Effects of Traditional and New Media on China’s Political Landscape

The sustain of the communist regime, particularly the Chinese government, has been an interest in academia. Despite the collapse of communist ideology after the Cold War, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has succeeded in gaining high support among citizens. This paper, authored by Associate Professor Dr Tetsuro KOBAYASHI and PhD Candidate WANG Xiaoting of CityU’s Department of Media and Communication, argues that nationalism propaganda by the media plays a prominent role in uniting Chinese people ideologically. It is because nationalism, defined as “a perception of national superiority and an orientation toward national dominance” (Kosterman & Feshbach, 1989:271), strengthens the distinction between foreign “other” and “self”, serving as a form of motive for the Chinese people to defend the image of China as a powerful state. By articulating the nature of political information that is contingent on types of media, this study provides novel empirical evidence that is of great importance for understanding the impact of media use on the (in)stability of the current political system in China.

The analysis results of survey data indicated that people who mainly gain political information through Chinese state-controlled media outlets (namely CCTV, People’s Daily, and Xinhua News) were reliably associated with a higher level of nationalism, which in turn positively predicted higher support for the current political system. However, considering that the younger generation in China is gradually tuning out from the mass media, the magnitude of its effect in the future is in question. When it comes to social media, Weibo and WeChat cannot be lumped together under the name “social media” in terms of their propaganda impacts on political system support in China. Specifically, as political information on Weibo is more diverse than that on traditional state-led mass media, it is expected to undermine the effect of CCP-led nationalist propaganda, which in turn reduces support for the current political system. In contrast, the dissemination of political information is relatively limited on WeChat because its technological features strongly facilitate social interactions among people who know each other in person. Therefore, the use of political information through WeChat predicted higher levels of nationalism in this study.

The study demonstrated that the proliferation of social media is not tantamount to the potential of social change in China; at least not in the case for WeChat. At the same time, with the tightening control on the media industry in Chinese President XI Jinping’s administration, the Chinese media could effectively promote nationalism to gain support for its legitimacy.