網絡規管的新秩序: 權力、控制與治理

Depending on where one stands, the cyberspace can be thought of either as a site for discursive emancipation to be celebrated or as a threat to dominant discourse warranting containment. The former typically implies the latter, especially in societies where the press is granted limited measures of self-determination. While the power unleashed by new media technology is yet to be fully appraised, scholars agree that the time-cherished professionalism in newsmaking is being dethroned. Increasingly taking its place is a new set of routines and a platform-based business model that privilege click-rate, metrics, sensory stimulation, and audience balkanization over people and public interest. Enter media convergence. As a state-headed massive media digitalization campaign, convergence in China started with news organizations as the primary sites of reform and evolved into a co-opted integration of various actors in the realm of platforms and networks. In the process of this multi-role interplay, two major characteristics emerged in the country's internet ecology: one is a pluralistic space where exchange of ideas is limited; the other is discourse dominated by the state apparatus. This situation gives theoretical salience and historical urgency to discussions of cyberspace regulation and governance. Based on their decade-long emersion into the reality and research of the technology-information relationship as the State Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Secretary General of Academy of Social Science, the two invited scholars offer valuable insights beyond the facade of change into the deeper meaning and implications of digital news production and the fate of journalism in China.