Given the political constraints facing civil society in China, the Internet is a strategic opportunity and resource for achieving organizational development and social change. The less formal of the two components of civil society is the online communities. Here my findings go beyond current studies of online communities in China or elsewhere. Many studies have shown, correctly, the “reality” of virtual communities, arguing that they are just as real as offline communities. Such analysis emphasizes the practical aspects of online communities but neglects their meaning as spaces for identity and moral exploration. It also tends to focus on the internal dynamics of computer-mediated interaction, with little attention to their connections to the broader patterns of contemporary life.

My analysis in reveals a vibrant utopian impulse in Chinese onlinechapter 7 communities. This impulse is expressed in idealized images of online communities as spaces of freedom, solidarity, and social justice. In his famous study of elementary forms of religious life, Emile Durkheim wrote that “a society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal.” Creating an ideal is society’s way of3

creating and recreating itself. The ideal represents the sacred values of the community. Chinese online communities are thus both the products and the vehicles of social regeneration. Through them, people exert their work of the imagination. The values of freedom, solidarity, and justice both motivate online activism and are reaffirmed in the process. Such social regeneration is urgent, because the new conditions of Chinese modernity, such as new forms of inequalities, have greatly strained community and social justice. Contemporary Chinese modernity has created greater freedom in individual life. For large segments of the population, the choices of life have multiplied. But this freedom comes with new forms of anxiety and insecurity. The utopian impulse is rooted in these broader social transformations. As long as these conditions remain, people will continue to seek freedom, justice, and solidarity through online communities. But as my analysis also shows, they will not limit their ideas and action to cyberspace but will inevitably bring them to bear on the social spaces they inhabit. Nor, of course, do I intend to imply that all that happens in online communities is virtuous by civic standards.

The fifth factor in my multi-interactionism model of online activism is transnationalism. In , I examined three broad types of transnational activists—the Chinese diaspora,chapter 8

international NGOs, and domestic activists. A main finding is that the radicalization of online activism is in direct proportion to the degree of transnationalization. The more4

transnational, the more radical and confrontational. This finding is significant because it reveals the limits of political control in the age of globalization. Observers of Internet control in China often neglect the contentious character of Chinese Internet culture. One reason for this is that they fail to see other balancing conditions, such as activists’ creativity, business interests, civil-society initiatives, and the possibilities of engaging in long-distance, transnational activism. If transnationalization improves the chances of more radical forms of activism, it is because it increases connections between domestic and international activists and thus gives domestic activists a degree of leverage that would otherwise be unavailable. This finding does not negate the continuing importance of the state. It shows, rather, that both the state and its challengers are based in an increasingly complex andC

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connected world. As challengers gain more leverage, so is the state subject to more sources of pressure.

A Cultural Revolution

The multidimensional interactions that drive Chinese online activism suggest that online activism is a central locus of tension and conflict in contemporary Chinese society. Analyzing online activism provides a unique angle for understanding broader social trends. The forms, dynamics, and consequences of online activism contain elements of the structures of feeling in Chinese society. I will propose that Chinese online activism is emblematic of a communication revolution in contemporary China. This communication revolution is a cultural revolution in the sense that it significantly expands the horizons of learning and communication for ordinary people. I will further propose that this communication revolution is a social revolution, because the ordinary people assume an unprecedented role as agents of change and because new social formations are among its most profound outcomes.

I will propose, finally, that this communication revolution is expanding citizens’ unofficial democracy. It is true that democracy as a political system, an important element in Raymond Williams’s long revolution, is missing from China’s long revolution. Yet as Williams argues, the progress of democracy is not limited to simple political change. It depends ultimately “on conceptions of an open society and of freely cooperating individuals which alone are capable of releasing the creative potentiality of the changes in working skills and communication.” The long revolution “is not for democracy as a political system alone” but derives its meaning from new conceptions and practices of self, society, and politics. Ultimately, these new conceptions and practices are the social and cultural5

foundations for a democratic political system. Let me begin with the cultural revolution. The culture of online activism is dynamic and

creative. It marks a significant change in the style of contention in recent Chinese history. Yet its significance goes beyond what it means as a form of contention. It signifies and contributes to more basic and profound trends of cultural change in Chinese society. Such change is profound even in comparison with periods as recent as the 1980s, which witnessed a period of extraordinary cultural effervescence. From the “misty poetry” in the early 1980s to the “culture fever” later in that decade, one cultural movement followed another. The fields of art and literature were full of creativity. A dazzling array of works was published. Literary journals sold millions of copies and were presumably read by millions more. Yet the main force of this cultural blossoming consisted of intellectuals, writers,6

artists, and professors. Its elitist bias was exposed most starkly during the climactic event of that age—the student movement in 1989. During that movement, despite belated efforts to unite with workers and peasants, students and intellectuals not only dominated the stage of political action but deliberately tried to distinguish themselves as the torchbearers—the “chosen few.”

