Postconference: Mediatization: Digital Revolution and Chinese Setting

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The convergence of digital technologies, including the Internet and mobile media, has reconfigured communication and social relationships, resulting in the dramatic transformation of Chinese society. New media have changed every aspect of Chinese society. The Chinese government has actively promoted its most recent technology campaigns in new and old economic sectors, through slogans such as “Internet thinking” and programs such as “Internet plus”. Digital media have become a priority in China’s grand strategy and policymaking. Stimulated by such forces, the further rise of new media and the deepening of social transformation are foreseeable with tremendous consequences for China, for Asia, and for the world.

As media technologies and mediated communication entangle deeper and deeper into people’s daily life, and involve themselves more with the holistic construction of a society and of a culture, mediatization processes would emerge. Mediatization not only re-structures the past but also introduces a novel social form, instigating new social cultural imaginations in various aspects of modern life, in politics, culture, religion, education, and other institutionalized social practices. More than applying or testing the existing mediatization thesis, this conference is designed to re-construct mediatization theory. In China, the latest development of digital technologies affords a unique real-life setting, where we see some of the world's most rapid and drastic social changes brought by new media, where new critical facets of mediatization theory still wait to be explored. We intend to enrich and expand the theoretical meaning of mediatization theory, accentuate communication as mediating practices that connect humans to the world, and thereby promote a new “communication turn” that enables communication rather than the exclusive category of media organizations to become the founding stone of Chinese society and of humanity.

Therefore, we set the theme of this conference as: "Mediatization: Digital revolution and Chinese context". We welcome submissions from different theoretical and methodological traditions that address a wide range of topics in various Chinese contexts including, but not limited to, the following: 1) Mediatization: New media and the governance of Chinese society; 2) Mediatization: New media and the convergence of news industry; 3) Mediatization: New media and urban communication in China; 4) Mediatization: New media, public opinion and discursive competition; 5) Mediatization: New media and public communication; 6) Mediatization: Global network and China’s interactions with the world; 7) Mediatization: New media and everyday life.

Sub Unit

• Sponsored Sessions

Chairs

• Randy Kluver, Texas AandM U

• Peter K Yu, Drake U Law School

• Linchuan Jack Qiu, Chinese U - Hong Kong

• Yong Hu, Peking U

• Min Jiang, U of North Carolina - Charlotte