Using the analogy of an orchestra, the book looks at the ways in which the Party-state conducts communications in China.
Rather than treating China's communications system as purely one of centralised top-down control, this book proffers that it is the combination of the government through its state policies, the propaganda bureau's campaigns, commercial consumer culture, digital and traditional media platforms, celebrities, entertainers and journalists, educators, community interest groups, and family and friends, who all contribute to the evolution of how ideas are perpetuated, enforced and legitimised in China.
Covering themes such as censorship, surveillance, national narratives onscreen and in everyday life, political agency, creative work, news production and gender politics, this book gives an insight into the complex web of conditions, objectives and challenges that the Chinese leadership faces when orchestrating their visions for the nation's future. As such, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, Chinese politics and Chinese Studies.
About the Author: Nicole Talmacs is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Malta (Malta). She is an interdisciplinary researcher, who draws from the fields of Media and Communications, Social Theory, Political Science, International Studies, and Cultural Studies. She is author of China's Cinema of Class: Audiences and Narratives (Routledge) and co-editor of The China Question: Contestations and Adaptations. Her recent works appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Asian and African Studies, and Media International Australia.
Altman Yuzhu Peng is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests lie at the intersections of Feminism, Public Relations, and Media & Cultural Studies. He is author of A Feminist Reading of China's Digital Public Sphere, co-editor of China, Media, and International Conflicts, and has published over 20 scholarly articles in such peer-reviewed academic journals as Asian Journal of Communication, Convergence, Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse, Context & Media, and Television and New Media.