To the extent that the Internet was first adopted in universities and research institutions in China, it had an elitist origin. Yet its rapid nationwide diffusion brought it quickly within the reach of the average urban consumer, despite the persistent digital divide. With this comes the expansion of culture, of which online activism is only the most radical expression. This cultural expansion is evident in three aspects—the sources of information and means of learning, the tools of cultural production and innovation, and the spaces of communication.

First, for the vast majority of Internet users, one of the most exciting things about the Internet is that it opens up new worlds of information and learning. The biannual Internet surveys produced by CNNIC since 1997 consistently show that the majority of people useCo

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the Internet for information seeking. The personal stories I collected about Internet use in the earlier years of China’s Internet history exuded excitement about the new possibilities the Internet offered. Today, as more and more people begin to take it for granted, the thrill people experienced when they first signed on to the Internet is already being forgotten. It shows how far the Chinese people have come in just over ten years, but the historical significance of the expansion of information sources can hardly be overstated.

To be sure, the existing digital divide means that many people still have no access to online information. Even here, however, there are interesting new experiments. In some7

remote areas, for example, county-level governments have launched projects to wire villages indirectly. One study finds that in the county of Jinta in Gansu Province, the county information center collects and compiles agricultural information from the Internet and posts the information online. Then teachers in village schools use the school computer facilities to print and photocopy the information and distribute it to farmers. In other rural areas,8

Internet bars and cellphones provide options in the absence of home Internet access. Indeed, as of December 2007, close to half of all Internet users in rural areas accessed the Internet in Internet bars; 23 percent use cellphones for access. Among migrant workers,9

the culture of mobile phones and Internet bars is just as dynamic and colorful as the broader Internet culture in China. Some Chinese scholars believe that these alternative10

methods of Internet access will prove to be effective means of narrowing the digital divide. In the long run, the real divide is not access but use and capability, which are shaped by11

the entire structure of social stratification and inequality in a society. The fundamental solution therefore depends on attacking social inequality.

Second is the expansion of tools of cultural production and innovation. Here again, online activism both reflects and leads larger trends of cultural creativity. Online activism involves quintessentially activities of cultural production and innovation. This is evident in every case I discussed in this book. Writing BBS posts, creating Flash and digital videos, setting up and maintaining campaign and petition Web sites, various forms of “artful contention” and digital “hidden transcripts”—these are all creative activities. That the Internet and other new information technologies offer tools for these creative activities is in itself significant. But the real significance lies in the democratization of these tools. There have always been tools of cultural production and creativity, but rarely have ordinary joes had such broad access to them. Certainly, because of the digital divide, not all people have access or the capability to use these new creative tools. Yet here again it is worth emphasizing that although the digital divide is a barrier to overcome, it does not shadow the real progress of the communication revolution. The broad trend in the past decade has been the rapid expansion of access. More than any other creative technology before, these new communication technologies equip the common people with the tools for creating their own cultural products.

Common people have become publishers, editors, writers, and artists, rather than just consumers, audience, and readers. Instead of just trying to receive and digest knowledge produced by dead authors or living authorities, they become knowledge producers. The12

enormous creative potential of the common people is released. This is crucial for correcting the asymmetry in knowledge production. In modern society, knowledge production is socially organized such that a minority of experts, authorities, and institutions control the processes of knowledge production and certification. The dominant ideas of society are the ideas of this minority. This in itself runs counter to the principles of a democratic culture. Thus when the ordinary people become knowledge producers, they infuse a new culture into society. They provide alternative perspectives, different standpoints, and more diverse life experiences. Their alternative experiences and perspectives can challenge cultural

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stereotypes, correct misinformation, and resist symbolic violence (symbolic violence meaning violence inflicted on society by the ruling elites through labeling, categorization, and other discursive forms).

