Joyce Nip

A meta-review of Chinese media

studies, 19982008
Abstract
This article aims to provide the first comprehensive meta-review of Chinese media
studies in an international academic journal. It situates the state of the field against
the historical context of institutional development and the flow of ideas related to
the study of media in China. Content analysis was conducted on 147 articles in
52 top academic journals between 1998 and 2008. Results show that research on
Chinese media has increasingly drawn interest beyond ethnic Chinese researchers,
with a rising proportion of articles published by non-ethnic Chinese, and growing
collaboration between non-ethnic and ethnic Chinese researchers. The industries
and genres have broadened, but journalism remains the most studied industry as
it has been since media studies started in China. The internet has become the most
researched medium. Partly due to the influence of mass communication research
in the United States, the media message has become the most popular subject of
study. Qualitative methods have been used more often than quantitative ones, but
an increase in quantitative methods is expected among scholars in Mainland China,
as positivist hypothesis-testing methods gain wide acceptance there.

Introduction
In this article, the term media studies refers to all approaches of investigation that take
any medium of communication as their subject of study in contrast to the more broadly
taken sense of the term that refers to the cultural studies of media that sprang up in the
United Kingdom in the 1960s. In fact, given the historical influence of scholarship from
the United States, communication institutionalised as a discipline in the United States
in the 1940s is the term more often used in academic institutions in China. Likewise,
the term Chinese media studies used in this article does not imply the existence of a
theoretical perspective specific to the study of Chinese media. It is used merely to refer
to studies of media in Chinese communities, societies or peoples, which form the basis
for this article.
Similar meta-reviews on Chinese media studies have not been available. So far, the
accounts of changes in the field tend to focus only on one of the three main Chinese
societies: Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Many of them particularly those
written about Mainland China were written in Chinese. Few of them included research
conducted outside Chinese societies on Chinese media. Those that did focused only on
one sub-field, such as political communication (Wilnat and Aw, 2004) or internet studies
(Kluver and Yang, 2005). Xus (2000) review of Chinese communication studies was an
exception, but its analysis was based only on seven international journals, and the period
covered was 198797. This article meets the need for a comprehensive up-to-date metareview of Chinese media studies, including 52 top journals in the study. The focus on
international journals is particularly meaningful as Mainland Chinese scholars are aiming
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at them as avenues for publication, following an initial push for publishing in Chinese
national journals.
Apart from their limited scope, many of the earlier reviews also suffered from problematic
methods. The categorisation criteria used for content analysis were often unclear, resulting
in uncertain boundaries of the categories. This study aims to overcome this problem by
proposing a new scheme of classification, one that may contribute towards the setting of
a benchmark for future comparisons.
The aim of this article is mainly descriptive: to present the current state of Chinese
media studies in terms of what is being studied, by whom and how. Media studies is
influenced by changes in media itself notably technology, industrial organisation and
socio-cultural context, including policy, social organisation and cultural values which
in turn influences both uses and culture. These changes take different forms in different
Chinese societies and communities. As in any other academic discipline or field, Chinese
media studies is also influenced by intellectual currents and the flow of ideas, which go
a long way towards defining the position of the discipline within academia. In addition,
several unique factors in Chinese societies including, notably, political and ideological
changes influence Chinese media studies, as they do studies on other aspects of China.
However, the ways in which these factors affect the scope, agenda and forms of research
on Chinese media go beyond the scope of this article. The price of the comprehensive
review is that specific research issues cannot be pursued. What this article does hope to
achieve is to throw light on the question by setting the descriptive analysis against the
historical context, focusing mainly on the institutional development of, and changes to,
ideas in the field. On this basis, the findings of a content analysis are discussed below.

