Alternative Media in China

2011 Words9 Pages
A6321 Media Management Prof. Arunachalam Mahizhnan Impact of alternative media to mainstream media in China ------Citizen Journalism on Weibo Ying Lingshu G1201014L March 13, 2013 Wee Kim Wee School of Information and Communication Nanyang Techonological University, Singapore What is alternative media? Chris Atton (2002) gives a detailed description of the characteristics generally found within alternative media: its content should be politically, socially or culturally radical and have strong ‘aesthestics’ in the use of visual presentation. (Atton, 2002). Atkinson (2006) defines alternative media as “any media that are produced by non-commercial sources and attempt to transform existing social roles and routines by critiquing and challenging power structures” (Atkinson, 2006). So the forms of alternative media involves traditional outlets such as newspaper and magazines, or radio, television, and movies. Nowadays, it also involve the newer media outlets of websites, e-books and e-magazines, streamed audio and video or other media outlets that are found online. Alternative media is usually seen as more accessible and participatory than the mainstream (Coyer & Dowmunt, 2007), which is why it is sometimes described as “participatory journalism” (Allan 2006). Yet there are many more ways to consider alternative media: as ‘community media’ or ‘civil society media’, or something that is ‘radical’ (Coyer & Dowmunt, 2007; Bailey et al., 2008). According to Kate Coyer and Tony Dowmunt (2007), alternative media refers to “the media produced by the socially, culturally and politically excluded”. In the context of China In China, both traditional media and new media are under strict censorship. Hence, the future of traditional alternative media looks grim. However, comparing to the traditional media, although news media on the Internet is under
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