The cases of online activism I studied all in one way or another involved the common people as knowledge producers. The knowledge they created typically subverted received wisdom or prevailing views. Thus activists among hepatitis-B carriers challenged the received wisdom about the vectors of infection for this virus and pointed out how discriminatory government policies helped perpetuate popular misconceptions. Similarly, Flash videos about animal protection during the avian flu crisis in 2005, by taking the perspectives of birds and chickens, revealed the mindlessness, paranoia, and cruelty that human beings are capable of during times of perceived danger. And of course, a main part of consumer-rights defense is to expose counterfeit products.

The expansion of tools of cultural creativity and the release of the creative energies of the common people are directly related to the extension of existing cultural forms and the appearance of new ones. An important feature of online activism is its diverse genres and rituals. These cultural forms are the vehicles of citizen activism. They are also the vehicles of popular sentiments in general. Herein lies the significance of these cultural forms. For what they express, ultimately, are the concerns and aspirations of the common people. Slippery jingles are a popular cultural form, and so are Flash videos, youtube videos, blogs, and BBS postings. They communicate experiences, viewpoints, and values often at variance with those carried in official forms. That is why between popular and official forms there is always conflict. One seeks to dominate, the other resists. Resistance is more effective the more creative it is.

The third area of cultural expansion is the emergence of a citizens’ discourse space. A citizens’ discourse space is where people can voice concerns and express their feelings and opinions. To expand citizens’ discourse space is an important goal of the new citizen13

activism. A major achievement in this respect, not surprisingly, is the social construction of the Internet as such a space. Nowhere else do Chinese citizens participate more actively and directly in communication about public affairs. Nowhere else are so many social issues brought into public discussion on a daily basis.

A new concept is born out of a new reality while shaping that reality. “Discourse space,” or , is one of the new vocabulary terms linked to citizen activism in Chinahuayu kongjian today. Other examples include “discourse right” ( ), “rights protection” (huayu quan wei quan ), “disempowered groups” ( ), “right to know” ( ), “citizen rights” (ruoshi qunti zhiqing quan

), “public participation” ( ), “grassroots” ( ), “publicgongmin quan gongzhong canyu caogen sphere” ( ), and “civil society” ( ). Some of these concepts,gonggong lingyu gongmin shehui such as “right to know” and “public sphere,” are entirely new coinages or translations.14

Others use Chinese terms and expressions used in the past, but the old concepts are replaced with new ones emphasizing citizen participation. For example, in the earlier period, was the Chinese equivalent of the English word “grassroots.” Literallyjiceng meaning “foundation” or “infrastructure,” is a term with a revolutionary history. Thejiceng hallmark of Mao’s organizational approach, the so-called mass-line, was based on the15

assumption that the voice of the party should penetrate into the very basic fabric of Chinese life—the or foundation. The new vocabulary has abandoned the term andjiceng jiceng adopted a literal translation of the English word “grassroots” as .caogen

A citizens’ discourse space is thus also a space for fashioning a new language and a new identity. Perhaps the most important new identity fashioned in cyberspace is the rather mundane term “netizen” ( ). A netizen is an Internet user, but both in Chinese andwang min English, the term carries the meaning of a citizen, because it combines the two words ofCo

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“Internet” and “citizen” into one. But the mundane netizens in China today are synonymous with being fearless, informed, impassioned, and not easily deceived. Sometimes they are denigrated as Internet mobs ( ), but recall that, in history, whenever thewangluo baomin common people act up they are denounced as mobs. It is true that there is a great deal of radicalism in Chinese cyberspace, but as I have shown in these chapters, Internet radicals are often called into being by even more radical forms of social injustice. The popular

carried a story on January 13, 2008, titled “Don’t Even ThinkSouthern Metropolis News About Deceiving Netizens.” The story refers to many of the cases of Internet contention that happened in 2007 and that are discussed in this book. The story argues that these Internet events show convincingly that in the Internet age, netizens will not let themselves be deceived by anyone, because “suppression and deception will only strengthen netizens’ desire to express themselves.”16

A Social Revolution

China’s communication revolution is also a social revolution. It is social because its dynamics are social dynamics, because its primary agents of change are the ordinary people, and because its most profound influences appear in the form of new social formations. It is revolutionary not because it happens abruptly but because in the depth and scope of its influences, it is unparalleled in history. The Internet revolution marks, accompanies, and contributes to profound changes in all aspects of Chinese society.