The birth of education on media in China

In China, systematic studies of the media first appeared in the journalism field in 1918,
when Peking University set up the Association of Journalism Research (Wu, 2006; Zhang,
2005). Elective courses on journalism offered in 1918 at St Johns University in Shanghai
(Wu, 2006) were followed by the establishment there of the first Department of Journalism
two years later, and then by the opening of similar departments in other parts of the
country (Wu, 2006). By 1949, there were 59 institutes of journalism (Fang, 2000, in Wu,
2006). However, many did not survive the ideological dictates of the communist regime
after 1949, and were closed down, merged or replaced by newly created Departments
of Journalism in other universities entrusted to take up the ideological gauntlet. When
the Cultural Revolution began, there were fourteen Journalism Departments nationwide
(Wu, 2006).
In other areas of media studies, evidence suggests that as early as 1925 a Chinese
sociologist obtained his PhD from the University of New York with a thesis that studied
public opinion in the United States about China (Zhang, 2005). Ideas on mass communication
were first introduced to the country through translated works published in 1956 (Zhang,
2005). However, further developments in media studies in Mainland China had to wait
until the open-door policy of 1978.
When journalism education in the Mainland came under the influence of the Soviet
model of propaganda in the 30 years between the communist takeover and the open-door
policy, media studies took root in Taiwan after the relocation of the National Chengchi
University across the Taiwan Strait in 1954, with the establishment in the same year of
its Graduate Institute of Journalism (Chen, 2001). This was followed by the successive
establishment of other university programs, but a doctoral program in Journalism Studies
was not started until 1983 in the National Chengchi University. The establishment of
the School of Communication in the National Chengchi University in 1989 to oversee
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journalism, advertising, and radio and television was considered a milestone (Wang, 2006).
In addition to the more traditional communication policy and social effects analysis,
various branches of communication studies, including telecommunications, information
management, information and multimedia production, began to be offered in a period of
expansion during the first half of the 1990s (Wang, 2006). By 1995, it was estimated
that Taiwan had produced over 100 PhDs in communication-related disciplines (Hsu and
Chen, 1996), and at that time the academic qualifications of communications faculty staff
in Taiwan were on average much higher than those in Hong Kong or Singapore (Wang,
1996). By the mid-2000s, twelve universities were hosting fourteen graduate programs
on journalism or communications, two of which were doctoral programs (Wang, 2006).
In Hong Kong, journalism training first appeared in 1927 (Leung et al., 2006).
Systematic research training was started with the establishment of the first Masters program
on journalism and communication in 1977, but the first doctoral program was not set
up until 1995 (Leung et al., 2006), when tertiary education in Hong Kong experienced
a period of rapid growth.
In Mainland China, the open-door policy provided the environment for the revitalisation
of journalism education. The first Masters and doctoral programs on journalism studies
were accredited in 1981 (Jin et al., 2000). Communication studies were introduced into
journalism education in the mid-1990s, and began to change the vocational nature of the
discipline (Wu, 2006). By 1997, journalism and communication were officially elevated
to a level-one discipline, comprising two separate level-two disciplines: journalism and
communication (Li, 2000; Zhang, 2005), in the same year that doctoral programs on
communication were established (Liao, 2002).
Massive investment in higher education by the mainland Chinese government in 1998
marked a turning point in communication studies. The number of students and faculty
members soared along with the number of departments and programs offered. By the
mid-2000s, more than 500 universities had established journalism and communication
departments, most of which were on mass communication (Chen, 2005). The period
covered by this study is designed to coincide with this phase of development.

Early media research in China

The Chinese-language book, A History of the Chinese Press, published in 1927, was
probably the first research output on Chinese media (Wu, 2006). In the early days, research
was sporadic and concentrated mainly on journalism history and practice; however,
communication studies caught the attention of researchers long before it was integrated
into media education. Although the first academic journal of the field debuted in 1967
in Taiwan, under the English title Mass Communication Research and the Chinese title
Journalism Studies, communication studies, with its social scientific methods, came to
Mainland China much later after the 1978 open-door policy (Shao and Liao, 2008). A
pioneering effort in borrowing communication theories was made in 1981 when Fudan
journalism students conducted a small-scale survey to study the flow of information
about the trial of the Gang of Four (Zhang, 2005). In the following year, when the
first nationwide seminar on communication was held in Beijing (Li et al, 2008; Shao,
1999; Xu, 2000), systematic methods were used for the first time to conduct national
news audience research (Chen, 2005). A series of academic contacts mainly with
universities and scholars from the United States followed (Liao, 2005); among them
was the much-acclaimed visit by Wilbur Schramm in 1982 (Chen, 2005). The Culture and
Communication Research Centre, the first of its kind in a tertiary institution in Mainland
China, was set up in 1985 at Fudan University. It was renamed the Center for Information
and Communication Studies in 2000.
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The influence of American communication theories on research in Mainland China was

slow to be felt, however, as scholars pondered about the indigenisation of communication
theories (Zhang, 2005). A survey of earlier publications on communication in Mainland
Chinese journals between 1982 and 1985 found that most of the 182 articles were
introductory texts or rhetorical commentaries; only 43.3 per cent had any analysis involved
(Yao, 2002). At the second national communication seminar held in 1986, the focus of
interest on communication studies was still on improving journalism research (Liao,
2005). Communication studies and research suffered a setback for a few years amid
anti-liberalisation following the 1989 June Fourth repression, but the research agenda
diversified after the major bases of media research moved from journalism organisations
to tertiary education institutes around 2000 (Chen, 2005).
Media research in Taiwan developed in a more favourable environment. The estimated
800 articles published in Taiwanese media journals between 1967 (when the first academic
journal was published) and 2009 (Wang, 2010) gives some indication of the strength of
media research in Taiwan. The number of books on communication published in Taiwan
between 1947 and 1999 was estimated at 2000 titles on the basis of a bibliographic
search (Chen, 2001).
Research in Hong Kong blossomed after the institutionalisation of the research
audit in universities in the mid-1990s. Counting the output of three top journalism and
communication programs, Leung et al. (2006) identified 393 pieces of research between
1995 and 1999, produced by 37 researchers. Yet, as scholars are expected to publish in
internationally refereed journals, a locally based journal did not appear until 2006, when
the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Baptist University jointly
launched the Chinese-language Communication and Society journal, which still serves
more as a venue of publication for scholars from Mainland China rather than those from
Hong Kong.

