This paper explores how readers of Chinese mainstream media editorials use disagreement strategies to attack the institutional face of the mainstream media organizations on Weibo. By quantitative and qualitative analysis, the disagreement strategies in Weibo comments were elaborated based on the logos-oriented and ethos-oriented distinction. It was found that logos-oriented disagreements were employed to criticize the content of the editorial, ethos-oriented ad-hominem disagreements were employed to attack the trustworthiness and impartiality of the mainstream (...) class='Hi'>media organizations, and ethos-oriented ad-personam disagreements were pure insults to express their negative emotions to the mainstream media organizations. The findings suggested that the online commenting space of Chinese mainstream media editorials is a public sphere of combined deliberation and liberal individualism. This study adds to existing literature the disagreement strategies used in online comments while shedding light on the role of online comments in the public sphere building in the Chinese social media context. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

Having been recognised as a “resource-intensive” economy, the People’s Republic of China has been experiencing major implications in terms of ecological environment degradation, which continuously harms the health of the Chinese people and the productivity of China’s economy. Among the political efforts set forth by the Chinese central authorities, the claim of promoting a “National Ecological Accounting and Auditing Scheme” has been drawing nationwide attention. Through a series of critical discourse analysis on relevant written texts produced by the (...) central authorities, mainstream media and the Chinese academics, this paper sets out to analyse the historical evolution of the institutional context in relation to the establishment of such a scheme, and further, to decipher the ideological underpinnings that have shaped this context. The findings indicate that the signification of NEAAS goes far beyond the environment protection, in that, this scheme constitutes a fundamental institutional reform that the Communist Party of China seeks to conduct. (shrink)

This paper calls into question the growing tendency of quasi-absolutism within postmodern mainstream media discourse under the guise of objectivity. The tendency’s major aim is to ascribe more believability to its discourse by re-presenting that which it covers as the vehicle of objective truth to the mainstream audience. Two interweaving discourses have marked such objectivity: one in the form of indoctrinating and omnipresent narratives, which via effective propaganda become tantamount to ritualism, the other epitomised in the nostalgia (...) for rationalisation, already inherent in western positivist thought through the exponential increase of quasi-empiricism. Accordingly, what the media cover exists. What they do not remains in the order of myth. The article starts by rethinking objectivity within modern western academia, a discourse whose objectivity is already flawed from within. Then, with respect to human experience and media coverage, the paper concludes by raising the question of postmodern mainstream media’s substitution of religious quasi-absolutist narratives, be they secular or non-secular. Subjectivity thus emerges as the ultimate ground upon which our being may be legitimate. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine the representation of Chinese Indonesians in New Media after the demise of Suharto’s New Order regimes. It takes root in the recent phenomenon in Indonesia as the “reappearance” of Chinese faces in popular Indonesian media by discussing the celebrities or public figures, and ordinary ‘man-on-the street’ of Chinese Indonesians, who are catapulted in the mainstream mass media and portrayed in popular television formats in particular such as reality-shows, talk-shows, (...) news and variety shows. Based on participatory observation and in-depth-interview to the producers of several popular TV shows casting Chinese figures, this article argues that the political changes from authoritarian Suharto’s regimes which marginalized Chinese ethnicity to democracy has re-identified the representation of Chineseness in public sphere which contributes to more reception of Chinese identity at large in the country. This representation intermingles to produce the debates on religiosity and nationalism. (shrink)

Interactions between the media and Catholic institutions can be difficult to navigate, especially given the nuances of Catholic teaching and the desire of media outlets to convey the desired information in a succinct and easily digestible manner. However, these interactions also present an opportunity for evangelization and clarification of Catholic principles. Any instance of communication between Catholic institutions and secular media outfits should be done carefully and deliberately so as to limit the risks of any given statement (...) being taken out of context or otherwise misrepresented. (shrink)

My impression is the media aren’t very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion—there are some extra constraints—but it’s not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.

The US and China have both benefited greatly from their trading relationship. However, motivated by a US concern that their partner was becoming more of a rival, then-president Donald Trump began a ‘trade war’ in 2018. In US news outlets and, of particular interest here, on American social media platforms, China was represented as a global menace, with extreme xenophobia against Chinese people. Yet less is known about how Chinese people responded on social media to the (...) same situation. This paper explores the discourses carried on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, focusing on the 2021 Alaska talks between the US and China, where negotiations took place. As with their US counterparts, Weibo users comment little on actual trade benefits or damages caused by the conflict. We find a strong sense of nationalism, but this is not based on xenophobia; rather on a discourse comparing the talks to similar events early in the twentieth century, where the ‘Century of Humiliation’ began, and where territories such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shaoshan were taken by colonial powers. Foregrounded is China’s ability now to end this humiliation. (shrink)

