A Meta-Review of Chinese Media Studies, 1998–2008

Abstract

This article aims to provide the first comprehensive meta-review of Chinese media studies in an international academic journal. It situates the state of the field against the historical context of institutional development and the flow of ideas related to the study of media in China. Content analysis was conducted on 147 articles in 52 top academic journals between 1998 and 2008. Results show that research on Chinese media has increasingly drawn interest beyond ethnic Chinese researchers, with a rising proportion of articles published by non-ethnic Chinese, and growing collaboration between non-ethnic and ethnic Chinese researchers. The industries and genres have broadened, but journalism remains the most studied industry – as it has been since media studies started in China. The internet has become the most researched medium. Partly due to the influence of mass communication research in the United States, the media message has become the most popular subject of study. Qualitative methods have been used more often than quantitative ones, but an increase in quantitative methods is expected among scholars in Mainland China, as positivist hypothesis-testing methods gain wide acceptance there.