Differences within the mainland Chinese press: a quantitative analysis

Haiyan Wang, Colin Sparks, Nan Lü, Yu Huang
2016 Asian Journal of Communication  
This paper reports the results of a content analysis of five newspapers selected from the Chinese daily press. The research was conducted as part of an international project designed to explore the relationship between journalistic self-conceptions and journalistic practice. This paper reports only upon journalistic practice, in particular the extent to which different models of journalism are present. The results of the analysis demonstrate, firstly, that while the concept of a uniform
more » ... l media system" is one of some utility in comparative studies, there are, even in the highly structured Chinese case, very significant differences with a single country. Secondly, it demonstrates that the common division of the Chinese press in to a politically oriented party press and a market oriented commercial press is inadequate to explain the identifiable differences between titles in the sample. A four grouping solution fits the data much better and demonstrates that there are newspapers that combine strong evidence of indicators of the party press with strong evidence of indicators of the commercial press. As a consequence, the claim that marketization will necessarily lead to conflicts with the party appears to be mistaken.
doi:10.1080/01292986.2016.1240818 fatcat:r6t6j7nosbfinm7ciykf2cfcq4