Mass Writing in Modern China: The Generation, Development, and Turning Points of Urban Newspapers

Author: Sun Wei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: Urban newspapers are considered a "new type of comprehensive newspaper in China." The grand landscape of urban newspapers in contemporary China is shaped by its history and reality. Urban newspapers have thus become an indispensable mirror of modern China. Urban newspaper studies have gradually become a hot topic in both the industry and academia since the mid-1990s. These studies can be broadly divided into two categories. One is operational research within the field of journalism and communication, which reveals the basic rules and procedures of urban newspapers as a special form of news production. The other is critical research in humanities and social sciences, which points out the impact of this news production on Chinese society and its historical process. The stance, framework, and use of theoretical tools in this book are based on a reflection of the above two research tendencies, aiming to integrate operational media studies with humanities and social science research, exploring new paths in media studies. Therefore, this book adopts the framework of the relationship between urban newspapers and modernity, publicity, "lifepolitics," and consumer culture. In the author's view, these themes are the most important propositions in contemporary China during the modernization process, and they also provide strong support for the brief yet dazzling development history of urban newspapers. Urban newspapers and modern China are deeply intertwined and inseparable in these dimensions. The "urban newspaper phenomenon" is thus not merely the professional achievement of journalists, but also the "mass writing" of countless ordinary people about contemporary Chinese society. This perspective, theory, and methodology, which differ from traditional newspaper studies, constitute the features and novelty of this book.