Media and Pollution in China: Mouthpiece or Watchdog?

Abstract

The media plays a vital role in spreading and communicating environmental issues to the public. It is widely accepted that China has become increasingly open toward environmental news. However, the Chinese media has long been understood to be the mouthpiece of the Chinese government. Social systems have the greatest power to influence news content in the hierarchical model. Hence, this paper has assessed to what extent the news content on pollution in China is produced under the influence of social systems. This study concludes that the Chinese media coverage favors topics that are positive towards China, thus using more Chinese sources that tend to put a positive spin on new content by framing pollution as a natural and global problem. However, some local and commercial Chinese media and CCTV, to some extent, do have some free space to investigate pollution news and to criticize the government so long as it is not extremely politically sensitive. This paper discusses the communist ideological forces in the social systems that have a huge impact on the news content in China. Another finding is that since the opening of the market in China, some of the commercial media is somewhat influenced by a liberal ideology and thus serves as a watchdog. This does not mean that the "Chinese government's media control is dysfunctional.

A mediation model of the relationship between university students’ news media literacy and xenophobia: The role of intellectual humility, perceived threat, and blind patriotism

“…Compared with developed Western countries, China’s news media literacy education is not universal, and knowledge of students’ levels of news media literacy is insufficient ( Zhao, 2022 ). With the lack of news media knowledge, people may not realize that the press may serve as a “mouthpiece” ( Zhang, 2021 ) for people in power. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the situations of news media literacy and xenophobia in China’s sociocultural and media environment.…”