Abstract:This commentary interprets the acerbic and defamatory commentary around the most recent trending of #RespectLisa in February 2021 within the theoretical framework of "intersectionality." Drawn on intersectional feminist media, K-pop, and antifan studies, the commentary reveals the complexities of the hostility targeting the female Thai K-pop celebrity Lisa and considers the hateful discourse a manifestation of intersectional discrimination in global K-pop culture.

Abstract:This article studies how the political affiliation and administrative rank of news organizations in a nondemocratic setting affect news selection autonomy. While existing studies have found that further commercialization contributes to more news selection autonomy, the extent to which political affiliation and administrative rank of news media explain autonomy remains unknown. Eight Chinese news organizations of varying political affiliations and administrative ranks were thus selected to compare their news and frame selection strategies. The findings reveal that political affiliation largely explains news selection autonomy: Party-affiliated outlets generally have lower news selection autonomy than nonparty outlets. Administrative rank has some effect on news selection autonomy in the highly competitive media markets, where news organizations with a lower administrative ranking must play more with propaganda control to compete with their higher ranking counterparts.

Abstract:This research explores the variations between Chinese party and non-party newspapers in the framing of trans-edited international news. Existing studies on the framing of Chinese domestic news show that the variations depend on the sensitivity of news, which invokes government control. However, it is not clear how strictly the government would control international news and whether party and non-party news organizations would show similarities or variations in the framing of it. To address these issues, we conducted a comparative quantitative content analysis of 806 pieces of trans-edited international news from one party newspaper and one non-party newspaper. The findings show that the party and non-party newspapers show similarity on the use of three frames but small variations on the other four. This implies a strong control of the Chinese government on the reporting of international news. By comparison, the government control has stronger effects on the party newspaper than on its non-party counterpart.

Abstract:This study investigates a particular use of an application of speech recognition technology in the assessment of English proficiency. The use of the application, called Versant English Test, is examined in the context of a country where English is not the first language of communication, in order to determine whether or not English as the first language of the country in which the test is taken could have a bearing on the test result. As suggested by Chun (2006), this study compares the results achieved by test takers in a non-English speaking environment with those obtained by different test takers in an English speaking environment. To be able to decide whether the Versant is more prone to setting-related bias than other English proficiency tests, the Versant test scores are correlated with the TOEFL scores of the test-takers in a non-English speaking setting and the correlation coefficient is then compared with that achieved in an English-speaking environment. The results suggest that the correlation between the Versant and TOEFL in a non-English-speaking environment is not significantly different from that obtained in an English-speaking environment.

Abstract:An ever-increasing number of us live in a world rich in information and media that provide us with constant access to that information. Besides television, radio, newspapers, and computers, we now carry communication devices with us. Mobile devices with digital content - phones, iPods, PDAs - have become ubiquitous around the world, creating an information environment with as yet unknown consequences for the way we function and the way we think and feel. This study examines responses from students at 12 universities from 10 nations who tried to avoid all "media" for 24 hours and reflect on their experience, and considers the data in the context of ambient media in hopes of better understanding the effects of living in a world of ambient media. © First Monday, 1995-2014.

Abstract:As Chinese politicians hold the power to control the dissemination of political information, beat journalists must guard their relationship with the authorities to expand the boundaries of news reporting; that is, to gain more access to political information and report more sensitive news. What remains a puzzle is how beat journalists can possibly expand these boundaries. Data from participatory observation and in-depth interviews with journalists reveal that in order to gain more access to political information, they not only serve as political advocates but also seize the opportunity to act as watchdogs. To report more sensitive news without being sanctioned or denounced by the authorities, they coordinate with peers both within and outside the news organization.

Abstract:互联网时代与社交媒体的到来让网络生态走向分权化,国家政府面对的不仅是大量信息流通的挑战,还有私人公司与公民团体不断提高的网络决断权。后者已经成为一种新的权威。在互联网治理的过程中,政府应该如何与这些新兴的私人和社会行为体进行互动和介入?政府与这些行为体之间已经有了哪种互动关系?在这种互动中,权力又是如何分配的?本文探讨了国际和中国语境下的互联网治理模式,包括多利益攸关方主义、数字宪政主义和分析性网络治理。前两种模式具有功能主义的论点和规范性的支撑,后一种则分析了不同行为体之间的权力关系。本文在最后提出,在研究互联网治理时,应综合规范性和分析性的学术路径。