While the proliferation of social media technologies in China has empowered the public with new opportunities for public expression and political engagement in a ‘virtual public sphere’, Chinese Internet censorship has meant that users have to develop creative ways to engage in political criticism. In a context where both mechanical and human censors are employed, Chinese users have become adept at utilizing the affordances of technology, Chinese language and cultural resources to express their opinions through social (...) media. Drawing upon data from the Chinese microblogging website, Weibo, surrounding the major chemical explosions in 2015 in Tianjin, the study explores three discursive techniques of indirection by Chinese social media users to express political criticism in the context of censorship. The study highlights that through the creative use of quotation, allusion and irony, users challenged the authority’s official narratives of the event. The study not only demonstrates the pluralization and dynamics of Chinese online expression, but also points to a better understanding of Chinese censoring as a continuingly evolving interplay between technology and cultural forms and between layers of government and users. (shrink)

This study examined the organizational ethics of 51 Chinese media outlets by investigating their organizational statements through breaking them down into three components: definitions, loyalties and values (functions and purposes), and ethical principles (consequentialism vs. formalism). The impact of three characteristics on organizational ethics was also tested. It was found that the Chinese media are most loyal to organizational development, then to the government; and least loyal to their audience. Furthermore, media organizations tend to use (...) consequentialism rather than formalism to justify their moral decisions. This pattern is particularly salient in TV stations compared with daily newspapers. (shrink)

Purpose Algorithms are in the mainstream media news on an almost daily basis. Their context is invariably artificial intelligence and machine learning decision-making. In media articles, algorithms are described as powerful, autonomous actors that have a capability of producing actions that have consequences. Despite a tendency for deification, the prevailing critique of algorithms focuses on ethical concerns raised by decisions resulting from algorithmic processing. However, the purpose of this paper is to propose that the ethical concerns discussed (...) are limited in scope and suggest that it is not clear what concerns dominate the debate. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a systematic mapping study approach to review articles appearing in leading UK national papers from the perspective of the ethical concerns over a period of one year. The articles are categorised using a widely cited framework detailing a taxonomy of ethical concerns. The UK context is important because of UK public policy initiatives around AI. Findings The research presented in this paper contributes the first systematic mapping study of articles appearing in leading UK national papers from the perspective of widely accepted ethical concerns such as inscrutable evidence, misguided evidence, unfair outcomes and transformative effects. Originality/value The research presented in this paper contributes the first systematic mapping study of articles appearing in leading UK national papers from the perspective of the ethical concerns. The UK context is important because of UK public policy initiatives around AI. To review the media content from the perspective of ethical concerns, this paper uses the synthesised conceptual map of ethical concerns developed by Mittelstad et al. Given the dominance of that framework, this paper’s contribution is also an important instantiation and experimental validation of using that conceptual map. (shrink)

This paper argues that the proliferation of the new term ‘baby man’ has an impact on reconstructing established gender relationships and resisting China's authoritarian political power in a highly-censored online environment. This study employs feminist critical discourse analysis to investigate how Chinese feminism adopts the discursive construction of ‘baby man’ and how they echo the complex historical and sociocultural backgrounds through a case study of 43 posts containing ‘baby man’ on Chinese social media. The finding suggests that (...) the term ‘baby man’ is employed in discursive strategies, namely, double irony, the blunt resistance against both gender and power relationships that deconstruct the heteropatriarchal gender norm through the mother – son female gaze and contempt for the nation's past and current population policy. It argues that despite perennial censorship, these three discursive strategies help reconstruct the extant gender hierarchy backed by conservative Confucianist ethics and represent a grassroots challenge to the political authoritarianism indoctrinated by the state. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to examine how a national minority, in our case Israeli Arabs, perceives its representations in the media during a global pandemic. The importance of this research is in gaining a better understanding of the perceptions of such minorities during global crises so that it can serve as a framework for various similar studies. Israeli Arabs were perceived as those who did not obey the instructions of the Ministry of Health and the government of (...) Israel during the pandemic. Therefore, this study asks: “How and in what ways do Israeli Arabs perceive their representations in the media during the COVID-19 pandemic?” Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to answer this question. The findings show that the interviewees believe that the media did not represent them properly but in a stereotypical way, and that the government and media should have adjusted health instructions in a way that is compatible with their culture. The research concludes that the media have the responsibility of ensuring an overall representation of minorities that is adequate and positive. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Canadian mainstream media’s response to Black Lives Matter Toronto, focusing in particular on two events that occurred in the city in the Summer of 2016 and Winter of 2017. By relying on Critical Race Theory, I argue that a White-dominated press has been unwilling to engage with the message presented by Black activists under the excuse that the tone of the message is overly harsh and threatening to White audiences. After analysing the historical (...) roots of such a claim, I conclude that, in the current climate, there is no space for any dialogue in what remains an oppressor-oppressed relationship across the country, including in Toronto, Canada’s most multicultural city. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between the government and the media in post-apartheid South Africa. An overview is given of key developments and tensions between the government and the media in the first 10 years of democracy and the ethical frameworks underlying the respective positions. An overview of the debate between the so-called "national interest" and the "public interest" is given, and linked to normative ethical frameworks of libertarianism vis-a-vis communitarianism. A mean between the 2 is suggested in (...) the form of mutualism, whereas the necessity for conceptual clarification in debating the relation between the government and the media is emphasized. (shrink)

