Author(s)

Yiran Zhao

Corresponding Author

Yiran Zhao

ABSTRACT

Marketization as an ongoing process in China’s online news industry has resulted significant “power-shifting”: news media’s function becomes more of social and financial, but less of the political. This leads to the changes of journalistic practice within the newsroom. Arguably, online news workers are going through a drastic change of media regulation. In time of reporting critical news, their gaining autonomy allows them to include/exclude news content in a market-driven environment. Conducting 20 in-depth interviews with China’s online news workers from 2012 to 2018, this paper explores the internalization of media regulation within the newsrooms. It develops the triangular models of coordination/restrain to demonstrate how the inclusion/exclusion decisions are influenced throughout the process of online news production.

KEYWORDS

Online news workers, journalistic practice, autonomy, newsroom