Abstract:This research inspects the media and public discourses surrounding the first season of the sensational Chinese reality TV rap competition,The Rap of China(iQiyi, 2017). Through the combined theoretical lenses of queer China studies and global media studies, I examine the show's framing of linguistic, geocultural, gender and sexual variations in its construction of a nationalistic imaginary alongside China's media and cultural globalization. I reveal a revised fantasy of 'authentic Chineseness' projected by the competition. I then offer a careful reading of the post-competition sexual scandal and the government's 2018 crackdown on Chinese hip-hop. I consider the official criticism and censorship of Chinese rap as the government's response to the public cultural panic over the threat to China's hetero-patriarchal-structured sexual morality. I show that a self-contradictory imaginary of a globalized, modernized and diversified 'Sinophone' community located within mainland China was created and positioned at the party-state's moral and cultural centre. In this imaginary, nonnormative cultures, identities, languages and forms of intimacy, which have often been ostracized or degraded in the linguistic, geopolitical and conjugal paradigms of mainstream Chinese culture, are enabled to negotiate a place within official culture and mass media, though often in limited and problematic ways.

Abstract:This paper explores media regulation in China and argues that the country's broadcasting regulatory strategies of becoming more legal-rational and law based have been affected by two forces: the Chinese Party-state's attempt to recast the foundation of its political legitimacy, and the legitimizing power of legal rationality per se. The legitimization of media-regulatory efforts have primarily centered on procedural justice of the rule of law in the following ways: enacting stable new broadcasting laws (stability); instituting public consultation in rule making (procedural inclusiveness); strengthening law enforcement (enforcement); and placing checks on administrative power (restriction of state power). The advantages of this procedural legitimization are that it provides predictability by restricting arbitrariness in the exercise of administrative power and providing some opportunity for public participation, while limiting regulatory authority. On the other hand, Chinese media regulation still requires mechanisms to secure its operational transparency, accountability and deliberation to avoid being cast as a legitimizing ritual. This paper also argues that procedural legality and justice is a necessary, but insufficient condition for obtaining the media regulator's legal-rational legitimacy, and given the status of the country's constitution and its weaknesses in political participation, accountability and transparency in national law making, the content of the media regulation itself must also manifest the social and political values of protecting citizen and media rights.

Abstract:Since public access to the Internet in Mainland China increased in the early 2000s, pop-cultural (re)productions and imaginings that interrogate the rigid boundaries of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and other sociocultural registers have thrived and diversified. As an introductory piece to the special issue of Feminist Media Studies, "Queer Pop in Post-2000 China," this paper explores this "queer pop" phenomenon as a proliferation of non-normatively gendered and/or sexualized narratives, performances, cultural productions, inventions, interpretations, artistic expressions, gestures, sociocultural relations, imaginations, and significations, especially in China's mainstream media and public spaces. By mapping out various manifestations of this phenomenon in this digital, globalist age, as well as its potential and the challenges it faces, the case studies presented in this special issue, such as those that address queer fandom, livestreaming, online video and digital documentary making, cross-cultural translation, and the making and broadcasting of online TV programs, excavate its substantial norm-defying power. The essays reveal the negotiative spaces made possible by the development and transformation of media cultures and practices by and for gender, sexual, and sociocultural minorities in an authoritarian, heteropatriarchal society where media portrayals of LGBTQ groups and lives have been subject to ambiguous, yet persistent, censorship.

Abstract:This article explores Bret Easton Ellis's negotiation in Imperial Bedrooms (2010) of what the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has identified as the paradox of "enlightened false consciousness" constitutive of cynical reason. My claim is that the novel extends Sloterdijk's critique by short-circuiting the logic of cynical reason through the open display of seemingly sincere statements that have inevitably emerged from artifice. In particular, I consider the challenges inherent in constructing a critique from within a cynical society in which no speech act can be legitimated, justified, or grounded.

Abstract:This article focuses on the use of natural language processing (NLP) to facilitate second language learning within the context of academic English. It describes a full cycle of educational software development, from needs analysis to software testing. Two studies are included 1) the needs analysis conducted to develop the Intelligent Sentence Writing Tutor (ISWT) which diagnoses and at request corrects second language errors in writing, and 2) the summative evaluation of ISWT. The former comprises a survey of learning styles and learner corpus analysis which have both fed into the development of ISWT. The latter is addressed in a quantitative study with elements of both within-sample and comparison design. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the examined phenomenon, the paper establishes links to previous and concurrent research in the fields of second language acquisition and ICALL (intelligent computer assisted language learning), while relying on a variety of theories and approaches to address a specific educational problem. The comprehensive coverage of the development process takes precedence over the fine detail of individual development stages. © 2013 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.

