China and Russia: Communication and Power in Non-Western Societies

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

In scholarly analysis and media coverage, China and Russia tend to be lumped together as countries with authoritarian media systems. Both countries evolved from communism to modern hybrid authoritarianism. Both feature repressive media environments with significant state interference into journalist practices and social media usage. Both tend to defy Western pressures on human rights and press freedom and defend their own norms of media and political governance.

Piercing through similarities on the surface, however, there are significant differences, which in part result from their distinct political transition paths. Russia and China took two different routes moving away from Communism. While Russia started with political liberalization, which resulted in the Communist Party losing control, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has retained its political power and orchestrated the advancement of a “market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Such divergence yielded different modes of state-media relations and political communication in China and Russia. Whereas in China, much of the media has survived and succeeded commercially, for instance, in Russia, most media grew dependent on either the oligarchs or the state in the 1990s. And while in China, journalists ended up compromising with the regime throughout the economic reform, in Russia, journalists experienced a period of democratic freedom, which has been curtailed in the past decade.

Despite the great intellectual fruitfulness of comparing media and communication in Russia and China, there has been very limited effort to this day that explicitly calls for comparative research of these two countries (Meng and Rantanen, 2015a; Meng and Rantanen, 2015b; Roudakova, 2012; Repnikova, 2015; Sparks, 2008). This curious blind spot has to do with the Western centrism of our field. For one thing, intellectually and practically, it is far easier to mobilize resources to compare one Western society with another. For another, when non-Western countries are included in comparative projects, they are either treated as data for testing theories and concepts generated in a Western context, or perceived as the Other that deviates from the ‘norm’ or the ‘conventional model’.

This panel represents a pioneering attempt at seriously distilling and comparing media and communication in Russia and China. Taking another step in the direction of de-Westernizing media studies and moving beyond the meta-level analysis of systems towards illuminating a multi-faceted process of media-state relations, the panel not only presents new empirical studies but also a strong theoretical ambition that moves beyond the status quo of comparative research.

Sub Unit

• Global Communication and Social Change

Chair

• Daniela Stockmann, Leiden U

Individual Presentations

• Online Deliberation in China: Who Voices Opinions in Chinese Cyberspace? - Ting Luo, Leiden U; Daniela Stockmann, Leiden U

• A New Internet World, A Neo-Authoritarian Model of Internet Governance: A Chinese Perspective - Min Jiang, U of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Rewiring Authoritarianism: Internet Regulation and Political Control in Putin’s Russia - Jackie Kerr, Georgetown U

• Comparing Official Discourses on the Media and Politics in China and Russia - Bingchun Meng, London School of Economics; Florian Toepfl, Free University of Berlin

• Critical Journalists and the State in China and Russia - Maria Repnikova, Annenberg School for Communication

Respondents

• Bingchun Meng, London School of Economics

• Maria Repnikova, Annenberg School for Communication