This book focuses on China’s media diplomacy and its interplay with a range of international conflicts. It assesses the representation and framing of China, as well as the perception and reception of China’s media communication in relation to various crises and conflicts. Including detailed analyses of many cases, it highlights the complex, fluid and dynamic relationship between media and conflict, and discusses how this both exemplifies and also affects China’s relations with the outside world. In addition, in contrast to most existing studies of mediatized conflict in the digital age, it provides a very valuable non-Western perspective.

This book explores the media and conflict relationship in the age of social media through the lens of China. Inspired by the concepts of medialization of conflict and actor-network theory, this book centers on four main actors in wars and conflicts: social media platform, mainstream news organizations, online users and social media content. These four human and non-human actors associate, interact and negotiate with each other in the social media network. The central argument is that social media is playing an enabling role in contemporary wars and conflicts. Both professional media outlets and web users employ the functionalities of social media platforms to set, counter-set or expand the online public agenda. Social media platform embodies a web of technological and human complexities with different actors, factors, interests, and power relations. These four actors and the macro social-political context are influential in the medialization of conflict in the social media era. ‘’Empirically rich and theoretically innovative, this book advances our understanding of the constantly changing dynamic between international conflict and its medialization. With its compelling case studies, Shixin Zhang’s monograph makes a valuable contribution to the literature on Chinese social media in conflict situations.’’ - Daya K. Thussu, Professor of International Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Ironically, as telecommunications technology—the embodiment of modernity—advances, bringing people in different nations into more direct contact during conflict situations, traditional cultural factors become increasingly important as differing ways of thinking and acting collide. The mass media can be seen as a factor in the creation of international conflict; they also, claim many scholars, are the key to control and resolution of those problems. Whichever side of the coin one chooses to look at—mass communication as cause or cure of conflict—there is no doubt that the news media are no longer peripheral players on the global scene; they are important participants whose organizational patterns of behavior, values, and motivations must be taken into account in understanding national and international conflict. In this volume, a distinguished group of authors explores the variety of ways the news media—newspapers, radio, and television—are involved in conflict situations. Conflicts between the United States and Iran, India and Pakistan, and the United States and China are examined, and national-level studies in Sri Lanka, Iran, Hong Kong, and the United States provide varied contexts in which the authors look at the complex interrelationships among government, news media, and the public in conflict situations.

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date scholarly examination of how China builds international relationships through public diplomacy practices, together with an assessment of the impact of these practices around the world. It explores the sources of China's evolving strategies, how the past influences the present, and the impact of domestic factors that shape China's communication strategies. Including a wide range of detailed examples, the book also discusses how far China is creating new models that will reshape the current landscape of public diplomacy. Chapters 1 and 11 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com.

This collection of 13 case studies examines the challenges faced by media practitioners reporting on conflicts across the diverse media ecologies of Asia. Topics covered include; media bias; resource limitations; professionalism; government intervention; poor working conditions and pay and physical and financial security.

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, grade: 1,0, Stockholm University, language: English, abstract: 1 Introduction The process of Globalization and new communication technologies such as television and internet provide advanced opportunities for the mass media to report about conflict and war in any remote part of the world beyond national borders. The public opinion and people’s perception of a conflict can be shaped by news coverage, in many cases imprinted by the relationship between the media and the political elite which is especially consistent in times of war (Hallin 1986, cited in Dimitrova and Strömbäck 2005: 406). If media coverage is reflecting the line of government officials, images related to war and conflict are biased. This construction of reality by the contemporary mass media is especially criticised, besides other critique, by so-called “corrective forms” of journalism (Cottle 2006: 100-119). The recently escalated conflict between the People’s Republic of China and its autonomous region of Tibet is perceptible everywhere in the world and not only a national issue behind doors any more as contemporary mass media enhance a form of “global scrutiny” making violent and despotic behaviour of states visible for the world (J.B. Thompson 1994, cited in Stevenson 2003: 107). In fact, the tensions between China and Tibet is not a new phenomena but the riots bring the issue back into the public what proves the statement of Simon Cottle, that the mass media is rather reporting about violent conflicts and has little interest in processes of peaceful resolutions of conflicts (Cottle 2006: 100). The conflict is carried out in the media via “selective, framed communication” and voices stating their opinion on the conflict are raised everywhere in the world.[...]

How do aspiring and established rising global powers respond to conflict? Using China, the book studies its response to wars and rivalries in the Middle East from the Cold War to the present. Since the People’s Republic was established in 1949, China has long been involved in the Middle East and its conflicts, from exploiting or avoiding them to their management, containment or resolution. Using a conflict and peace studies angle, Burton adopts a broad perspective on Chinese engagement by looking at its involvement in the region’s conflicts including Israel/Palestine, Iraq before and after 2003, Sudan and the Darfur crisis, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Gulf crisis and the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The book reveals how a rising global and non-Western power handles the challenges associated with both violent and nonviolent conflict and the differences between limiting and reducing violence alongside other ways to eliminate the causes of conflict and grievance. Contributing to the wider discipline of International Relations and peace and conflict studies, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, Chinese foreign policy and the politics and international relations of the Middle East.