Methods for and approaches to Chinese media research

From the beginning, scholarship in the United States has exerted decisive influence on the
development of media studies in China (Chen, 2005). The Chinese scholar who started
the Institute of Journalism Research at Peking University, Xu Baohuang, was trained
in the United States in journalism and economics. The university that housed the first
Department of Journalism in China, St Johns University, was founded by Americans. The
graduate research program at the Department of Journalism and Communication in the
Chinese University of Hong Kong was established with the help of US communication
scholar Wilbur Schramm (Chan, 1992), when most of the faculty staff in the department
there were Taiwanese who had received their graduate training in the United States (Chan,
1992). A survey found that 82 per cent of respondents among full-time journalism and
communication faculty members in Taiwan obtained their highest degree in the United
States (Wang and Lo, 2000, in Lo, 2006). Such historical connections partly explain why
communication has found greater acceptance in China than media studies. The other
major explanation can be found in the developmental needs of a struggling nation, which
can better be met by the administrative approach of communication research than the
interpretive/critical approach of media studies.
The quantitative turn in communication research in the United States in the 1940s
has found its way into media education in Taiwan, where the journalism curriculum
includes training in social science methods, including statistics and computer software
for quantitative data analysis (Wang, 2006). Studying MPhil and PhD theses completed
in Taiwan, Wang and Tsang (1996) found that quantitative methods dominated in the
period 198692, with content analysis taking 42.8 per cent and questionnaire surveys
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36.4 per cent respectively (Wang and Tsang, 1996). Rather contradictory results were
reported in Lo (2006), which documented that qualitative methods were used more than
quantitative ones up to the mid-1990s. Analysing articles in the leading Mass Communication
Research journal in 196695, Lo (2006) found that 46 per cent (n=146) of articles fell
under the social sciences paradigm and 4 per cent (n=11) under the interpretive/critical
paradigm, but 51 per cent (n=161) were literature reviews. Wang and Tsang (1996) and
Lo (2006) agreed that qualitative methods had risen in popularity in Taiwan in later years.
This was partly a response to the challenges posed to communication by the cultural
and critical studies of media, which had been experienced in the West since the 1960s.
The figure for content analysis and questionnaire surveys together dropped slightly to
67.4 per cent in 199395 (Wang and Tsang, 1996). Literature review, criticised by
Lo (2006) as lacking rigour, rose from 48 per cent (n=52) in 197685 to 57 per cent
(n=66) in 198695, while the use of survey lost popularity (from 35 per cent, n=38 to
26 per cent, n=30) (Lo, 2006). It is difficult to interpret the changes documented by
Lo (2006), as the classification of literature review in contrast to interpretive/critical
paradigm could be highly variable. Some of the articles classified under the interpretive/
critical paradigm in Los (2006) study might also fall into the cultural analysis category
in Zhous (2006) study. Given the difficulty of classifying the approach of the articles,
this study opted not to analyse this dimension.
If the influence of critical cultural media studies was felt in Taiwan only decades
after the introduction of communication, it certainly did not wait that long on Mainland
China. The first branch of media studies introduced to China in the early 1980s was mass
communication, which was dominated by audience research (Zhou, 2006). Reviewing
audience research trends in Mainland China using three key Chinese journalism and
communication journals, Zhou (2006) found the first cultural analysis in 19972000,
although behaviorist analysis dominated during the entire period of his study from 1985 to
2002. Structural analysis was the only other approach consistently adopted over the years.
While the percentage of structural analysis articles remained about the same throughout
the period, cultural analysis had taken the toll on behaviorist studies, which in 200102
made up 57.1 per cent of the articles analysed, with structural analysis constituting
28.6 per cent and cultural analysis 14.3 per cent. However, Zhou (2006) remarked that
these cultural analysis articles merely introduced ideas on literacy criticism, cultural
studies and reception analysis, as opposed to reporting the results of investigations on
cultural phenomena.
Although Chen (2005) has observed that positivist empiricist research has become
generally accepted among journalism and communication scholars in Mainland China,
qualitative methods (70.9 per cent) were used more than quantitative ones in audience
research in Mainland China (Zhou, 2006). Quantitative methods rose between 198588
(13.3 per cent) and 198992 (36.8 per cent), dipped in the 1990s (26.8 per cent to
17.1 per cent), and then climbed again in 200102 (28.6 per cent). Qualitative methods
took a reverse trend, falling in the late 1980s, rising in the 1990s and then dipping again
in the early 2000s (Zhou, 2006). One of the explanations offered for the rise in quantitative
methods in the late 1980s was that quantitative articles were more easily accepted than
qualitative articles in the period of political anti-liberalisation (Zhou, 2006). The lack
of systematic training on methods, however, is one of the reasons proposed for why
quantitative methods are still not popularly used (Zhang, 2005).

Areas of study
In Taiwan, the weighting of mass communication and audience research had begun to
lessen after the earlier years of lopsided development, although they remained the most
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researched areas (Lo, 2006). In the period from 1961 to 1995, mass communication made
up 21.9 per cent (n=66) and audience research 18.5 per cent (n=56) of research projects
(Hsu and Chen, 1996), overshadowing other branches of communication, notably speech
communication, interpersonal communication and organisational communication (Hsu and
Chen, 1996). Similarly, mass media audience and media effects formed a very active area
of research in Mainland Chinese journals of journalism and communication in 198196
(Huang and Han, 1997, in Zhou, 2006). Little systematic documentation is available to
show whether and how the research agenda in Mainland China has shifted since then.
The choice of research approach and methods suggest that Mainland China, as in
some other aspects of its development, is leap-frogging in the development of media
studies: on the one hand, it has yet to grasp the social scientific methods promoted by
communication; on the other, it has come under the new influence of media ecology,
structuralism and critical approaches (Chen, 2005).

