Publication date:
24 December 2014Length of book:
162 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
237x164mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780739182925
The Political Economy of News in China: Manufacturing Harmony is the first full-scale application of Herman and Chomsky’s classic propaganda model to the news media content of a country with a system that is not outwardly similar to the United States. Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman examines the news media of the People’s Republic of China using the five filters of the original model. He asks provocative questions concerning the nature of media ownership, the effect of government or private ownership on media content, the elite-centered nature news sourcing patterns, the benefits and costs of having active special interest groups to influence news coverage, the continued usefulness of the concepts of censorship and propaganda, the ability of advertisers to indirectly influence news production, and the potential increase of pro-capitalist, pro-consumerist ideology and nationalism in Chinese news media. This book will appeal to scholars of international media and journalism.
Hearns-Branaman examines the structure, role, and culture of China’s news media by applying the propaganda model developed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. The first three chapters are devoted to explicating the filtering process that contextualizes what is considered newsworthy and how this news will be presented to the public. Chapter 4 delves deeper into the workings of China’s news media by examining the filtering process in terms of ownership, size, and profit motive. Here the author notes the more paternalistic nature and ruling party–focused legitimizing role of the Chinese media compared to the media in the US. The next two chapters enrich the analysis by examining the internal filters of sourcing and the external filters of flak and advertisers. The more limited impact on the Chinese news media of external actors compared to the US is noted here. Chapter 7 examines the influence of the dominant ideology in the filtering process. The growth of nationalism in China is seen as narrowing the differences in the ideological filtering process in China and the US. The concluding chapter recaps the entire filtering process and comparisons between the Chinese and American news media. Highly recommended for Asian collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and researchers/Asian studies.