Self-Caging or Playing With the Edge? News Selection Autonomy in Authoritarian China
This article studies how the political affiliation and administrative rank of news organizations in a nondemocratic setting affect news selection autonomy. While existing studies have found that further commercialization contributes to more news selection autonomy, the extent to which political affi...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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SAGE Publishing
2020-05-01
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| Series: | SAGE Open |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020922980 |
| Summary: | This article studies how the political affiliation and administrative rank of news organizations in a nondemocratic setting affect news selection autonomy. While existing studies have found that further commercialization contributes to more news selection autonomy, the extent to which political affiliation and administrative rank of news media explain autonomy remains unknown. Eight Chinese news organizations of varying political affiliations and administrative ranks were thus selected to compare their news and frame selection strategies. The findings reveal that political affiliation largely explains news selection autonomy: Party-affiliated outlets generally have lower news selection autonomy than nonparty outlets. Administrative rank has some effect on news selection autonomy in the highly competitive media markets, where news organizations with a lower administrative ranking must play more with propaganda control to compete with their higher ranking counterparts. |
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| ISSN: | 2158-2440 |