Studies in Communication Sciences 13 (2013) 106

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Studies in Communication Sciences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scoms

Editorial

The latest look at media studies in China

Chinas media landscape has evolved greatly over the last few
years. Technological innovation, the transformation of the traditional media industry and the explosion in the use of new media
have changed not only the outlook for the dissemination of entertainment and information, but also the communication methods
and models adopted between the media and the public in China.
Together with the promotion of Chinas Soft Power worldwide, the
media industry has been pinpointed as one of the priority cultural
industries for further economic development.
These evolutions have been studied by Chinese scholars from
different perspectives and at different stages over the years, contributing much to recording the changes in the media landscape in
China, but very little of the fruit of their research has been shared
with the western world. Most of the studies have been carried by
scholars from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore or Chinese scholars
overseas but, partly because of the language barrier, mainland Chinese scholars academic achievements have received less attention
in the international academic literature.
Understanding the important role of Chinese researchers, who
are at the frontier of the media industry in China with their growing capability and desire to communicate with the world, the China
Media Observatory (CMO) at the Universit della Svizzera Italiana
(USI) has worked hard to get in touch with scholars and experts in
the media and communication elds in mainland China in recent
years. Not only has the CMO paid visits to different universities
in China, given seminars there and cooperated on several joint
research projects (i.e. the research project with the Communication University of China Encoding the Olympics was published by
Routledge in 2012), it also tries to invite prominent Chinese scholars to Switzerland each year to share their most recent research
and their in-depth understanding of the media in China.
The idea of organizing a special English publication for mainland Chinese scholars on Media Studies in China was born at the
end of 2011 when Zhan Zhang, researcher and PhD candidate at
the China Media Observatory, went to Shanghai for an academic
conference organized by Fudan University. On that occasion she
met Prof. Dan Huang and Prof. Ye Lu from Fudan and talked with
them about the problems of local Chinese scholars entering the
international academic eld, as well as the exiguity of Chinese scholars publications in the English-speaking world. This idea was then
approved and encouraged by Prof. Fei Jiang, professor and director
of the Communication Department of the Institute of Journalism
and Communication at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
With the backing of Prof. Richeri, director of the China Media
Observatory, CMO and the Communication Department of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences decided to promote the project
and garnered the interest of the editors of Studies of Communication Sciences in publishing a special edition of the Journal. The call
for papers was sent in June 2012 to universities throughout China

and more than 20 abstracts were received. The organizers selected

8 and arranged for the full papers to be peer reviewed. Finally, 4
papers were submitted before the deadline for publication: On the
three waves of Chinas communication studies: A commemoration of
the 30th anniversary of Schramms visit to China & Chinas communication studies in post-Schramm times, by Prof. Fei Jiang; Participative
Chinese audiencesA case study of the reality show Switching Spaces,
by Prof. Kuo Huang; Media exposure and Chinese cultural identity, by
Prof. Yibin Shi; and Social network service and social development in
China, by Prof. Chengyu Xiong and Yuxiang Lv.
On the three waves of Chinas communication studies provides an
historical overview of the relevant literature on how communication studies in China were carried out before and after Schramms
visit to China in 1982. It provides a very clear picture of the efforts
made by Chinese scholars over time to bring Communication Studies to China, and of how Chinas communication studies were nally
conducted from multiple perspectives.
Participative Chinese audiencesA case study of the reality show
Switching Spaces, looks at how Chinese audiences participate in
reality shows and how this specic show reects the audiences
participation. It draws a map of patterns and degrees of audience
participation from cross-analysis of the variables, and provides
some important ndings to understand this eld.
Media exposure and the Chinese cultural identity is about the
relationship between media exposure and Chinese culture identication. A city-wide sample survey is used to show that Chinese
cultural identity is positively associated with the amount of media
exposure in terms of both media format and content (Chinese and
foreign content).
Social network service and social development in China systematically details the development of SNS (Social Network Services)
in China, and divides it into 4 stages based on the following characteristics: traditional networked socializing, the embryonic stage
of SNS, the rapid growth of real-name socializing, and the thriving
stage of socialized media.
We hope you enjoy this special edition and we also hope that
it marks the beginning of a new commitment to bring China and
Switzerland (and Europe) closer in the eld of media and communication studies.
Giuseppe Richeri
Zhan Zhang
China Media Observatory, Lugano, Switzerland
Fei Jiang
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhan.zhang@usi.ch (Z. Zhang)

1424-4896/$ see front matter 2013 Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scoms.2013.11.003