The social status of teaching profession has rapidly plummeted in the Turkish society. This study discusses the societal aspect of social status and aims to critically analyse the representations of mainstream media about Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge teachers in Turkey as one of the societal reflections of teachers’ social statues. Although the dimensions of media effect on societal perceptions are not fully located, an indirect effect cannot be ignored. The study’s methodology, T. A. van Dijk’s critical (...) discourse analysis is recruited for its comprehensive interpretation opportunities alongside with the thematic analysis, which is recruited to categorise the themes due to the ten-year duration chosen to analyse the news on the media. The examined examples of news are categorised into three themes as positive individual representations, negative individual representations and professional representations. Reflections of reactive news, which is a sub-category for individual negative representations, are found to be the section where the ideological stances/worldviews mostly are detected. Teachers’ educational actions/expressions within the classroom or actions/expressions outside school are determined to be included in the news in a way to create public discussion and moral panic. The hidden intentions and purposes behind these choices are open to discussion. The study recruits thematic analysis and Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis for analysis purposes. It is found that the majority of news is negative examples and represented with the striking headlines. Within the ten years duration explored, a transformation has been identified in both the cases, which are the sources of the news and how they are presented in the newspapers. As a conclusion, it is argued that the Turkish media should adopt a more positive and realistic attitude towards reflecting teachers’ social representation. (shrink)

This paper deals with transcultural ethnic media, that is, ethnic media with at least two additional fundamental benefits: They provide space for and aim at different ethnic communities and connect them to the major society. Additionally, they include inter- and transcultural content and provide professional journalism. Content analyses with particular focus on the conveyed values as well as the perception of such a magazine ‒ biber, published in Vienna, Austria ‒ by traditional print media reveal that in (...) reporting on issues not covered by mainstream media, transcultural magazines promote counter-public spheres on the one hand. On the other hand, they offer the majority society insights into ethnic communities. Mainstream media report much more frequently about such a transcultural magazine than about ‘classic’ ethnic media, evaluate it positively and see it as an important contribution to the media landscape. Overall, transcultural media play an important role in gaining bridging social capital. (shrink)

As the title of the present publication suggests, the ten essays of this book try to approach an inconvenient trauma of global human reality and the uniformity of media and cyberspace in which human lives suffer harm, loss of inner identity and of broader meaning. Indeed, our postmodern and post-identity times are characterized by a flux of rapid social changes, uncertainty, vague and shaking moral values, by violence and frightening information with its contradictory truths and genuine ambiguity; finally by (...) the violence of unpredictable climate change resulting in various and frequent calamities and devastation of life. Doubt and time are the central concern of modern philosophy and remind us that violence is inherent in the human condition and that reflection on it, regardless of different cultural sensibilities, is ipso facto part of the mainstream of our individual and global concerns. These, and many other fascinating topics from Western and Chinese history, were explored and brought to light by a learned forum of distinguished scholars and experts whose contributions are contained in this publication. (shrink)

Delivering news on social media platforms is an increasingly important consideration in journalism practice. However, little attention has been paid to audience engagement with news on social media, especially the discursive presentation of news on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. Based on 36 news reports collected from the People’s Daily official account, this study analyses how news discourse is constructed and presented to engage audiences. The results suggest that highlighting proximity, personalisation, positivity and human interest (...) in news values are the strategies adopted by journalists to engage audiences. The headline tends to use forward-referring terms and performs the speech acts of assertives and expressives to construct news values of proximity and positivity. The news story makes use of particular addressing terms, reported speeches and evaluative markers to construct news values of personalisation, positivity and human interest. The study enriches the analysis of journalistic practice of news on social media in the Chinese context. (shrink)

In this study, the under-examined area of privacy perception and protection on Chinese social media is investigated. The prevalence of digital technology shapes the social, political and cultural aspects of the lives of urban young adults. The influential Chinese social media platform WeChat is taken as a case study, and the ease of connection, communication and transaction combined with issues of commercialisation and surveillance are discussed in the framework of the privacy paradox. Protective behaviour and tactics (...) are examined through different perceptions of privacy in the digital age. The findings of this study suggest that users possess certain amount of freedoms on WeChat. However, users’ individual privacy attitudes and behaviour in practice suggest they have a declined sense of their own freedom and right to privacy. A privacy paradox exists when users, while holding a high level of concerns, in reality do little to further the protection of their personal information on WeChat. We argue that once a user has ingrained part of their social engagement within the WeChat system, the incentive for them to remain a part of the system outweighs their requirement to secure their privacy online as their decision-making is largely based on a simple cost-benefit analysis. The power and social capital yielded via WeChat is too valuable to give up as WeChat is widely used not only for private conversations, but also for study or work-related purposes. It further blurs the boundaries between the public, the professional and the private, which is a rather unique case compared with other social media around the world. (shrink)

