The Chinese Approach to Web Journalism: a Comparative Analysis

As the fastest growing medium ever recorded, the internet has offered spectacularly different means for collecting, producing, organizing and disseminating news. Within the ever-increasing literature and research on web journalism worldwide, the US- and UK-based academic studies actually far outweigh studies of anywhere else. This book, therefore, is an attempt to contribute to the diversity of the global communication study by analyzing Chinese mainstream web journalism in a global context. It explores the distinctive forms of journalism that have emerged in mainstream news websites in mainland China. Two case studies, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, are employed to identify features in Chinese and Western news online. Specifically, a comparison is made between the in-depth news sections of popular mainstream news websites in China and those in the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. This book should be useful to professionals in the field of new media studies cross cultures, or anyone else who may be interested in comparative journalism studies.