The communication revolution is rooted in contemporary social conditions. As I argued in , online activism responds to two central consequences of Chinese modernity.chapter 1

One is the social polarization that has accompanied China’s rapid economic development. Economic developments do not automatically bring about social progress. Rather, grave social injustices and insidious forms of social inequality have become exacerbated over the course of economic developments. Many of the spontaneous forms of online protests happen as a countermovement against social injustice and inequality. The other consequence is social dislocation. Social injustices happen to the poor, the weak, and the disempowered. Social dislocation touches everyone in a rapidly changing society, the upwardly as well as the downwardly mobile. The consequences of social dislocation are identity anxieties and crises. Online activism is thus also an identity movement, expressed as yearnings and struggles for social recognition, personal dignity, and a sense of community.

Not surprisingly, the yearnings for justice, identity, and community are translated into acts of communication, for communication is about community and vice versa. A17

communication revolution is necessarily a social revolution. The rapid development of the Internet is as much about technological change as it is about social change. It often seems that a new development in communications technology triggers social change. But the opposite is just as true. New technological developments are just as much responses to social needs. A dynamic and participatory Internet culture would be hard to imagine without the intense social yearnings for communication. Not only is society a cause of the communication revolution, but the dynamics of the communication revolution are also social. Never before has social participation been as important an engine of technological development as in the case of the Internet today. The Internet would not be what it is without social participation. Participation on the Internet is a productive activity. No wonder that Internet firms are willing to invest their resources in maintaining free blogs and online forums, for these free spaces of communication are also spaces of social and economic production.

Just as the cultural revolution associated with the Internet creates new cultural forms, soC op yr ig ht @ 2 01 1. C ol um bi a Un iv er si ty P re ss .

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its social consequences are manifest in the rise of new social forms and formations. Over a decade of online communication has created numerous online communities. New social types have proliferated, ranging from citizen journalists and bloggers to hackers, cybernationalists, BBS hosts, Flash animators, Internet gamers, and, of course, online activists. Civic associations maintain an active Web presence and use Web sites to achieve organizational visibility and promote causes of social change.

The significance of these new forms and formations is fourfold. First, they are significant because of the relative weakness of citizen organizing in the history of the PRC. Citizen organizing was not absent in the past, but it lacked a legitimate and institutionalized base. Today, it has attained a degree of institutionalization. Online communities are legitimate formations, and as I showed in , their activities extend offline. Civic associationschapter 7 such as NGOs have to negotiate restrictive state regulations in what they can or cannot do, but they enjoy de facto or de jure legitimacy and have room to maneuver. This is not to underestimate the political restrictions they face, but rather to recognize the importance of the institutionalization of new social forms.

Second, the size and scale of citizen organizing are significant. The largest online communities have millions of registered members, larger than any other form of social organization except for the Chinese Communist Party itself. There are also tens of thousands of small communities. The scale is equally remarkable, considering that the members in many communities are scattered not only in different cities but in different regions of the world. The social interactions take place at multiple levels. All this translates into an enormous synergy of social interaction. For any political ruler, it is a new social force to reckon with. Growing control of the Internet partly reflects the state’s awareness of this new social force.

Third, the new social formations are significant for the values they represent. My analysis of online communities in shows that members of online communities not onlychapter 7 express critiques of social reality and affirm moral values they see as damaged in contemporary society but are ready to act on their cherished values. They demonstrate a high degree of civic engagement, or, in the words of some Chinese scholars, “civicness.”18

At a time when Chinese society is plagued by a crisis of trust, it may appear ironic that trust should exist in online communities. As I showed in , members of onlinechapter 7 communities both demonstrate high degrees of trust and strive to reaffirm it. The irony is superficial. The reality is that if communication remains open, people will build trust. Trust is only as poor as communication.