Originating in a 1983 Mexican Government Program, the term ‘food sovereignty’ was coined in 1996 by La Via Campesina—a global peasant network—to address concerns within the civil society for food security. Rather than to accept the neoliberal framework of mainstream food security definition and governance, the food sovereignty movement seeks to view food security as the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture systems with limited corporation intervention. As a result, food production should be geared toward (...) the domestic and local markets and not toward international trade that only benefits corporations. This food sovereignty movement was inducted into China in 2013 just as China’s agricultural systems were shifting toward a more corporate-centric structure that increasingly exploits the small-scale farmers. A question was hence raised: How have the global civil society networks influenced the Chinese civil society and promoted China’s local food sovereignty movement? Through the world society theory, the author has identified social forums, such as international conferences and social media channels, as an expedient means for interactions. However, as the Chinese government continues to develop a corporate-centric food security governance system and tighten its civil society space, the impacts of China’s food sovereignty movement remain unclear. (shrink)

_ Americans were forced to decide during an 18-month period of intense uncertainty whether to invade Iraq as part of the war against terrorism. This article reports compelling evidence that mainstream media between September 2001 and March 2003 failed in their primary responsibility: to provide sound news and commentary on which Americans could base critical decisions about war and peace. One reason is that journalists did not use an objective approach-in part because it had been discredited by (...) class='Hi'>media professionals and critics who advocated more activist approaches. (shrink)

Originating in a 1983 Mexican Government Program, the term ‘food sovereignty’ was coined in 1996 by La Via Campesina—a global peasant network—to address concerns within the civil society for food security. Rather than to accept the neoliberal framework of mainstream food security definition and governance, the food sovereignty movement seeks to view food security as the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture systems with limited corporation intervention. As a result, food production should be geared toward (...) the domestic and local markets and not toward international trade that only benefits corporations. This food sovereignty movement was inducted into China in 2013 just as China’s agricultural systems were shifting toward a more corporate-centric structure that increasingly exploits the small-scale farmers. A question was hence raised: How have the global civil society networks influenced the Chinese civil society and promoted China’s local food sovereignty movement? Through the world society theory, the author has identified social forums, such as international conferences and social media channels, as an expedient means for interactions. However, as the Chinese government continues to develop a corporate-centric food security governance system and tighten its civil society space, the impacts of China’s food sovereignty movement remain unclear. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 2. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 419 Paul Amar Insurgent African Intimacies in Pandemic Times: Deimperial Queer Logics of China’s New Global Family inWolf Warrior 2 This essay offers a new paradigm of “deimperial queer analysis” that reveals the tension between the People’s Republic of China’s extractive expansionism in Africa and its claim to solidarity with Africans against white supremacy and Northern imperialism. China (...) has been labeled an “anti-imperial empire” that forcefully challenges previous Euro-American imperial legacies—all while it verges on reenacting them.1 A critical way it resolves this geopolitical tension is through the articulation of a mission for global China, and since 2017, the heroic filmic fictional figure of the “Wolf Warrior” anchors such an approach. The Wolf Warrior is a gorgeous, muscled, Chinese male rogue soldier in exile who adventures through the archipelago of the PRC’s shipping, mining, and medical projects across the Global South to battle white mercenaries, corrupt Asian businessmen, and local pirates—all while saving Africa from a ravaging pandemic. Extending a hugely popular film series, the release in 2017 of the blockbuster Wolf Warrior 2 (abbreviated below as Wolf 2) unleashed a worldwide social media frenzy as well as a revolution in diplomatic tone and protocol for China. In these ways, Wolf Warrior 2 came to mark the debut of the global PRC as a hegemonic structure 1. David Armitage, “The Anti-Imperial Empire?” Times Literary Supplement, no. 6018, August 3, 2018, https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-anti-imperialempire -american. 420 Paul Amar of feeling with an attendant popular cultural logic, launching a cast of military characters, humanitarian imaginaries, and gendered rebranding initiatives. These fused into a global cultural megaproject with the PRC presenting itself as a leader in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South—a time the PRC has officially branded as its “Rejuvenation Era” of “Stepping Out into the World.” This essay shows how exactly this Wolf Warrior imagination has legitimized a new global regime, but I also reveal how, paradoxically, the Wolf Warrior regime has offered a distinct, more subversive worlding project. I argue here that the utopia immanent in this project can be revealed by interpretively turning this Wolf universe inside out through a deimperial queer analysis that honors and combines a Third World feminist lens and the “Asia as Method” approach with Danmei/BL and Slash queer-feminist fanfiction hacks. Danmei is a Chinese (originally mainly Tawainese) fanfiction genre that subverts mainstream heteronormative narratives by erotically aestheticizing and renarrating male-male intimacies within mainstream plotlines from feminist perspectives. BL (short for “boylove ”) is a similar Japanese fanfiction genre, and Slash is the term used in English for the queer/feminist hacking and excavation of sublimated and particularly utopian gender and sexuality plots from within seemingly conventional heteronormative or patriarchal popular-cultural texts. The everted or inside-out epistemology given expression here uses a set of non-phallogocentric lenses and decolonial feminist decoding practices. At stake is the urgency of not repeating the epistemic violence of conventional “anti-imperial” arguments, which tend to be heteronormative, statist, macho, and monolithic. Instead, the form of critique elaborated here brings questions of gender, race, and sexuality to the fore through a three-part approach. First, I identify the homoerotic register of the techno-infrastructural elements in the film. I generate close readings that detail the visual and genre codes of battle scenes, thug subjects, and piracy plots that forge a homoerotic model of rogue or “wolf” governmentality and that act as a metaphor for China’s techno -infrastructural rule. Second, this essay explores the gendered hauntings of supremacist humanism. I deploy a decolonial feminist lens to map the configuration of African women, female doctors, Maoist women insurgents, and feminized “flowerboys” as a rebel protectorate overseen by China’s phallic prerogative that is itself haunted by the specters of Euro-American humanist betrayal and white supremacy. Third, Paul Amar 421 I trace queer kinship utopias. I demonstrate that Wolf Warrior 2 rejuvenates a non-Western, queer, globalist kinship structure that triangulates Asian, white, and Black through adoption dramas and bromance bonds. Through these intimacies, an... (shrink)

