Communication and Community in the New Media Age

Wang Bin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032008240
• eBook ISBN: 9781000391947
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Social Sciences

This book investigates the relationship between information communication and community development in China in the new media age, drawing on theoretical resources from journalism, communication, urban sociology, community management, and the activities of social movements.

Contrasting existing scholarship that centers on new technologies and virtual aspects of today's communication, the study highlights community residents' daily praxis in real social spaces and the interaction between online and offline communications. Through content analysis, case studies, questionnaire surveys, and in-depth interviews, the author explores the social engagement of communication in public expressions and negotiations among Chinese urban communities. From micro, meso, and macro levels respectively, three interactive mechanisms are discussed: (1) media use and social consciousness and mobilization; (2) new media and changes in community governance; and (3) state-community interplay. Based on these mechanisms, the author proposes the idea of "the construction of grassroots social communication", exploring approaches to the modernization of social governance and attainment of social interests by optimizing information communication.

Communication and Community in the New Media Age will appeal to academics and students studying communication and social transition in China, new media and society, urban sociology, and public governance.

1The Chinese context and theoretical implications of community media

Community media has developed globally since the latter half of the twentieth century, but as a theoretical concept, it has different connotations and specific implications in different countries and historical periods. With the rise of new media technologies, such as the Internet and the concept of a virtual community, the connotations of community media have been further enriched and developed in people’s practice in both developed and developing countries. Community media is considered the main type of alternative media, taking diverse forms, including the low-power FM radio stations, community television, community newspapers in the US, underground immigration radio in the UK, the Aboriginal radio in Australia, rural radio and miners radio in Latin America and Africa, and a community network provided in North America and Europe by access to the Internet (Li, 2009).

What are the social and historical contexts and value of community media in other countries? How does community media work in China? What is its research value? By describing the social context and theoretical implications of community media in China, this chapter explores how community media plays the role of a participatory communication platform for residents by empowering them.

1.1 The value of community media in the Western context

Community media has different manifestations in the different power structures of society, because it is related to specific historical conditions. In fact, different countries and societies have different names for community media, such as independent media, local media, citizen access to media, alternative media, radical media, etc. These different names refer to differentiated social demands. In general, however, community media broadly refers to those media serving communities or group media that have not been denied access by the mainstream media (Thomas, 1993).

Furthermore, as distinct from the concepts of alternative media, radical media, and others that emphasize social change, community media places more emphasis on the community itself. Sociologist Robert Park first introduced the community concept to the communication field. He defines the community as a “geographically based group of people working together in mutual aids” (Ke, 2013). Park also firmly believes that culture and communication are essential ways to establish the community. People reflect, regulate, and consult through communication and dissemination of subjective values and attitudes contained in their culture, on the basis of which communities are formed (ibid.). Communication constructs the common sense of community as well as community attachment and forms the identity of community residents. In the case of a mature American community newspaper, its core mission is to “build the community through a series of means such as reporting local news, serving the community, building, cultivating, enhancing and encouraging the ‘geographical sense’” (Chen, 2012: 1), which well explains the essence of community media.

In fact, the relationship between media, communication, and community was being debated long before the birth of the communication era. Dewey (2012: 3) said in Democracy and Education that “society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication”. Schramm (1984: 2) also stated: “It is no coincidence that the word communication has a common root with the word community. There will be no community without communication, and similarly, there will be no communication without community”.

Nevertheless, the concept of community continues to develop in various ways. The Internet technology has created more virtual communities, breaking the geographical boundaries of traditional communities (Wang & Wang, 2009). Does the new media create a new community or destroy the boundaries between original communities? The development of communication technology, in a certain sense, blurs the boundaries between reality and the virtual world. The emergence of virtual communities seems to have weakened the “local nature” of the community. Virtual community media, which has rapidly developed in recent years, such as community owners’ forum, can achieve resonance between the weak relationship on the network and the strong relationship of the same community owners in reality. Therefore, it plays a significant and unique part in the construction of community consciousness, and the formation of organizations to protect people’s rights, etc.

We believe that simplistic conclusions, divorced from specific social contexts, deprive the concept of community media of its local nature. Some scholars think that community media can be placed in civil society, that is, the essential place where individuals participate in the social and public life outside the “state” and the “market”. In this way, community media becomes the channel through which members, organizations, and movements of civil society can express their ideas, identities, and cultures, and promote participation in democracy (Li, 2009). Regarding the relationship between community media and social activism, the following values and demands in the Western context can be seen.

