Chinese News Discourse

Chinese news discourse, despite sharing commonalities with news structure elsewhere in terms of the ‘inverted pyramid’ where the important message comes first followed by details in the body, exhibits characteristics of its own. These characteristics constitute the main focus of this examination. On the one hand, Chinese news outlets are mostly state-owned and are, henceforth, driven by the intention to defend the government. On the other, the burgeoning social media with its unstoppable momentum has posed new questions and new avenues for exploration. Synchronically, confronted with the dominance of the official or authoritative news reports and incessant postings on social media, Chinese news discourse demonstrates the coexistence of competing journalistic systems – politically driven and professionally driven – and, to make the scene even more complicated, user-generated. Political discourse has seen the transition of government control from direct to indirect, acting as a tool for propaganda while accommodating to the needs of more stakeholders and, for that matter, being more professional. The era of ‘Wemedia’ where everybody can participate by posting on social media has posed a great challenge, as well as a leverage, to the previous authoritative practice. While state-owned news media also cannot afford to loosen its grip of social media, the general public also has more opportunity to publicise their ideas. However, such a scenario is unlikely to change within the foreseeable future. In the academia, scholars have resorted to many avenues to examine the unique characteristics of Chinese news discourse; constructive journalism, although quite controversial in the academia, is one of the avenues that coincides with the justification of the official discourse in the Chinese news media.