Misbehaviour and malpractices of Chinese journalists in recent years have brought media corruption under the spotlight. The lack of professionalism and scarcity of fully established ethics in media organisations have made the case worse. However, while Chinese media and academics concentrate narrowly on paid-for news or gag fee by prompting the enforcement of disciplinary restraints and ‘thought education’, this hot issue has been largely ignored by western scholars and has only been occasionally reported by some (...) western media. Based mainly on prominent cases and document studies, this article classifies three major types of media corruption in the Chinese context: (1) individual red-envelope taking, (2) institutional profit seeking and (3) personal businesses benefiting from the identity of a reporter. It then explores two major endogenous causes of media corruption: media’s unique role in China’s political power structure and their monopoly in information collection and delivery. Two current countermeasures undertaken against this phenomenon in China are finally analysed. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Sinophobia which is usually not expressed openly in the public service media. The Sinophobia discourse intensified in 2020 in connection with the coverage of the pandemic. How are anti-Chinese attitudes expressed in the news discourse of the Czech Radio and Czech Television? Examples from a broader analysis of the representation of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic in news and journalism programmes are given. Inductive qualitative research methods (discourse and semiotic analysis) were used to detect subtle nuances (...) of meaning and reveal implicit presuppositions. This study focuses on the manifestations of bias, e.g., the ideologically grounded attitudes of the speakers. The anti-Chinese statements (about poor hygiene habits and eating wild animals) were most often mentioned in connection with the origin of the coronavirus, vaccination, and China expansive policy. Sinophobic messages were built on the opposition of Us and Them, which is, according to van Dijk (2000), the core of new racism. In spite of the fact that the open hate speech and systematic bias (intentional implications, obvious evaluation or signposting) were not found in the researched sample, the analysis identified the presence of Sinophobic statements in both public service media. (shrink)

The concept of a public energy field is central to public administration discourse theory. Its main idea is the facilitation of dialog between government and the public, on the basis of equality, to construct a public policy consensus. In contemporary society, social media provides new and distinctive channels for such interactions. Social media can, therefore, be conceived as a novel type of public energy field. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, interactions between the Chinese government and (...) the Chinese public have been acutely reflected through WeChat official accounts. This article focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and, through social media text mining and processing, analyzes the text topics and emotions covered. Basic principles of discourse validity, regarding this public energy field and two guarantee conditions, are applied to analyze the information exchange and dialog between the government and the public on COVID-19 through WeChat official accounts. It was found that the government’s WeChat official accounts have not yet formed a harmonious dialog space to balance the public energy field, and that the interaction between the government and the public has to be improved. The government’s social discourse had a significant influence on the public’s social discourse. Using text analysis, the study found that the government has published information on 11 topics related to the prevention and control of the pandemic. It can be argued that the public energy field presented by both the government and the public effectively portrayed and reflected the actual situation of the pandemic in China. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an increasing academic interest in Chinese homosexuality; however, linguistic-oriented research on this topic is scant and multimodal inquiry on it is even rarer. To address the gap, this article conducts a discourse analysis of how tongzhi in mainland China are represented by news media. Specifically, we examine both linguistic and visual representations of tongzhi by utilizing two influential English-language newspapers in mainland China published between 2009 and 2019. Our data consist of 221 news articles (...) totaling 117,407 words; 44 of the articles are accompanied with pictures. Methodologically, we draw on Halliday’s transitivity structure coupled with van Leeuwen’s classification of social actors. Our findings reveal that Chinese tongzhi are mainly represented in a negative fashion, and that there is little positive news representation of this invisible community. In addition, socio-cultural factors contributing to media representations of Chinese tongzhi are considered. (shrink)

