中國社會變遷、媒體環境與策略傳播研究

The current issue contains four articles from a special issue on “Strategic Communication” (i.e., an entity’s communication that is substantial for its survival and sustained success) as well as an article of a similar topic. The five papers explicate the strategic communication practice of different entities (news and media organizations, a grassroots non-profit organization for migrant workers, social movement organizers, community leaders against a nuclear construction, and a social media influencer) for achieving their goals in mainland China’s contemporary social and media environments. Specifically, these studies empirically examine the influencing factors and outcomes of strategic communication and assess the applications of relevant theories in the Chinese context. Overall, strategic communication research conducted in mainland China tends to focus on political communication in response to the nation’s various social changes and the influence of its new media landscape by primarily employing interviewing and content analysis in the research. Future research in this area that uses a quantitative methodology and big data and explores the topics of communication in strategy formation, implementation, alignment, and evaluation is promising. In addition to the five research papers, the issue also includes an academic dialogue among renowned Prof. Klaus Krippendorff, Prof. Chin-Chuan Lee, Prof. Colin Sparks, and Prof. David Weaver on the problems and challenges in the discipline of communication as well as their advice to junior communication scholars.