Medium of study
In Zhous (2006) study in 19852002, most studies focused on a combination of print
and broadcast media until 1996, with the broadcast medium surpassing print. However,
in 19972000 the broadcast medium took the biggest share, accounting for 48.6 per cent,
while the print medium represented only 2.8 per cent of published studies. The dominance
of broadcast dropped in 200102 (to 17.6 per cent), with research on the internet, first
identified in 199396, comprising 20.6 per cent of audience research (Zhou, 2006). The
change in the medium being studied in mainland China follows the change in media
usage from print to broadcast, and then the internet. Media convergence probably
explains the increasing proportion of audience studies (50.0 per cent) devoted to media
in general (Zhou, 2006).
New media research published in Mainland Chinese journals rocketed in 200306.
Nearly half (n=29) of the 69 articles found between 2000 and 2007 were published in
2006 alone (Wei, 2009). However, the agenda of new media research in Mainland China
was different from that in the West, being dominated by mobile telephony and applications
on the mobile media platform, with mobile phone text message alone constituting
37.7 per cent (n=26) of the sampled articles (Wei, 2009). This is understandable in light
of the greater penetration of mobile personal media than fixed-wire internet in Mainland
China.

Studies on Chinese media conducted outside China

Of course, research on Chinese media is not conducted by scholars in Mainland China,
Taiwan or Hong Kong alone. Zhu (1997) identified three waves of global research on mass
communication and social change in China, corresponding to ideological changes in the
West towards China: books published in the first (ideology) wave (1950s1960s), during
the Cold War period, focused on the structure, functions, and operation of Communist
propaganda machinery in China. In the second (development) wave (1970s1980s),
following President Richards Nixons visit to China, there was a tendency to regard the
Chinese propaganda machinery no longer as an evil face but rather as a model for the
developing world in its modernisation efforts. In the third (culture) wave (since the 1990s),
an increasing diversity in perspectives has been observed (Zhu, 1997).
Xus (2000) review probably gave the most comprehensive account of Chinese
communication studies conducted outside Mainland China up to the mid-1990s. Including
academic journals and books, as well as MPhil and PhD theses, published about but
outside Mainland China in 198797, his study found that journalism was the most popular
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area, generating 20.2 per cent (n=71) of all the 351 items. Radio and television followed,
producing 14.0 per cent (n=49) of the items. Film and advertising made up 12 per cent
(n=41) and 11 per cent (n=40) respectively. Unfortunately, the criteria for classification in
Xus (2000) scheme included a combination of the nature of communication, the industry
being studied and the themes of study, generating categories like political communication
alongside film, advertising and media and youth. This means one single item could
be classified under more than one category, thus undermining the usefulness of the
categorisation.
One interesting dimension studied by Xu (2000) was the ethnicity of researchers. It
was found that ethnic Chinese scholars authored the largest portion of the publications
(46.9 per cent, n=180), whereas non-Chinese researchers contributed to 35.4 per cent
(n=136). The rest were authored by collaborations of the two. With the growth in the
number of Mainland Chinese research students studying overseas, it was expected that
this study would find an increasing proportion of publications authored by ethnic Chinese
researchers.

Defining Chinese for the present study

This study takes Chinese communication and media studies as a field that has found its
subject of study in the communication/media related to Chinese societies, communities
and peoples. This would mean the communication or media in or relating to Chinese
societies mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau to say the least, as well
as Chinese communities in societies predominantly comprising other ethnic groups for
example, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Some may consider
Singapore to be a Chinese society; however, for the purpose of this study, Singapore was
considered a society that includes a Chinese community. Nonetheless, the boundaries drawn
by this study extend the scope of Chinese communication and media studies to a global
field of study that potentially encompasses multiple countries in the world.

The scope of this study

How the state of the field looks depends heavily on the methods used to map it. Most
academic reviews of Chinese media research have tended to follow a communication
perspective, and in some cases this has placed restrictions on which journals were studied
(e.g. Kamhawi and Weaver, 2003). This study seeks to go beyond previous studies in
projecting a comprehensive view of the field covering journalism, communication and
media studies. To avoid a predetermined view that would affect the result, this study cast
a wide net around journalism, communication and media journals. The 2010 journal list
produced for research assessment by the Australian Research Council (www.arc.gov.au/
era/era_journal_list.htm) was used to identify relevant journals. All 57 journals ranked
as A* and A in the fields of research Communication and Media and Journalism and
Professional Writing were initially included.