Background:As a highly contagious disease, the COVID-19 pandemic has become a serious health threat and psychological burden for the global communities. From the conceptual perspective of affordances, this research examined the role of social media for health campaign and psychological support during the global crisis.Methods:Data from both social media and a nationwide survey were collected and analyzed. Face mask-related posts on Sina Weibo from January 1, 2020, to June 30, 2020, were retrieved and studied. Face mask wearing as (...) a well-established preventive measure was identified and examined from hashtag topics. A nationwide survey with a randomized experiment embedded was conducted to further investigate the mobilizing dynamics.Results:During the escalation phase in the first half of 2020, the hashtag topic “#national mask campaign#,” initiated by a celebrity, topped the ranking of mask-related topics on Weibo. The findings indicated that prevention activities, solidarity expression, and names of celebrity idols were frequently discussed. With celebrity idols as opinion leaders, millions of fandom publics actively participated in this hashtag health campaign. Results of the nationwide survey show the popularity of fan identity, and the experiment results demonstrate the strong mobilizing power of celebrity idol and fandom community in civic engagement and participation among young Chinese.Conclusions:The research demonstrates how the affordances of social media, such as liking, commenting, reposting, and hashtagging can be influential in promoting health behaviors and expressing solidarity. Implications for public health professionals and policymakers to raise awareness and understanding about health campaigns via social media are discussed. (shrink)

Social media has been widely applied by major religions throughout the world to enhance cohesion among believers. Although a considerable amount of research has focused on the effect of social media on the beliefs of Christianity and Islam, East Asian religions have seldom been featured in current research. This study, therefore, took a representative sample of individuals participating in the celebration of the festival of the goddess Mazu and measured their attitudes towards and perceptions of social media’s (...) influence on folk religion. I also explored how social media stimulates transformation in Chinese folk religion, its influence on the preservation of cultural values, and the cross-industry alliance between folk temples and local businesses. Moreover, this study proposes suggestions for further research. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the ways socio-economic issues are represented in mainstream news media and how it is consumed, understood and interpreted by Israeli young adults. It examines how mainstream media uses neo-liberal discourse, and the ways YAs internalize this ethic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome its limitations. Design/methodology/approach This was a mixed methods study. First, it undertook content analysis of the most popular Israeli mainstream news media among YAs: the online (...) news site Ynet and the TV Channel 2 news. Second, the authors undertook semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 Israeli YAs. The analysis is based on an online survey of 600 young Israelis, aged 18–35 years. Findings Most YAs did not perceive mainstream media as enabling a reliable understanding of the issues important to them. The content analysis revealed that self-representation of YAs is rare, and that their issues were explained, and even resolved, by older adults. Furthermore, most of YAs' problems in mainstream news media were presented using a neo-liberal perspective. Finally, from the interviews, the authors learned that YAs did not find information that could help them deal with their most pressing economic and social issue, in the content offered by mainstream media. For most of them, social media overcomes these shortcomings. Originality/value Contrary to research that has explored YAs’ consumerism of new media outlets, this article explores how YAs in Israel are constructed in the media, as well as the way in which YAs understand mainstream and new social media coverage of the issues most important to them. Using media content analysis and interviews, the authors found that Young Adults tend to be ambivalent toward media coverage. They understand the lack of media information: most of them know that they do not learn enough from the media. This acknowledgment accompanies their tendency to internalize the neo-liberal logic and conservative Israeli national culture, in which class and economic redistribution are largely overlooked. Mainstream news media uses neo-liberal discourse, and young adults internalize this logic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome the limitations this discourse offers. They do so by turning to social media, mainly Facebook. Consequently, their behavior maintains the logic of the market, while also developing new social relations, enabled by social media. (shrink)

This paper mainly introduces the application of immersive media in Chinese public cultural participation from the perspective of cultural education, as well as the important value of the application of immersive media in expanding the breadth, accuracy, and depth of education and thereby improving the quality of education. On this basis, the realistic path of the role of immersive media technology in further realizing public cultural participation is discussed. First of all, through a questionnaire survey, it (...) analyzes the problems existing in Chinese public cultural participation from the perspective of cultural education and the application of immersive media in Chinese public cultural participation. Secondly, from the aspects that the application of immersive media can extend the space of cultural participation, enrich the content of cultural participation and strengthen the value recognition of cultural participation, it demonstrates that immersive media helps to solve the dilemma of Chinese public cultural participation as a whole and thus improve the quality of education. This will bring new possibilities for expanding Chinese public cultural participation and promoting public social education and cultural quality education. Finally, it discusses the further development of immersive media technology in the field of cultural education from the aspects of optimizing the ecology of immersive media development, promoting the R&D and application of immersive media technology, and promoting the integration of immersive media with cultural participation space and cultural education content. (shrink)

