Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9627-2489

Date of Award

1-10-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Maria Repnikova

Second Advisor

Cynthia Hoffner

Third Advisor

Carrie Freeman

Fourth Advisor

Rongbin Han

Abstract

This dissertation examines the roles of Chinese transnational journalists in Western media during a period of the past five years, marked by escalating US-China geopolitical tensions. It draws on data from 37 interviews with Chinese journalists placed in reputable and newly founded Western news outlets, as well as on narrative analysis of selective journalistic content. The study explores how these journalists serve as transnational communicative intermediaries, both challenging and immersing in hegemonic media practices in the Global North. The analysis illuminates significant obstacles that this journalistic community faces as it operates in Western media, including precarious labor and reporting conditions. In terms of labor conditions and career trajectories, these assistants and journalists face distinct yet significant challenges due to their status as Chinese employees, expatriates, immigrants, and minorities. In reporting on China, they also face the dual constraints from Western media’s reporting structure that prioritizes the Western gaze, and an increasingly constrained Chinese media environment that limits their access to China stories. Despite these obstacles, they negotiate different opportunities for professional development, craft and publicize nuanced narratives that counter the simplified geopolitical stories prevalent in mainstream Western media. Some of these journalists also initiate independent media projects like podcasts, newsletters, and videos that center to the needs of China-interested audiences and promote China storytellers’ voices by focusing on humanistic perspectives and societal issues.

This study enriches three key bodies of scholarship: media imperialism, transnational journalism, and China’s global communication. Firstly, it deepens our understanding of global media hybridity by linking the individual agency of non-state journalists with broader power hierarchies and editorial processes. Secondly, it deepens our grasp of labor dynamics in transnational journalism by examining the precarity and opportunities of non-Western journalists, challenging the traditional binary that positions Western correspondents as central and Global South journalists as peripheral. Lastly, it positions Chinese transnational journalists as pivotal in reshaping China’s global communication narrative, moving beyond the dominant focus on state-driven practices and diasporic engagements.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/37515722

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