The sample of articles from the journals

The Communication and Mass Media Complete (CMMC) database was the first source
used for identifying relevant articles from these 57 journals. Those journals that were not
included in the CMMC were searched in other electronic databases, using
(a) mainland china or taiwan or hong kong or macau in geographic term, as
well as
(b) Chinese in any field.
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The results of either of these two searches were intersected with the results returned from
the journals on the ERA list. Limiters were set to the years 19982008, and to academic
peer-reviewed English-language articles. The ending year 2008 was chosen as the full
text of journal articles for the latest issues of 2009 were embargoed at the time of study.
Where the issues of some journals or the entire journal were not available through
databases, library hard copy holdings were checked and the websites of the journals were
sought. In such cases, the titles of all the issues in the relevant years were browsed to
identify relevant articles. Eventually, five journals from the ERA list were excluded,1 as
they were not covered by any of the electronic databases to which this author had access,
their hard copies were not held by any library of a tertiary institution in Hong Kong
where the author was based at the time of study and their websites did not provide
lists of article titles. In total, 52 journals were included for sampling relevant articles for
study. A total of 334 articles were identified as relevant at the first stage.
The 52 journals were arranged alphabetically according to their titles, and the order
of the results returned from the database searches served as the basis of an interval
sampling of one in two. For articles identified by browsing, relevant articles were arranged
chronologically in descending order when applying the interval sampling. Sampled articles
identified through journal websites were requested through interlibrary loan.
During analysis, articles that were found not to be academic research articles editorials,
introductory pieces, reviews and forum pieces were dropped. Articles that fell outside the
interest of this study were discarded. Some of them were articles that used the situation
of Chinese media as one of the examples to illustrate some general pattern or theory.
Content analysis was applied to a final sample of 147 articles.
Taking reference from previous studies (Kamhawi and Weaver, 2003; Wang and Tsang,
1996; Zhou, 2006; Xu, 2000), this study coded the articles according to eight dimensions:
(1) ethnicity of the author(s); (2) location of affiliation of the author(s); (3) location of
the subject of study; (4) the subject-matter of study; (5) the industry/content genre of the
subject of study; (6) the medium under study; (7) the method of analysis; and (8) the
data-gathering procedures. The bibliographic information of the articles was also coded.
Four rounds of pilot coding and training involving 49 articles were provided to two MPhil
students (A and B) of communication at the Hong Kong Baptist University. Their codings
were benchmarked against the authors. At the end of each round, the coders were briefed,
and the coding instrument adjusted. In the last round, the agreement between As codings
and the authors on the various questions was 1.00, except on the question subject of
study, which was .90. Bs codings deviated from the authors on four questions, agreeing
at .92 on three of them and .62 on the subject of study. A third MPhil student (C) was
brought in to help at a later stage to code the bibliographic information of some remaining
articles, and the author coded the major questions of those and some other articles. The
author also double-checked the coding of the subject of study question of articles in
which difficulty was anticipated.

Latest state of Chinese media studies, 19982008

Year of publication
The results showed that 2005 seemed to mark the beginning of increasing research output
(Table 1). Between 1998 and 2004, articles in the sample ranged from ten to twelve per
year (except in 1999, when there were only seven), but in 2005 there were fourteen. The
number jumped to eighteen in 2006 and 25 in 2007, but it returned to eighteen in 2008.

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Table 1: Ethnicity of article authors by year, 19982008

Year
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Total by ethnicity

Chinese
7 (70.0)
4 (57.1)
10 (83.3)
8 (80.0)
8 (80.0)
8 (66.7)
7 (63.6)
9 (64.3)
14 (77.8)
16 (64.0)
6 (33.3)
97 (66.0)

Ethnicity of author
Non-Chinese
1 (10.0)
2 (28.6)
1 (8.3)
1 (10.0)
2 (20.0)
3 (25.0)
3 (27.3)
1 (7.1)
2 (11.1)
4 (16.0)
9 (50.0)
29 (19.7)

Combination
2 (20.0)
1 (14.3)
1 (8.3)
1 (10.0)
1 (8.3)
1 (9.1)
4 (28.6)
2 (11.1)
5 (20.0)
3 (16.7)
21 (14.3)

Total articles by year

10 (6.8)
7 (4.8)
12 (8.2)
10 (6.8)
10 (6.8)
12 (8.2)
11 (7.5)
14 (9.5)
18 (12.2)
25 (17.0)
18 (12.2)
147 (100.0)

*The figures in brackets are percentages of the year.

Ethnicity of author(s)
The increased output came from ethnic Chinese, non-Chinese, as well as collaboration
between the two groups of researchers. However, comparing the first and second halves
of the period, with 2003 excluded as the dividing year, it was found that collaborated
publications had surged the most (200 per cent, from n=5 to n=15). The growth of nonethnic Chinese research output also outpaced that of ethnic Chinese research, with growth
of 171 per cent (from n=7 to n=19), compared with the latters growth of 40.5 per cent
(from n=37 to n=52). This suggests that Chinese media research has increasingly drawn
interest from international scholars. While increased collaboration between ethnic and nonethnic Chinese researchers was certainly facilitated by a very significant increase in the
number of Mainland Chinese students pursuing postgraduate studies abroad, the relatively
small progress among ethnic Chinese research output signals that these overseas-trained
Mainland students have yet to mature as independent researchers.
However, compared with the period studied by Xu (2000), ethnic Chinese researchers
have contributed an increased portion of research. In this study, two-thirds (66.0 per cent)
of the sampled articles were authored by Chinese researchers; only 19.7 per cent were
authored by non-Chinese scholars. The rest (14.3 per cent) involved collaborations of
the two (Table 1).
In reviewing communication research in Hong Kong, Chan (1992) lists four interweaving
direct factors: (1) degree of research freedom; (2) financial and institutional support;
(3) the incentive system; and (4) size and quality of research personnel. The sometimes
unpredictable change in political climate aside, these same factors are equally applicable
to understanding the development of research capacity in Mainland China.