The vertiginous rise of right-wing populism, especially in its “nationalist, xenophobic and conservative form”, and some “racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and sexist” drifts associated with this phenomenon – whether real or perceived as such – make the mainstream media play a double role. On the one hand, the mainstream media reflect the struggle for political hegemony between different vested interests; on the other hand, they engage in the fight against right-wing populism blasting both right-wing populist candidates and (...) their voters or supporters. Many mainstream journalists ask citizens to realize a “sanitary cordon”, a “wall” or a “republican front” to block far-right populism and preserve liberal democracy. Moreover, they urge people to be wary of all attempts to “dediabolize” or “normalize” some tokens of right-wing populism. The main idea of this article is that right-wing populism is more harmless than is generally believed and, if excessive, negative media coverage doesn’t baffle but feed it. Populism is essentially a latent side effect of liberal democracy. Populism rises and becomes obtrusive only if a significant part of society perceives a regime of illiberal majoritarianism instead of one of liberal democracy. Right-wing populists are chiefly frustrated “ci-devants” who feel dispossessed of their past, identity, properties, qualities, privileges or titles. Inasmuch as the causes of collective frustration are many and varied (e.g. the real or just perceived corruption of the elites, the “system”, the deep state, the relocation of jobs, immigration, national sovereignty, national identity, communitarianism, radical Islamism, the status of some traditional institutions, some chapters of official history, etc.), there will always be right-wing populists, whether they are self-declared or covert. By adopting David G. Hackett’s thesis that the media are “agents of hegemony”, we applied the critical analysis of discourse to a set of 346 media articles in order to reveal the discursive sources of power, domination, inequality and partiality. The articles appeared in The New York Times and Le Monde during the period 2016-2017, at the time when the presidential elections took place in the United States and France. The articles were selected according to the occurrence of the keywords “Donald Trump” – “populism” and “Marine Le Pen” – “populisme” within the titles. The analysis of these articles reveals a divisive discursive structure that correspond to a real political cleavage in society. It is true that populism presents a “Manichean outlook”, in which there are only friends and foes” and no compromise is possible. It is also true that mainstream media reinforce this Manichean perspective on society and make populists feel marginalized and politically disempowered. The mainstream media may appease right-wing populism if they treat its followers as legitimate and equal political actors. For this, they have to give up the narrative structures that underscore insurmountable divergences and irreconcilable interests. In a liberal democracy, mass media should chiefly play the role of mediator. They may not aim to defeat or re-educate certain categories of citizens just because they advocate “wrong” political solutions. (shrink)

The United States has a current population of approximately 313.9 million people. In 2013, more than 600 million users had active accounted on Qzone, China’s largest social media site (Millward 2013). Although discussions of social media tend to assume American or European users, social media is a worldwide phenomenon, and different locales bring different concerns to bear on social media ethics. China not only leads the world in terms of sheer numbers of users, but also has (...) the most active environment for social media, ranging from instant chat platforms like QQ to blogs, microblogs, social networking sites, and gaming platforms. Chinese users also spend approximately 40 percent of their time online on social media sites (Chiu, Ip, and Silverman 2012_. Given this, inquiries into social media ethics should involve China (and other non-Anglo-European locales and concerns). This chapter is split into two parts: part I draws on distinctly Chinese philosophical conceptions of living well in order to provide a cultural recontextualization of some of the questions associated with social media and ethical development, and to hopefully enrich larger discussions of social media ethics; part II considers the contemporary situation of social media in China, what social media actually looks like in China, and some of the political concerns surrounding social media in China. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive introduction to media ethics and an exploration of how it must change to adapt to today's media revolution. Using an ethical framework for the new 'mixed media' ethics – taking in the global, interactive media produced by both citizens and professionals – Stephen J. A. Ward discusses the ethical issues which occur in both mainstream and non-mainstream media, from newspapers and broadcast to social media users and bloggers. (...) He re-defines traditional conceptions of journalistic truth-seeking, objectivity and minimizing harm, and examines the responsible use of images in an image-saturated public sphere. He also draws the contours of a future media ethics for the 'new mainstream media' and puts forward cosmopolitan principles for a global media ethics. His book will be invaluable for all students of media and for others who are interested in media ethics. (shrink)

