Seeking Truth In International Tv News

This book puts CGTN (formerly CCTV-News) and the BBC’s international television news head-to-head, interrogating competing ‘truths’ in the exacting business of news reporting. Written by a media scholar and former long-serving BBC News journalist, Seeking Truth in International TV News asks if China’s English-language television news programmes are little more than state propaganda, and if the BBC can be viewed as a universal news standard to which all other broadcasters should aspire. Over 8 years of Xi Jinping’s rule, it investigates how the international TV news channels of CGTN and the BBC reported on Chinese politics, protests in Hong Kong, disasters, China in Africa, and insurgency and its suppression in Xinjiang. The comparison reveals uneven editorial imperatives at the Chinese broadcaster and raises questions about the BBC’s professed tenets of balance and impartiality. It also illustrates how Chinese journalists commit ‘small acts of journalism’ that push the boundaries of information control. A rigorous analysis of reportage from the two channels, this book will be relevant to scholars of global media, journalism, international relations and public diplomacy. It will also interest those in academia, the media and international affairs who want to examine the nature of news and ‘soft power’ in a comparative context.

This book discusses the effect of communication strategies in the course of China’s national image building from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. The research data are collected via researcher’s in-depth observation as well as focus group analysis and case study of selected Chinese radio and TV networks. On the basis of the empirical study and drawing on theories of international communication and political communication, this book also introduces an analytical framework that can be used to evaluate the effect of communication strategies in practice. Especially, the framework is applied to systematically analyze the formation and application of Chinese Communist Party’s communication strategy with an aim at improving the national image and increasing its global influence. This book is of interest to graduate students and researchers who are interested in the broadcast communication in China.

This book addresses the issues raised by digital platforms in the Global South, with an emphasis on the cultural stakes involved. It brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers – including political economists, socio-economists, geographers, media sociologists or anthropologists – who each explore these issues through an insightful case study at a local, national, regional or international scale. While studying the strategies of some of the main US-based Big Tech platforms or video streaming platforms towards the Global South, the chapters also consider the often-neglected active role local or regional actors play in the expansion of those Western digital players, and highlight the existence of a constellation of local or regional platforms that have emerged in Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Middle East. In addition to analysing the complex relationships of competition, collaboration or dependence between these diverse actors, this volume examines the ways in which the rise of these digital platforms has generated new forms of cultural entrepreneurship and participated in the reconfiguring of the conditions in which cultural contents are produced and circulated in the Global South. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the transnationalisation of cultural industries or in the social, political, economic, cultural and geopolitical dimensions of digital transformations and will be an important resource for students, teachers and researchers in media, communication, cultural studies, international relations and area studies programmes.

This volume is a theoretically informed comparative analysis of the telecommunications and information policy-making process in two major developing economies, China and India. With a focus on how policies are made rather than what those policies are, the book investigates how policy actors interact within institutional structures to define policy problems and identify potential solutions. The authors explain the evolution of these policy-making systems as the two countries liberalized their economies and opened their media and telecommunications systems to competition over the past two-and-a-half decades. With applications in numerous international contexts, this book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in public policy studies, telecommunications, business, development economics, political science, Asian studies, and public administration.

This book tackles the infodemic—the rapid, widespread diffusion of false, misleading, or inaccurate information about the disease and its ramifications—triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a focus on four Asian societies, the book compares and analyzes the spread of COVID-19 misinformation and its broad impacts on the public in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Singapore. Providing both a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of misinformation and cross-societal analyses of patterns, the book features in-depth analyses of the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation and engagement and explores its consequences in an Asian context. The book sheds lights on these key questions: What types of infodemic messages circulate widely on popular social media platforms? What factors account for exposure to and engagement with debunked yet popular COVID-19 misinformation? How does exposure to widely circulated COVID-19 misinformation affect people’s beliefs, attitudes, and adoption of preventive measures to cope with the pandemic? How do macro social differences condition the diffusion and impacts of COVID-19 misinformation? What intervention strategies can counter the misinformation? Presenting scientific insights and empirical findings on the pressing issues about infodemic, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of communication studies, political science, public health, crisis communication, and Asian Studies, as well as policymakers and practitioners who wish to acquire cutting-edge, evidence-based knowledge about combating misinformation during a global pandemic.

The shift in international relations towards multipolarity has had profound implications across the world, but particularly in highly penetrated regions, such as the Middle East. This book explores the rivalry between the United States, Russia, and China in the region, investigating its effects and assessing the influence of regional actors and issues. Each chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of three core questions: how does global power competition manifest itself?; how does it impact regional political, economic, and security dynamics?; and how do regional actors and issues influence the trajectory and dynamics of global power competition? Expert international contributors take a country case study approach to consider these questions and investigate the most pressing contemporary events, issues, and trends in Middle Eastern politics. Tackling transregional and global issues and themes they analyse the convergence, divergence, and competition between global powers in managing threats and interests such as terrorism, energy and cyber security, nuclear non-proliferation, conflict resolution, and warfare. This volume will appeal to scholars and students of international relations, great power competition, China, Russia, the USA, and the Middle East.

Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication examines the rapidly evolving dynamics between global communication and geopolitics. As an intersection between communication and international relations, it bridges the existing gap in scholarship and highlights the growing importance of digital communication in legitimizing and promoting the geopolitical and economic goals of leading powers. One central theme that emerges in the book is the continuity of asymmetries in power relations that can be traced back to 19th-century European imperialism, manifested in its various incarnations from ‘liberal’ to ‘neo-liberal’, to ‘digital’ imperialism. The book includes a discussion of the post–Cold War US-led transformation of the hardware and software of global communication and how it has been challenged by the ‘rise of the rest’, especially China. Other key issues covered include the geopolitics of image wars, weaponization of information and the visibility of discourses emanating from outside the Euro-Atlantic zone. The ideas and arguments advanced here privilege a reading of geopolitical processes and examples from the perspective of the global South. Written by a leading scholar of global communication, this comprehensive and transdisciplinary study adopts a holistic approach and will be of interest to the global community of scholars, researchers and commentators in communication and international relations, among other fields.

Radio and television news are expanding everywhere, often at the expense of print media. Developments in global communications, in theory at least, have made the world smaller. An event anywhere can theoretically be reported anywhere else on radio within minutes; on television within hours. But theory and practice are often far apart. Broadcast News has become a global business, almost like the music industry, with its own 'Top 10' and an inevitable streamlining of taste. A few major organisations control the newsflow. Syndicators guarantee that more and more of us get to see or hear the same stories. This is typified by the growth of independent or local news stations, and cable suppliers, competing mercilessly with the traditional giants of the news airwaves (the US Networks, the BBC and other Public Service Broadcasters, etc.). But does this development satisfy the democratic demands of enlightened society and of informed citizens? This book presents a catalogue of worries, but also some rays of hope. It looks in detail at news broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic. It also covers the international broadcasting scene as well as third world countries and recent developments in Glasnost's USSR. A major empirical study of what we get from broadcast news (taking the case of the USA, Britain and Sweden) is also presented. Models useful for understanding both the present and the future are suggested.