Lecturer

This paper introduces and discusses the main perspectives of the book China's Window on the World: TV News,Social Knowledge and International Spectacle.It also briefly reviews the history of media studies in the view of sociology of knowledge and rethinks the relationship between social ...

Based on the textual analysis for the newspaper coverage of health care reform and interviews with commentary authors, this article is aimed to examine the linkage of the social structure and media discourses production in Mainland China within the framework of sociology of knowledge. By examing media’s public presentation function and opinion expression function, this paper finds a duality of the relationship between media and power networks, which includes emerging civic discourses on the one hand and the party-state authoritarianism on the other hand. In other words, China’s media production has an unclear vision.

Keywords: Producing society; Media presentation; Opinion expression

Audience research is a crucial area of theoretical communication innovation in the new media environment. By examining the academic project of ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’ funded by the European Cooperation Project in Science and Technology, this article analyzes the innovative ideas of European audience research from the perspective of the interaction between knowledge production and societal contexts. This project includes four mains issues: media literacy in the new media environment; audience interactivity and participation; the role of Information and Communication Technology use when involving social relationships; and audience transformation and social integration. By analyzing the academic vein of these issues, this article determines the theoretical trends and social meanings of European audience research, naming the construction of a new ‘audience participation paradigm’ in the new media environment.