Finally, the new forms and formations represent new developments in Chinese civil society. As I indicated in my introduction, civil society is a loaded concept, but it is only as loaded as history itself. Historical developments in China today have given it new meaning. When the concepts of “public sphere” and “civil society” were first introduced into Chinese intellectual discourse in the late 1980s, they were alien. They remain controversial in the Western scholarly literature. Yet in China today, they have become key concepts both in intellectual and popular, journalistic discourse. Some Chinese scholars have argued recently that with the thriving of civic associations China has stepped onto the threshold of a civil society. Thresholds aside, my analysis of online organizing and online communities19

supports the argument that a veritable associational revolution in China is happening.20

Online social formations are a crucial component of this associational revolution. It bears emphasis that online social formations are always projects under construction because of their openness and dynamism. Different viewpoints and social and political forces will necessarily come into contact. There will be tensions and conflicts. The future of these formations therefore remains open to negotiation or transformation.

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Toward an Unofficial Democracy

Both the cultural and social transformations associated with the communication revolution involve political dynamics and have political implications. But the communication revolution also has more direct political consequences. It has shaped state politics and contributed to the rise of a grassroots, citizen politics. Thus although democracy as a political system remains an ideal and not a reality, at the grassroots level, people are already practicing and experimenting with forms of citizen democracy. As Raymond Williams puts it, “if people cannot have official democracy, they will have unofficial democracy, in any of its possible forms, from the armed revolt or riot, through the ‘unofficial’ strike or restriction of labor, to the quietest but most alarming form—a general sullenness and withdrawal of interest.” As21

is clear from the above chapters, withdrawal is not a feature of Chinese people’s struggles for grassroots democracy. Engagement is. I will return to this point below. But since citizen politics comes about in direct relation to state power, it is necessary to first trace the evolution of state power in the Internet age.

The basic point here is that as technological change enables new forms and dynamics of citizen activism, so it provides occasions for state actors to adjust and refine the institutions, concepts, and methods of governance. The adjustments reflect both the grassroots pressure for democratic participation and elites’ attempts to strengthen political control. There is thus evidence of the slow and limited institutionalization of government transparency and citizen input. This is an ongoing process throughout the reform period, despite periodic policy contractions and relaxations and scholarly disagreements as to the sources of the process. The contribution of online activism to this process is the mounting22

social pressure for government transparency and public participation. Progress is limited but merits mention. One development is e-government. As I noted in ,chapter 5 e-government lags behind e-business or e–civil society. Still, major e-government initiatives have been under way for years, with campaigns to set up Web sites for government agencies at all levels and to use Web sites to publicize government policies and encourage direct citizen input. Kathleen Hartford’s study of two e-government projects at the municipal level, for example, shows the broad range of social issues that citizens brought to the attention of city governments through the mayor’s e-mail boxes. These mailboxes elicit citizen feedback and enhance government transparency.23

Besides e-government projects, there are efforts to promote information disclosure. The year 2007 has some significance in this respect. In April 2007, the State Council promulgated the “Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Government Information Disclosure.” This was the first of its kind at the level of the central government, with a mandate to “ensure that citizens, legal persons and other organizations obtain government information in accordance with the law” and “enhance transparency of the work of government.” Also in April 2007, the State Environmental Protection Administration24

(SEPA) issued China’s first-ever “Regulations on Environmental Information Disclosure.” The regulations require both government and business enterprises to disclose environmental information in order to safeguard the rights of citizens to obtain information about the environment. The process of formulating this regulation reflects popular pressure. For years, SEPA officials had been working closely with environmental NGOs to promote public participation in decision making on environmental issues. For example, in April 2005, SEPA held the first public hearing on a controversial environmental project concerning the protection of the lake bed of the Yuanmingyuan Garden in western Beijing. The public25

hearing resulted in the cancellation of the project. The hearing was held because environmentalists had launched a media campaign to request such a hearing to oppose the project.

The institutionalization of government transparency and citizen participation, however,

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lags far behind government efforts to strengthen and refine methods of control and governance. In this respect, Internet control is a field for the state topar excellence experiment with new ways of governing. As I argued in , in fewer than fifteenchapter 2 years, China’s Internet-control regime has undergone three stages of evolution. With each new stage, the methods of control became more refined and sophisticated. The general trend is a gradual move from repressive power to disciplinary power, from hard control to soft control. From 2003 to the present, the dominant mode of power has been disciplinary. On the one hand, the state is stepping up Internet control. This is evident in the new Internet-related regulations promulgated since 2003.

