A JOINT CONFERENCE ORGANISED BY THE CHINESE ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNICATION AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION

FACILITATED BY THE CHINA MEDIA CENTRE OF THE UNIVERISTY OF WESTMINSTER

BEIJING 20-21 OCTOBER 2007

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The opening of China to the world and the tremendous pace of economic growth and social change that it has experienced in the last 25 years has attracted enormous interest around the world. Inside China, social scientists have been confronted with a vast and complex transformation that involves every area of social life. Internationally, scholars in all disciplines have begun to understand the scale and importance of the changes going on. The media are central parts of this process and understanding how and why they are changing is an urgent and important task.

All national cases have distinctive features, and this is particularly the case with a country possessing the long and rich history and traditions that China has. On the other hand, many of the issues that are evident today are ones that exist in different form in many countries around the world. The balance between state and market provision of the mass media is a major issue in many different countries. Regulating the media, whether in developed market economies or in those with much greater degree of centralised planning, remains a subject of much debate. The social role of journalism, and the conditions under which they can conduct investigations and report on incidents and events, recur in many different contexts. The impact of the new media, notably digital television and the Internet, are problems in every society. The relations between national media systems and international media companies provoke debates everywhere. Despite the evident differences of economics and politics, there is certainly enough common ground to make comparing the findings of Chinese scholars with those from elsewhere a valuable project.

In order to facilitate this, the Chinese Association for Communication has invited the International Communication Association to join it in organising an international conference in Beijing to bring together scholars from China and around the world to discuss some of the pressing issues of communication. The theme of the conference is “Harmonious Society, Civil Society and the Media.” The choice of this theme reflects a recognition that the problems that scholars investigate, and the concepts that they use in their research, differ from place to place. The concept of building a Harmonious Society is central to contemporary discussions in China, but it is unknown to many western scholars. Civil Society, on the other hand, is used very widely internationally but is much less common in Chinese discussions. Both concepts address issues of the relationship between the mass media and the broader society, and one of the aims of the conference will be to explore the convergence and differences between them.

We recognise that much of the thinking that is current internationally about the media and society originated in the west, primarily in the USA, and that the universal applicability of the assumptions upon which these theories rest have increasingly been questioned by scholars from outside the global North. In particular, the models of the relationship between the media and the members of a society that have dominated international scholarship have been subject to much debate. There is little agreement in the North, let alone around the world, about what the optimal relationship between the media and the public it seeks to serve should be, and the conference aims to provide a forum in which research on various aspects of that issue can be explored and compared.

This conference will be the first large-scale meeting between Chinese and international scholars, and it will provide a unique opportunity for both sides to begin to learn more about the work that the others do. Because the subject is so large, and the possible topics so many, the organisers have selected a number of areas in which they will particularly welcome papers and panels. The sub-themes reflect areas which are well-developed in both research communities and which provide promising ground for a mutually enriching exchange. The themes are:

In all societies rapidly changing technologies and the development of a global marketplace are forcing governments, regulators and businesses to rethink established models of media regulation. In the USA the issue of concentration and cross-media ownership is constantly debated. In much of Europe there remains an intense debate about whether public broadcasting can survive in the digital age. In China, the regulatory bodies are grappling not only with technological change but also with the impact of a rapidly growing market on the media. All of these societies face the issue of how best to ensure that the media meet the goals both of economic efficiency and the needs of the public.

New media and new communities.

The impact of the Internet has been dramatic both on the ways in which the media reach their public and in the ways in which the public communicate with one another. The established media face challenges both to their business and to their monopoly on public information and discussion. The burgeoning of new forms of communication -- email, chat, blogs and other forms made possible by the new technology -- have granted people the chance to form groups and communities that are free of some of the constraints of time and place that previously determined sociability. In all societies, these are seen as both opportunities and threats.

Journalists everywhere carry out their work under constraints. In some cases these are economic imperatives and in others they are political. These pressures work in different ways but in all cases journalists experience problems with following up and publishing the stories they believe are important. These problems are particularly acute in the case of investigative journalism, which is often seen as the form of journalism that best serves public purposes. It is, however, very expensive to support and it runs the risk of embarrassing powerful figures, so it is frequently the site of conflicts between journalists pursuing what they see as professional goals and media owners and controllers concerned with other objectives.

The media industry is one of the fastest growing industries in our world and meanwhile new media technologies continue to expand its boundary. In China, the crucial part of media reform is to separate the public nature of the media from its commercial nature, and indeed, this reform is gaining ground. When talking about media, scholars are more and more using the language of economics instead of that of ideology. Commercialization, industrialization, and conglomeration tremendously change the media landscape, and draw broad attention on policy making, industry regulation, corporate strategy, corporate branding, production and sales management, and marketing.

Globalisation has meant that the operations of media companies, and the trade in media products, has taken place more and more on the international level. States, on the other hand, remain the main regulators on media policy, setting rules for ownership and content that constrain these exchanges. Very often they are motivated by considerations of maintaining what they see as the national culture. The viability of these policies, and the aims of the global media companies that run up against them are subjects of intense debate. Issues of programme production and trade, of the international reach of satellite services, and the social meaning of the migration of programme formats from society to society are all issues that concern scholars everywhere.

Globalization has meant new challenges around the world. At the same time, many of the classical development goals such as clean water, adequate food and the chance to build a better life remain unmet for millions of people. The role of the mass media in addressing both the new and the old problems has been hotly debated. There are a range of issues, notably in health, in education, in social integration, that are perceived as problems that the mass media must address in all societies, and in particular in ones that are undergoing a rapid process of change and growth.

Prospective participants should send electronically to the organisers a 250 word abstract, or a preliminary panel proposal, by January 1st 2007.

Email Address: paper2007@cuc.edu.cn

A full copy of the paper or the final proposal for organised panel session should be submitted by April 1st 2007.

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