Location of author affiliation

The increased prominence of ethnic Chinese researchers in the first half of the period
under study (19982002) compared with Xus (2000)s period (19871997) is probably
the result of the push for research output in Hong Kong since the early 1990s. Indeed,
between 1998 and 2002, Hong Kong and Macau (n=16) was the most productive of all
regions, surpassing North America (n=12). Over the entire period from 1998 to 2008,
Hong Kong and North America were the top centres of research on Chinese media in
terms of output. However, North America surpassed Hong Kong and Macau (27.9 per
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cent, n=41) in the latter half of the period, culminating more than one-third (34.0 per
cent, n=50) of the total sampled articles in the period. Taiwan, although having a larger
community of scholars than Hong Kong and Macau combined, trailed far behind with
7.5 per cent (n=11). This is probably due to the fact that most Taiwanese scholars publish
in Taiwanese rather than international journals. Mainland China produced only 2.7 per cent
(n=4) of the sampled articles, revealing that it still had a long way to go before meeting
the requirements of international academic publishing (Table 2).
Table 2: Location of author affiliation by year, 19982008
Year

Location of author affiliation

Asia
North Europe Australia CombinTotal
America
& NZ
ation
articles by
year
2
1
10

1998

Mainland Taiwan Hong

China
Kong &
Macau
1
6

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003
2004

2005

2006

2007

2008
Total of
location

2
1

12

5
1

10

10

12

14

11

4
11
41
8
50
8
(2.7%) (7.5%) (27.9%) (5.4%) (34.0%) (5.4%)

18

25

13
(8.8%)

12
(8.2%)

18
147
(100.0%)

Location of subject of study

Predictably, Mainland China was the most studied location, accounting for 42.9 per
cent (n=63) of the articles. More than half (50.8 per cent, n=32) of these studies were
published by researchers based in North America, a high proportion of whom were likely
to have originated from Mainland China. Hong Kong and Macau were the second most
studied locations, with 23.1 per cent (n=34) of articles devoted to them, over 80 per cent
of which (82.4 per cent, n=28) were authored by scholars in Hong Kong and Macau.
Taiwan, despite being the second largest Chinese society, came third, with 10.2 per cent
(n=15) articles devoted to it. More than half of them (53.3 per cent, n=8) were authored
by researchers in Taiwan, and another quarter (26.7 per cent, n=4) by researchers in North
America who were likely to have originated from Taiwan. These figures suggest that,
unlike in the earlier years, Mainland-originated scholars based overseas have probably
overtaken their Taiwanese peers in research capacity.
Media in diasporic Chinese communities are hardly studied, with Asia accounting
for 5.4 per cent (n=8), and North America 4.1 per cent (n=6) of the articles. Australia
and New Zealand was the location of study of only one article in the sample (0.7 per
cent). No consistent trend regarding the location of subject of study was observed in the
eleven years under study, but in 2008, Mainland China surged to feature in 77.8per cent
(n=14) of all articles published, while in previous years the percentage fluctuated between
No. 138 February 2011
121

27.3 per cent and 50.0 per cent. Whether the very large increase suggests the beginning of
a trend that corresponds to increased general interest in Mainland China remains to be seen.

Subject of study

Devising a categorisation scheme applicable to the entire field of journalism, media and
communication studies is a challenge. Some schemes used in previous studies included
multiple dimensions, not a single one. This study attempted to develop a categorisation
scheme that would be applicable to the diverse field of media and communications,
encompassing various approaches. It consisted of the following thirteen categories:
1. Law and policy
2. Media industry/organisation
3. Media production, distribution and promotion
4. Media message
5. Media format and characteristics
6. Audience effects/interpretation
7. Consumer uses of media
8. Media implications on culture/society
9. Media history
10. Media theory
11. Communication of specific nature/in specific context
12. Culture, values and perceptions
13. Others
The content analysis found that media message was the most studied subject, accounting
for 26.5 per cent (n=39) of the articles (Table 3). Culture, values and perception came
second, being the subject of study of 15.0 per cent (n=22). Articles classified under this
category usually discussed some aspect of culture without reference to any particular media
product. Articles that focused on a specified media product or message were classified
under the media message category. Media organisation/industry was the third most popular
subject of study, accounting for 13.6 per cent (n=20) of the articles.
The category media format and characteristics applied to studies that focused on the
genre presentation or technical aspect of the media. All the six (4.1 per cent) studies that
suited the description focused on the language medium (Table 3). In these studies, the other
technical medium whether print, television or something else (where it was relevant to
the studies) was only treated as a transparent conduit of transmission without its role
being investigated. However, articles that investigated the grammar of representation in
the mass media were classified under the category media message, even when the use of
language might form part of the discussion of the representation.
The twelve articles devoted to communication of a specific nature or in a specific
context dealt with communication delivered outside the institutional media system. Among
them, political communication was the most studied, featuring one-third (n=4) of the
twelve articles. The areas studied included government public relations, political debates
in elections, and political conversation. Other popular communication areas were conflict
communication and organisational communication.
Compared with authors based elsewhere, those in Australia and New Zealand favoured
media message the most. A total of 38.5 per cent (n=5) of their articles were devoted
to studying media messages higher than their peers in North America (30.0 per cent,
n=15), and Taiwan (27.3 per cent, n=3). On the other hand, researchers in Mainland
China based on the four articles identified in the sample studied culture, values and
perception (50.0 per cent, n=2) the most.

