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Thought Work Contested: Ideology and Journalism Education in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2017

Maria Repnikova*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, Georgia State University. Email: [email protected].

Abstract

This article examines the dynamic evolution of China's ideology work through the prism of journalism education. Official sensitivity about both student activism and the media makes journalism education a critical sector for observing how the Party attempts to instil ideology. The article interrogates the process of negotiation of official ideology among authorities, educators and students at elite journalism schools. It demonstrates that alongside state-sanctioned media commercialization and globalization, official influence still looms large in journalism training. Ideological teachings continue to occupy a core place in the curricula, and the authorities deploy a mix of structural oversight, ad hoc surveillance and coercion to keep the educators in check. The effects of the official ideology work, however, are ambivalent, as educators and students engage in the active reinterpretation of the Party's media principles. While these practices do not directly undermine the Party's legitimacy, they demonstrate that official ideology has merely constructed what Yurchak terms a “hegemony of form,” highlighting a degree of vulnerability in China's mode of adaptive authoritarianism.

摘要

本文从新闻学教育的视角来探究中国意识形态工作的动态演变。新闻学教育对中国官方而言具有学生运动及媒体的双重敏感性, 因此可以作为观察当局意识形态工作的关键领域。本文探究了在中国精英新闻学教育机构中, 政府、教师和学生针对官方意识形态的协商过程, 论证了在国家允许的媒体商业化及全球化过程中, 官方影响在新闻学教育培训中依然非常突出。 在新闻媒体课程中意识形态继续占据核心地位, 而当局还通过一系列诸如结构性监督、临时性管制、乃至强力高压措施来约束教师。尽管如此, 政府意识形态工作的效果却差强人意, 因为教师和学生总是不断地对党的媒体原则进行积极的重新解读。这种行为虽然并不能直接削弱当局的合法性, 但是却展示了官方意识形态工作仅仅建立了“形式霸权”, 从而凸显了中国调适性威权主义模式在一定程度上的脆弱性。

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2017 

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