First, community media is a participatory media that helps the public achieve the right of access to media. The concept of the right of access to media includes democratic participation rights and political civic rights, emphasizing that citizens, organizations, and communities, engaged in non-professional communication, can take the initiative to access and use media facilities, and participate in content production and operation. The practice of access to media can be traced back to Britain and the United States in the 1960s. With the rise of the anti-Vietnam War, anti-political, and anti-cultural new civil rights movements, many underground media and independent media emerged, in diversified forms, including newspapers, magazines, documentaries, etc. Later, the aim of these media and social movements gradually shifted to community issues and they cooperated with community organizations and residents to transform their community (Sun, 2011).

The production mechanism of “by the people, for the people” enables local residents to participate in content production and organizational management of community media to protect the right of access to media for citizens. In a large number of community media organizations, volunteers participate in content production for free, which is “by the people”. They are not only the recipients of media contents but also its producers. And “for the people” emphasizes that the content of the community media is to serve the community residents, as the content is different from that found on the mainstream commercial media and in the public media of current Western society. Of course, this operation mode of “by the people, for the people” also quickly leads to the mixed quality of the communication contents and chaotic management, which further affect the performance and sustainable development of community media.

Second, community media is a carrier of the alternative public sphere, which helps to democratize the field of communication. An alternative public sphere is a concept put forward by the sociologist Jürgen Habermas (Zhan, 2002). After he introduced the theory, critics pointed out its limitations and said that the concept applied only to middle-class white males. Habermas then proposed working-class culture as an alternative public sphere, in which alternative media has the potential to survive in an alternative public sphere (Luo, 2010). Raymond Williams (1980: 50–63), a British cultural scholar, argues that there are three main features of the democratization of communication: (1) de-professionalization; (2) de-institutionalization; and (3) de-capitalization. This is a unique summary of the features of community media. As a form of alternative media, community media also builds an alternative public sphere to a certain extent. The existence of such an alternative public sphere offers a supplement and challenge to the professional communication system with traditional institutional media as its leading members, advertising revenue as the primary mode of operation, and hiring professionals as the practical subjects.

Community media, with community residents as the subject, does not realize the “freedom from” of communication, but the “freedom to”. This is because it provides residents with a public platform for local expression, which further offers a sense of rights and practical possibilities as challenges to market media and public media, thus contributing to the democratization of communication.

Finally, community media, as a practical activity, fosters residents’ public consciousness and constructs a community identity as well as preserving local culture and local knowledge. Community media is a kind of collective practice in which residents participate in media production, and its most important features are that it is “by the residents, for the residents” and offering a local voice. Community residents are constantly improving their media literacy in the participation process, which also stimulates and strengthens their power and their ability to participate in constructing a community. This then changes the relationship both between these participants and between the participants and the community, as well as constructing the community’s culture and identity. Today, with the globalization of communication, the conversations between cultures are more common. However, an unequal power structure also exists in this cultural conversation:

The powerful side of the conversation is often in a privileged position to promote their cultural ideas, institutional arrangements and even lifestyles. Whereas, the weak side of the conversation is often in a passive position to accept basic concepts, institutional arrangements and lifestyle of the cultural systems.

(Ren, 2003)

As one of the most basic organizational units in society, communities’ unique role in the cultural tide of marketization and globalization is to develop local culture. Community media produces and perpetuates local knowledge and constructs residents’ local identity. Community newspapers have a long history in the United States. Their unique content focuses on weddings, funerals, births, sports events and other activities of the residents in the community. To some extent, these have become significant historical texts recording local culture and the changes in the community.

1.2 The situation in China and the context of community media

1.2.1 Community media in China: an integrated community network

Community media emerged and developed because of the historical background of the new civil rights movements in the West, and is characterized by the struggles of community residents against the dominant ideology and for the right of access to media. Community media is different from the commercial media market and the elite public media, as it has the features of alternative media. Although, in recent years, some community media have disappeared due to lack of funds, and some have started to explore commercial operations, most of them are not-for-profit operations. The significance and value of their existence lie in giving voice to community residents and group organizations, presenting diverse views for society, and creating public consciousness.