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No. 138 February 2011

123

1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Total

1998

Year

2
1
2
3
4
1
20

(5.4%) (13.6%)

1
1
2
8

1
2

3
2

(6.1%)

1
1
3
2

(26.5%)

3
6
5
1
5
3
3
6
5
39

(4.1%)

2
6

1
1
1

teristics
1

charac-

orgn
2

policy industry/ production message

Media

Media

Media
Media

Law &

Table 3: Subject of study by year, 19982008

(4.8%)

2
1
7

(6.1%)

1
1
1
1
9

1
1

(4.8%)

1
1
3

society

culture/

Subject of study
Audience Media use Media

(2.0%)

1
1

history

Media

(0.7%)

theory

Media

(8.2%)

12

1
3
1
2
1
2

cation

Communi-

(15.0%)

1
2
4
6
22

1
4
1

Culture

(2.7%)

1
1

Others

(100.0%)

7
12
10
10
12
11
14
18
25
18
147

Year
10

articles by

Total

Industry/genre of content of subject of study

Journalism/non-fiction was found to be the most studied industry/genre of content, featuring

in more than one-quarter (27.2 per cent, n=40) of the articles (Table 4). The percentage
was higher than the 20 per cent (n=71) found by Xu (2000). This might be due to the
categorisation scheme used by Xu (2006), which could have resulted in some journalism
studies being classified under information censorship or media law and ethics. As in
the overall pattern, Mainland China (42.5 per cent, n=17) was the most studied location
among studies on journalism/non-fiction. Hong Kong and Macau came second (32.5 per
cent, n=13). The prominence of journalism studies in the research agenda was likely to
be inspired by the potential democratic role of the media in the aftermath of the 1989
political crackdown and the return of Hong Kong to Mainland China (Wilnat and Aw,
2004), and serves as an example of how political changes influence the research agenda.
Table 4: Industry/genre of study by method of analysis
Industry/genre of study
Journalism/non-fiction
Fiction
Music
Sports and games
Cartoon and animation
Advertising, marketing and
public relations
Citizen content
Combination of the above
Others/not relevant
Total

Quantitative
13
3
1
0
0
7
2
2
16
44
(29.9)

Note: Figures in brackets are percentages.

Method of analysis
Qualitative
Combination
21
6
11
0
2
0
2
1
9
0
5
0
3
1
38
92
(62.6)

2
0
2
11
(7.5)

Total
40 (27.2)
14 (9.5)
3 (2.0)
3 (2.0)
9 (6.1)
12 (8.2)
7 (4.8)
3 (2.0)
56 (38.1)
147
(100.0)

Non-traditional industry/content genres have appeared in recent years. The first article
on cartoons and animation appeared in 2001 among the sampled articles. Citizen content
first appeared in 1999. This might have resulted from the diversification of research foci
responding to the change in the media environment, as well as the wide coverage of
journal titles in this study.

Medium under study

Consistent with the observed trend of increase in research on new media, the internet
(15.0 per cent, n=22) was the most studied medium in the last decade or so in Chinese
media studies (Table 5). Another 3.4 per cent (n=5) of articles were devoted to a combination
of new information and communication technologies or telecommunication, and 2.7 per
cent (n=4) were devoted to mobile phones or portable electronic devices. The year 2002
seemed to mark the turn towards interest on the internet, when the number of articles
jumped from one each in 2000 and 2001 to four. This turning point roughly coincides
with Weis (2009) finding that new media studies rocketed in 200306 among Mainland
Chinese research. However, the high interest in mobile devices among Mainland Chinese
publications was not found in international publications on Chinese media in this study.
Despite (or maybe because of) cries about the imminent death of the newsarticle, it was
the second most studied medium (14.3 per cent, n=21).

