课程内容

This course investigates how media and communication industries are organized, operated, and contested in an era of digital transformation and geopolitical tension. Taking China as its central case, the course situates Chinese media within broader global debates about platform capitalism, creative labor, and the competing logics of politics, commerce, and culture.  

The first week establishes foundational frameworks in media political economy, examining how social media, digital platforms, and artificial intelligence are reshaping content production, transforming creative work, and intensifying tensions between public interest, commercial imperatives, and cultural value. The second week turns to China, tracing the structural transformation of its media industries and analyzing how platform giants, algorithmic recommendation systems, and AI-driven content moderation have created new spaces for both state control and popular expression.  

A distinctive feature of the course is its attention to competing narratives: how international media frame China, how Chinese state media address global and domestic audiences, and how Chinese citizens across different social classes articulate their lived experiences through digital platforms. Students will develop analytical tools for understanding mediated politics in an increasingly fragmented global landscape.

预期目标

By the end of the course, students shall be able to demonstrate understanding of the key issues below, as well as developing the analytical perspectives and building in-depth empirical knowledge to formulate independent and coherent views on the relevant debate around these issues.  

• What are the contemporary features of the organization and operation of media production and distribution?

• How do the institutional relations and political economic contexts shape the production of media content?

• What is the changing nature of creative work in a networked digital environment?

• What are the key tensions around the political, the commercial and the cultural aspects of media and communication products?

• What is the structural transformation that media and communication industries in China have been going through and how that is related to the broader political economy and social transformation?

• What are some of the competing narratives offered by international media about China, by Chinese media to their international and domestic audiences, and by Chinese people of different social class recounting their lived experiences? What are the key themes of mediated politics emerging from these competing narratives?

课程安排