Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The current study examined the influence of the state and market power on media content within the context of the unevenly developed Chinese media by looking at whether the framing of the Internet in China in news articles would vary with the levels of political rank and financial autonomy enjoyed by individual Chinese newspapers. A scheme indicating different types of current Chinese newspapers operating in the Party-state and market spheres was constructed. A comparative study of the People’s Daily, the flagship mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, and the Beijing Youth Daily, one of the most influential mass-appeal newspapers in China, was conducted. Differences existed in issue salience and use of different types of news frames. The Beijing Youth Daily with more financial autonomy presented its inclination to marginalize politically sensitive issues and its greater likelihood of using the human interest frame than the People’s Daily which, with higher political privileges, was more likely to frame those issues from the perspectives of responsibility and morality. The comparison suggests that we might need to be conservative to draw an inference that the Chinese media would enjoy more political liberality with its increased diversified structure.