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Table 5: Medium of study

Books
Newsarticles
Magazines
Film and photography
Radio and sound recording
TV, video and cable
Fixed-wire telephone
Internet
Mobile devices
Combination of new ICTs/telecom
Combination of other media
Language
Others/not specified
Total

Number
2
21
4
12
3
16
1
22
4
5
14
6
37
147

%
1.4
14.3
2.7
8.2
2.0
10.9
.7
15.0
2.7
3.4
9.5
4.1
25.2
100.0

Methods of analysis

As in earlier surveys in Mainland Chinese journals (Zhou, 2006), articles using qualitative
methods (62.6 per cent, n=92) outnumbered those that used quantitative methods
(29.9 per cent, n=44) (see Table 4 above). This preference was observed among researchers
across various locations. By comparison, the highest percentage of research in Hong
Kong and Macau used quantitative methods (36.6 per cent, n=15). Taiwanese came
second (36.4 per cent, n=4). Quite unexpectedly, only 26.0 per cent (n=13) of research
in North America used quantitative methods. This seems to suggest that Hong Kong and
Taiwanese researchers, who learned their craft from North America in earlier years, have
not diversified their methods to the same extent as their North American colleagues in
recent years. Hong Kong and Macau-based researchers were the most rigorous in their
methods, producing the highest percentage of articles using a combination of quantitative
and qualitative methods (14.6 per cent, n=6). Three-quarters (n=4) of the articles authored
by scholars on the mainland used qualitative methods.
Qualitative methods were favoured among all industries/genres of study, except
advertising, marketing and public relations, in which 58.3 per cent (n=7) were conducted
with quantitative methods. Cartoons and animation was the only industry/genre that was
studied by qualitative methods alone (n=9).

Data-gathering procedures

The most popular data-gathering procedure was archival documents, featuring in

65.3 per cent (n=96) of all articles, of which qualitative literature review was the predominant
method of analysis (50.3 per cent of the total, n=74). Quantitative content analysis of
archival documents (n=18) accounted for 12.2 per cent of all articles, and 40.9 per cent
of all quantitative methods. Questionnaire survey (11.6 per cent, n=17) was the second
most used procedure for data-gathering. All of them employed quantitative methods of
analysis, and accounted for 38.6 per cent of quantitative methods.

Conclusion
Ten years after journalism and communication was made a level-one discipline and massive
investment was put into higher education in Mainland China, its researchers on media
have not yet matured sufficiently to compete on equal terms in international academic
No. 138 February 2011
125

publishing. The number of articles originating from Mainland-based scholars was minimal.
Among the increased number of Chinese media research articles published in international
journals, researchers based in North America have outgrown their peers in Hong Kong
and Macau, and can take pride in being the most productive centre of Chinese media
research in the second half of the period 19982008. It is worth noting, however, that a
growing proportion of researchers in North America and Hong Kong probably originate
from Mainland China. The further development of research on the Mainland would partly
depend on its capacity to provide a free and encouraging environment for overseas-trained
Chinese scholars.
Media studies in China started in journalism. The United States had exerted decisive
influence on its early development. After several decades of change, scholars in North
America opted more strongly for qualitative methods than their peers in Taiwan or Hong
Kong. Taiwan, after going through a period when communication research was dominated
by positivism (Hsu and Chen, 1996), seemed to be returning towards a better balance of
quantitative and qualitative methods (Wang and Tsang, 1996). However, on the Mainland,
scholars are trying to grapple with quantitative methods after years of suppression of social
sciences. At the time of writing, publishing in Social Science Citation Index journals
has become the highest goal of scholarship on the Mainland, as revealed in private
communication with a few scholars in the field. A prominent university in Shanghai
rewards such publication with 10,000 RMB (roughly A$1500) each. Lui (2010, in Zhao
and Lui, 2010) comments that American empiricist communication studies have replaced
the hegemony of journalism studies in Mainland China since the 1980s. This would
position the discipline in the field of social sciences, removed from the humanities origin
of journalism studies. The rapid expansion of communication education and research has
highlighted the shortfall in teaching and research personnel in Mainland China. Some
universities are seeking help from outside to remedy this situation. Fudan University in
Shanghai, for example, enlists researchers from Hong Kong to run summer schools on
methods for them.
Mainland China apart, the most researched Chinese society was Hong Kong. Chinese
communities outside of greater China were hardly studied. Mainland China will continue
to draw the most research interest, with its economic and media growth. The increasing
sophistication of the media industry on the Mainland suggests continuing interesting
issues for media research. So do the media in overseas Chinese communities in this era
of globalisation. The internet and new media have already become the most researched
form of media. Journalism was the most popular subject of investigation in the period
studied, but with the passing of the political handover in Hong Kong, Chinese media
research is expected to follow the diversification of media industries. While research issues
are too numerous for this study to gauge, it is safe to say that the political and social
problems of Mainland China will continue to engage scholars who enjoy enough academic
freedom to seize on them as research issues. In the process, research on Chinese media
will continue to be judged against its counterpart in global media studies in terms of
quality and comparability, while bearing the additional promise of developing concepts
and theories that address the particularities of the Chinese situation that could justify the
term Chinese media studies.

Note
1

The excluded journals were: (a) Communication et Languages: presse, television, radio, publicite,
edition, graphisme, formation, sociologie; (b) Reseaux: French Journal of Communication;
(c) Montage AV: Zeitschift fuer Theorie und Geschichte audiovisueller Kommunikation; (d)
Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics; and (e) Reading Room: A
Journal of Art and Culture.

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126

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Joyce Nip is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney.
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