No. 5 of 2024
Know chinese journalismAutonomous knowledge systems
In recent times, china had a unique knowledge system in the world, but it had been marginalized by a lack of dialogue with the world knowledge system. From this historical lesson, the autonomous knowledge system is not its uniqueness but its ability to interpret the world and to engage in dialogue with global knowledge systems. What is knowledge? Knowledge, as defined by plato, is a true and well-documented belief. As a rule, speech rights are based on intellectual theoretical systems. This should be the logical starting point for promoting autonomous knowledge systems. However, there is also a reminder that, in the effort to correct the “western interpretation”, many scholars have inadvertently fallen into the “china specialism” that will reinforce the “european-american discourse, we seek special” division of contemporary social science. It has been assessed by the patrimony that there is no real theoretical contribution to the “home” approach if it does not reveal universal problems. All these problems suggest that building autonomous knowledge systems necessarily points to theoretical innovation。
What's the theory? Theories are often seen as an insight across specific social contexts, that is, based on ideas that are formed in a given time and space and can be used to express another space and time. Only ideas or beliefs that have been rigorously and effectively justified can be translated into systematic intellectual theory. The construction of china's contemporary knowledge system is related both to speech rights and to knowledge in specific areas. Journalism is exactly where “secondary” schools of western science meet, and therefore theoretical innovation and autonomous knowledge systems are discussed in this area, with the value of “specimen”。
Based on the knowledge innovation path of journalism over the past 40 years, there are mainly two models. One is the “news reform” path. The main source of this is the joint efforts of the chinese news industry and the academic community since the beginning of the reform and opening up of the press, the practical and theoretical innovations resulting from the new era of press reform, the focus on the core issues of china's journalism, and the strong awareness and continuity of the issue. The second is the “digital journalism” path. Since the advent of the internet, the development of a digital society, particularly in the new context of a deeply mediated society, the new findings of industry practice and academic research in the digital news industry, and the transformation of communication networks brought about by technology are central values to this knowledge innovation path。
A comparison of the two paths reveals an inherent conflict between current innovations in journalism theory. Among them, the “news reform” path is the traditional knowledge production path of china's journalism industry in the face of a new pattern of development. The “political newspaper” is its core value concern, but it clearly stems from the assumption of traditional societies and traditional journalism that traditional journalism is media-centred, with media-centred research on the whole journalism industry. In terms of the path of digital journalism, the network of diverse and diverse actors is a major actor in the digital news industry, and the institutional media are only one of the relatively important nodes of the network, but they are no longer all of the digital journalism industry, and the theory of digital journalism points to the media as no longer central。
The two research paths described above have led to a polarization and tearing of intellectual innovation in journalism. A theoretical construction along the theoretical path of “news reform” inevitably falls within the old framework of “media-centred” journalism, which is alien to the digital community and the digital journalism industry; in turn, if digital journalism is used as the theoretical ceiling for building an autonomous knowledge system of journalism, then theoretical concerns in this area are more focused on the problems inherent in western society, often turning a blind eye to china. For example, the core list of questions on china's press reform, such as the “political newspaper” and the “all-party newspaper”, the “people's newspaper”, is largely absent from the theoretical concerns of digital journalism。
From this perspective, neither of the above-mentioned research paths is capable of acting alone as the theoretical innovation coordinates of journalism in china. Facing the age of innovation in autonomous knowledge systems, gao xiaohong has suggested that practice is a fundamental feature of contemporary chinese journalism and that responding to and guiding the resolution of practical issues is a fundamental task of journalism theory; hu jong-hoon has also suggested that there has been a marked shift in practice in terms of trends in global news communications research. On this basis, we can come to an innovative field of fundamental journalism theory, namely, the need to return to the core of china’s long-standing news reform practice, with the “network of actors” as the main subject of digital journalism. Perhaps this innovative shift in practice will help us look at autonomous knowledge systems。