Abstract:This study investigates how party and nonparty newspapers in China frame sensitive political issues differently, depending on their geographic relevance. Extant studies indicate that political control influences how news organizations present an issue. The assumption is that the framing of nationally sensitive issues is similar across Chinese news outlets, while the framing of locally sensitive issues diverges. An examination of the news frames used by six newspapers in Guangzhou in their coverage of a nationally sensitive issue and a locally sensitive issue confirms this assumption. In the coverage of the nationally sensitive issue, all newspapers use more leadership frames and factual information than responsibility, conflict and human interest frames. Contrastingly, the party newspapers use more leadership frames, whereas nonparty newspapers use more conflict frames in the reporting of the locally sensitive issue.

Abstract:We examined whether or not negative caregiving orientations, namely hyperactivation and deactivation, impair physical health of caregivers through the mediating role of life satisfaction. A sample of Israeli adults (N = 354) completed self-report scales measuring caregiving, life satisfaction, and self-rated health (SRH). Caregiving hyperactivation and deactivation predicted reductions in both life satisfaction and SRH of caregivers. A mediation model suggested that the associations between negative caregiving orientations and physical health are significantly mediated by life satisfaction. The results are discussed in relation to the contribution of individuals' interpersonal perceptions to their physical health.

Abstract:本实验是研究一个特定的评估英语水平的语音识别技术的应用程序。这个应用程序叫做Versant英语口语测试,此测试在不以英语为第一语言的国家中进行,以验证是否在英语作为第一语言的国家测试时,测试结果会受到影响。就像Chun(2006)所建议的那样,这个研究比较了在非英语环境下的考生和那些在英语环境中的不同考生所取得的测试结果。为了能够确定Versant测试是否比其他英语水平测试更易受到语言环境相关因素的影响,本研究将Versant测试分数分别与在非英语环境中进行托福考试考生的托福成绩,以及在英语环境中进行托福考试考生的托福成绩进行相关性分析,随后对比两相关系数。结果表明,在非英语环境中,Versa...

Abstract:This combined quantitative/qualitative study is based on a content analysis of 238 hours of Israeli talk shows from 2012 and semiotic analysis of selected programs to map the gender distribution of TV experts and explore potential differences in the way men and women are treated in the programs.. All in all, 495 experts were coded. Men experts outnumbered women experts in a 1.7 to 1 ratio. These men were signifi cantly older than the women and tended to have a higher academic rank, but they were not treated more favorably during the program. In fact, experts of both genders were criticized or disagreed with in just less than 4%% of the cases. The topics on which the experts commentated refl ect familiar gender stereotypes with men more likely to talk about security, politics and economy and women more often talk about body grooming and child care. The results, which partly accord with feminist criticisms of the popular media, are analyzed in relation to the theoretical concepts of symbolic annihilation and "fast thinking" and the fi ndings of studies that looked at the gender of scientists and scholars in other TV genres.

Abstract:Plagiarism, or using someone else's words or ideas without acknowledgment, is known to appear in university student writing. Culture, education, attitudes and language proficiency are viewed as the major causes of ESL writer plagiarism. The use of electronic plagiarism detection tools such as Turnitin and SafeAssignement seems to provide a remedy. While previous research (Walker, 2010) demonstrates that Turnitin can be an effective plagiarism deterrent, this paper claims that Turnitin can be additionally used as a learning aid which, paired with focused instruction, could help the students improve their quoting and paraphrasing skills. The claim is supported by an action research case study which tracks the plagiarism levels in a writing-intensive course. The conditions include the use of Turnitin to upload (1) the final assignment drafts only, (2) all assignment drafts, and (3) all drafts after explicit instruction in the use of Turnitin to improve paraphrasing skills. Condition 3 appears to be the most effective. i

Abstract:The past decade has seen a surge in the scholarship of queer China and Sinophone studies, which has productively explored the geocultural travelling and transformation of Western-originated queer theories and identity politics as powerful, generative tools in both the social-political and scholarly dimensions of diverse Chinese-speaking contexts. Along this line, this article, as the introductory piece to the special issue 'Making a queer turn in contemporary Chinese-language media studies', proposes a radical queer theorization, reading and critique of today's Chinese-language film, television, pop music and related celebrity and fan cultures. We connect queer China and Sinophone studies with (the too-often Western-centric) queer media studies to question the assumed absence or minoritarian position of queer media productions and fantasies in the Chinese and Sinophone worlds. Through unravelling various roots and routes in which visual-aural media forms, formats and imaginaries form discursive intervention into, if not close association with, the hetero-patriarchally structured societies and media industries, we show the research possibilities and directionalities opened up by recognizing the co-presence of and continual negotiation between queer and normative fantasies surrounding gender, sexuality, nationhood, ethnicity and class in Chinese-language media production, circulation and consumption.