On the other hand, fully aware of the productive aspects of the Internet economy, the state is reluctant to sacrifice economic gains to blunt methods of control. Hoping to maintain both prosperity and control, state authorities have been refining the technologies of control into what a Foucaultian perspective might view as biopower. The essence of biopower is to harness human subjects in the service of the state’s agendas. It is a

power because it enables the production of particular kinds of knowledge,productive subjects, and needs. A central element in this new biopower regime is the so-called26

soft-control approach ( ). In contrast to hard control, soft control, a termrouxing guanli borrowed from business management, is more about self-discipline, indirect guidance, efficient management, positive cues, and rule by law. The new principles of governance laid out at the Fourth Plenum of the Sixteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in September 2004, which I cited in , embody the idea of soft control. The promotionchapter 2 of self-discipline and the ethical use of the Internet, as well as a new system of asking citizens to voluntarily report on ( ) violations through an officially sponsored portal site,jian ju also embodies the idea of soft control. Technologies of power are most effective when they appear in the forms of technologies of the self, that is, when they induce individuals to willingly partake of their own transformation. From this perspective, the Internet may also be transformed into a technology of power.

The shift toward a more disciplinary mode of power is not limited to Internet control. As both a new object and a priority area of control, however, the Internet provides a strategic opportunity for state actors to adjust and refine the entire apparatus of governance and control. Thus the refined approaches to Internet control are visible in other areas, such as the control of the mass media, for here too, state control is becoming more sophisticated.

The constant evolution of power is a condition that will make China’s long revolution, a struggle for a more open and democratic society, an arduous process. Yet it is important to see the signs of progress. What are the political gains of China’s online activism? What are the signs of political progress in China’s long revolution?

The most important development here is citizens’ unofficial democracy. Online activism is a microcosm of China’s new citizen activism, and it is one of its most vibrant currents. In this sense, online activism marks the expansion of a grassroots, citizen democracy. It is an unofficial democracy because the initiatives, both in thinking and action, come from citizens. The expansion is evident both in consciousness and practice. In consciousness, the major developments are the rising awareness of citizenship rights among the Chinese people and the changing views of power and authority. Neither development is limited to online activism, yet both have expanded because of it. Chinese struggles for citizenship rights constitute perhaps the core of citizen activism since the 1990s. They have been extensively documented by the many scholars I have cited throughout this book. Online activism has been most instrumental in disseminating and deepening popular consciousness about citizens’ information rights. Freedom of speech was a main stake in earlier social movements, and it remains central. Information rights, such as citizens’ right to know, put additional demands on the government. Not only do citizens demand the rightCo

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to express their opinions, but now they also demand the right to be informed of issues of concern to their well-being.

Online activism promotes the awareness of information rights by eroding information control and propaganda. It makes it harder for state authorities and news agencies to control information. In 2001, a school explosion in rural Jiangxi province killed forty-two people. In 2002, a food-poisoning accident in the city of Nanjing killed over forty. In both cases, government authorities attempted to put a media gag on information but were eventually forced to reveal the truth because of exposure and controversies on the Internet. These cases led an influential Chinese media scholar to claim that the Internet has brought about the demise of propaganda based on centralized control of news and information.27

Whether this alleged demise has occurred or not is open to debate, but it is clear that centralized information control has become increasingly difficult.

Negative experiences also offer instructive lessons and help bring home the importance of information rights. Initial information control during the SARS crisis in 2003 and the Songhua River pollution crisis exacerbated the confusion and unrest. When people are poorly informed, rumors flourish. When rumors flourish, fear strikes deeply, and people lose the capacity for sound judgment and sensible action. When, under pressure, the Chinese government opened up the information channels, confidence and order were restored.

The growing rights consciousness parallels changing conceptions of power and authority. In contemporary China, power and authority are much revered and feared. To some extent, the onslaughts on official bureaucracies and bureaucratic power carried out by Mao and the Cultural Revolution have been reversed. The traditional, official-centered political culture (

) has returned to Chinese society with a vengeance. The culture ofguan ben wei wenhua official-centricity is everywhere today and being continuously propagated by China’s officially controlled mass media and culture industry. In popular culture, television dramas and films that glorify emperors, empresses, lords, and generals flood the market. They exalt power and wealth and inculcate values of blind loyalty to the superiors. Official newscasts of the style retain the same mode of presentation as they hadxinwen lianbo decades ago, with high proportions of airtime given to party leaders, who are presented in an aura of power and authority.