Trust is often an assumed outcome of participation in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) as they directly connect producers with consumers. It is based on this potential for trust “between producers and consumers” that AFNs have emerged as a significant field of food studies analysis as it also suggests a capacity for AFNs to foster associated embedded qualities, like ‘morality’, ‘social justice’, ‘ecology’ and ‘equity’. These positive benefits of AFNs, however, cannot be taken for granted as trust is not necessarily an (...) outcome of AFN participation. Using Chinese case studies of AFNs, which are characterised by a distinct form of trust pressure—consumers who are particularly cynical about small scale farmers, food safety and the organic credentials of producers—this paper highlights how the dynamics of trust are in constant flux between producers and consumers. I suggest that it is the careful construction of the aesthetic and multi-sensory qualities of food, which is often celebrated via social media, that human centred relations in Chinese AFNs are mediated. This leads to two key conclusions: first, that the key variable for establishing trust is satisfying the consumer's desire for safe (i.e. "fresh") food; and second, the materiality of the food and the perception of foods materiality (especially through social media), must both be actively constructed by the farmer to fit the consumer's ideal of freshness. (shrink)

It is a well-established fact that most new, non-traditional religious groups are treated negatively in the mass media. However, Falun Gong, the qi gong group that was banned in China in 1999, is a marked exception to this general tendency. Why should this be the case? In the present paper, we examine the various factors that combine to make Falun Gong the exception to the rule. We also call attention to this organization’s pattern of attacking critics, as well as (...) their pattern of attacking anyone who offers an interpretation of events that is at odds with Falun Gong’s interpretation. However, this heavy-handed tactic has the potential to backfire, and to prompt the media to reperceive them as a bully rather than as an innocent victim. (shrink)

Public concern over major agricultural product safety incidents, such as swine flu and avian flu, can intensify financial losses in the livestock and poultry industries. Crawler technology were applied to reviewed the Weibo social media discussions on the African Swine Fever incident in China that was reported on 3 August 2018, and used content analysis and network analysis to specifically examine the online public opinion network dissemination characteristics of verified individual users, institutional users and ordinary users. It was found (...) that: attention paid to topics related to “epidemic,” “treatment,” “effect” and “prevent” decrease in turn, with the interest in “prevent” increasing significantly when human infections were possible; verified individual users were most concerned about epidemic prevention and control and play a supervisory role, the greatest concern of institutional users and ordinary users were issues related to agricultural industry and agricultural products price fluctuations respectively; among institutional users, media was the main opinion leader, and among non-institutional users, elites from all walks of life, especially the food safety personnel acted as opinion leaders. Based on these findings, some policy suggestions are given: determine the nature of the risk to human health of the safety incident, stabilizing prices of relevant agricultural products, and giving play to the role of information dissemination of relevant institutions. (shrink)

In this study, I demonstrate the consequences of the triumph of neoliberalism and media deregulation for democracy. I argue that the tremendous concentration of power in the hands of corporate groups who control powerful media conglomerates has intensified a crisis of democracy in the United States and elsewhere. Providing case studies of how mainstream media in the United States have become tools of conservative and corporate interests since the 1980s, I discuss how the corporate media (...) helped forge a conservative hegemony, failed to address key social problems, and promoted the candidacy of George W. Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Key Words. (shrink)

As a type of public discourse closely related to litigation practices, Chinese legal news reports incorporate the important progress in China’s judicial reform. Meanwhile, due to the competitive pressure and driven by profit, Chinese legal news reports are characteristic of an evident trend of marketization. This article examines how and to what extent sensationalism invades Chinese legal news reports. The research methodology combines the theoretical paradigms of critical discourse analysis and genre analysis, with particular attention paid to (...) the notions of genre and interdiscursivity. The data include 70 legal news reports in Legal Daily. Analytical results show that Chinese legal news reports, although being a highly institutional genre, include a number of sensational strategies which promote the restructuring of legal news reports in China. (shrink)

This article maps the conceptual history of global inequality from its marginal status in the 1980s, its minute mainstreaming within research and globalization discourse from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, until its popularization, politicization, and “economization” in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, recession, and the publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century in 2014. Asking when, why, and how global inequality became a key concept, it draws upon quantitative and qualitative analysis of global inequality in (...) scientific articles, books, and public media. It traces transformations in the term's temporal and spatial meanings and situates these in the contexts of rising within-nation and declining between-nation inequality, inequality research, inequality in public media, and broader discursive fields. (shrink)

This article develops a framework to analyze how political actors adopt social media in systems characterized by clientelism and populism, tracing the consequences and disruptive capabilities of the forms of social media adoption. The framework proceeds in two analytical stages. The first locates actors’ structural positions in the political system (internal/external) and their relationship with the mainstream media (allied/antagonistic). The second builds on pragmatism focusing on iterative problem situations actors face that explain forms of social (...) class='Hi'>media adoption. In examining the structural positions and problem-solving stages of Colombian political actors, this article articulates three paths of adoption: habit preservation, internal innovation, and external innovation. Preservationists understand the new technology in old terms, projecting their understandings of old media onto the new one. Internal innovators combine clientelist practices and communication ones, upholding core routines while integrating new ones; they show a potential to reshape the system internally, making viable part of it, but changing the balance of power between existing elites. External innovators develop practices that integrate physical spaces and online communication, displaying a disruptive potential for existing core practices and the political system. In this way, the framework and empirical case link and develop the literatures on clientelism and political communication. (shrink)