So how do community media work in China? The primary demand is for the public to acquire the right of access to media and communication resources. However, China’s current media management system and positioning of media functions make it challenging to realize the right of access to institutional media. Whether it is Party newspapers and magazines with distinct administrative features or metropolitan newspapers with a high degree of marketization, there are bound to be blind spots and limitations in reporting perspectives, due to various factors involved in news production. In spite of the continuous promotion of guidelines, such as the “Three Closeness”, i.e., a guideline proposed by Hu Jintao that the media working for the Party and the people should get close to reality, life and the public, and the rise of civil programs, the lack of the voice of grassroots people in the mass media is still a basic structural social reality. Some researchers believe that the inequality of the right of access to media is a severe injustice in Chinese society (Xia, Yuan, & Chen, 2012).

In this structural constraint of the media profile, China’s community newspapers are not a real community media, but a “community-like media” (Wang, 2014). First, this is because our understanding of the community is vague, as a street, a district, a town, and a city may all be the target of a community newspaper. Most of the community newspapers are the downward extension of the coverage of local metropolitan newspapers. Production mechanisms have not been clearly set up to focus on the exclusivity and localization of contents and advertising, nor do they assume the mission of building community identity and residents’ sense of participation. At present, domestic community newspapers are not rooted in community development, but start with an external-led newspaper concept.

Second, the subjects of the newspapers are government agencies, community service organizations, real estate and property management companies, and traditional media groups living outside the local circle of residents; meanwhile, the reporting staff on the community newspapers are not like those in the US, who live in the same community as the readers, are part of the community, and have a thorough understanding of the community’s development needs and internal context. Therefore, community newspapers are an externally oriented operation mechanism. These two points determine that the community newspaper in China is a “community-like newspaper”, whose concept is not yet clear, whose model is not yet defined, and whose market space is not yet operationalized. In other words, we can only say that China’s urban information consumption and media competition have shown a community-oriented trend at present, but we cannot yet refer to the discourse and experience of Western community media, otherwise we would not be recognizing the difference in circumstances.

It is noteworthy that, with the proliferation of Internet use and the increase in the urban community residents’ consciousness of rights and interests, in Chinese cities, the community network – including community websites, community forums, QQ (a Chinese instant messaging software) groups of residents, WeChat groups of residents, neighborhood Weibo, etc. – represented by community owners’ forums, has seen rapid development. Using the new information technology represented by Web 2.0, community network integrates physical and social space, real space and virtual space, media space, and living space, using communication as a link, which can be called the integrated community media (Wang, 2010a). This book argues that as a kind of self-media, these forms of integrated community media realize the right of access to community residents. They are independent and serve as a platform for community self-governance. Moreover, in the process of social transition in China, it is common to see property owners resisting, mobilizing, and defending their rights through forums and other community media (Huang & Gui, 2009; Yuang, 2012; Zhou, 2011). Therefore, it is closer to community media in the real sense. More importantly, the community network, outside the existing media management system, has not been considered illegal media by the state and is not strictly controlled. Sometimes, in fact, it is not only supported by urban information policy advocating the digital city, the digital community, and a creative community but also is widely promoted and used by the state because of its ability to gather quickly and effectively social conditions and public opinions in the context of social management and innovation.

Of course, different network carriers of communities have diverse forms of development in various cultivation stages. The maturity of its operating mechanism affects whether it can serve as a platform for community self-governance and a channel for community mobilization to protect community rights. Externally, its development is affected by the intervention of administrative and commercial forces; and, internally, it depends on the degree of community development, the media literacy of the residents, and the relevance of their interests. Therefore, although the integrated community media is prevalent in the newly-built commercial residential communities in large Chinese cities, it only plays a role in specific issues and among specific resident groups. From the point of view of its function as an effective mechanism for social mobilization and social resistance, its functions and applications are not yet universal, and its development in China is characterized by sensitivity to protests and crowds.

1.2.2 Dual transformation of the s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Introduction
• 1 The Chinese context and theoretical implications of community media
• 2 The media form of community communication
• 3 Expression of their interests by community residents
• 4 Media use by community residents: Information access, neighborhood communication, and community action
• 5 Mobilization mode of community residents: Resistance identity and cooperative governance
• 6 Community governance based on new media
• 7 The power relations in community communication
• 8 The community-based development tendency in the media industry
• Conclusion
• Postscript
• Appendix: Major community public sentiment events in 2012–2015
• References
• Index