It is against this culture of official-centricity that the Internet culture of humor and play assumes special significance. Play has a spirit of irreverence. It always sits uncomfortably with power. The subversive power of the Wang Shuo–type “hooligan literature” in the recent history of Chinese culture comes from its spirit of play. Much online activism, and28

much Chinese Internet culture in general, is enlivened with this spirit. If Wang Shuo’s hooligan literature was shocking and heretical to its audience when it first appeared in the 1980s, it now appears timid and old-fashioned in comparison with the hilariously nonconformist Internet culture. In Chinese cyberspace, nothing is sacred. Pretensions to authority are favorite targets of attack. This culture of irreverence is not confined to the Internet but merges into the broader popular culture today. If religion is about the worship of an external source of power, one is tempted to argue that China has only now entered its secular age. The consequences of this secularization for political change will only gradually unfold.

The second area in the expansion of citizen democracy is practice. The growing rights consciousness is matched by the proliferation of forms of citizen participation in public affairs. Again, online activism is symptomatic of this expansion. Examples abound in other areas of contemporary life. The PX incident in the city of Xiamen, which I discussed in

in relation to the use of text messaging for mobilization, is exemplary, because itchapter 3 combines participation with opposition and joins online with offline action.

The PX case is about resistance. The online debate and the street demonstration expressed residents’ opposition to the construction of a chemical factory in their

Co py ri gh t @ 20 11 . Co lu mb ia U ni ve rs it y Pr es s.

Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.

EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 4/23/2018 11:49 PM via UTICA COLLEGE AN: 944954 ; Yang, Guobin.; The Power of the Internet in China : Citizen Activism Online Account: s8331415.main.ehost

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neighborhood. The project was supported by the municipal government. Therefore public opposition challenged both business and the local government. The PX case is also about citizen participation. For citizens to be able to participate in making decisions concerning their own well-being is a basic requirement of any democracy. Rapid economic development has not improved citizens’ chances of participating in democratic decision making. The growing sense of identity crisis and anxieties discussed in suggestschapter 1 that people increasingly feel that life is out of their control. It is as a reaction against this loss of control that citizens begin to be more actively engaged in civic affairs. Some residents in Xiamen learned about the PX project in online forums. Many learned about the planned demonstration through SMS, a simple cellphone text message that called on people to “take a leisure walk.” Several images of anti-PX graffiti painted on the walls near Xiamen University were circulated online. The information was there, but people did not have to participate. That they did, simply in response to an SMS message or a BBS post, reflected their desire to take control of their own affairs. They participated when they realized that they could no longer trust the government.29

The debate on the rule of law and democracy featured in a recent book issues from the premise that neither exists in China at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The Chinese30

government may have been building a legal system for decades, yet despite halting and limited progress, this system lacks transparency, accountability, and due process. Thus it is not surprising that Chinese citizens are increasingly resorting to contentious means in their struggles for a more just society. The Internet satisfies an immediate social need. It provides a new medium for citizens to speak up, link up, and act up against power, corruption, and social injustice. By using the Internet to speak up, link up, and act up, Chinese citizens participate in Chinese politics uninvited. They practice their own unofficial democracy.

Online activism represents Chinese people’s everyday struggles for freedom, justice, and community. It articulates people’s aspirations for basic citizenship rights—the right to voice their opinions on government policies, to be informed of issues that affect their lives, to freely organize themselves and defend their interests, to publicly challenge authorities and social injustices, and to be able to enjoy equal rights and human dignity. These everyday struggles have a mundane character. They do not necessarily articulate lofty visions for grand political designs. Yet beneath these mundane struggles run powerful undercurrents. The effervescence of online activism, as part of China’s new citizen activism, indicates the palpable revival of the revolutionary impulse in Chinese society. The power of the Internet lies in revealing this impulse and in signaling the probable coming of another revolution. As I have tried to suggest in these concluding pages, this would be a different kind of revolution. It may lack the usual revolutionary fanfare, but it will not be lacking in revolutionary power. As civic engagements in unofficial democracy expand, the distance to an officially institutionalized democracy shortens.

Co py ri gh t @ 20 11 . Co lu mb ia U ni ve rs it y Pr es s.

Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.

EBSCO : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 4/23/2018 11:49 PM via UTICA COLLEGE AN: 944954 ; Yang, Guobin.; The Power of the Internet in China : Citizen Activism Online Account: s8331415.main.ehost