The Intercultural approach.

The Intercultural approach. 

The intercultural approach aims to boost positive community life between individuals from various cultures and religions by focusing on individuals as a central element and holders of rights. As for strategies, these are considered from an intercultural perspective in public policies.

Intercultural communication (or cross-cultural communication) is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication. It describes the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear within an organization or social context made up of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. In this sense it seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures act, communicate and perceive the world around them. Many people in intercultural business communication argue that culture determines how individuals encode messages, what medium they choose for transmitting them, and the way messages are interpreted.
With regard to intercultural communication proper, it studies situations where people from different cultural backgrounds interact. Aside from language, intercultural communication focuses on social attributes, thought patterns, and the cultures of different groups of people. It also involves understanding the different cultures, languages and customs of people from other countries. Intercultural communication plays a role in social sciences such as anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology and communication studies. Intercultural communication is also referred to as the base for international businesses. Several cross-cultural service providers assist with the development of intercultural communication skills. Research is a major part of the development of intercultural communication skills.

Identity and culture are also studied within the discipline of communication to analyze how globalization influences ways of thinking, beliefs, values, and identity, within and between cultural environments. Intercultural communication scholars approach theory with a dynamic outlook and do not believe culture can be measured nor that cultures share universal attributes. Scholars acknowledge that culture and communication shift along with societal changes and theories should consider the constant shifting and nuances of society.

The study of intercultural communication requires intercultural understanding, which is an ability to understand and value cultural differences. Language is an example of an important cultural component that is linked to intercultural understanding.Intercultural communication is in a way the 'interaction with speakers of other languages on equal terms and respecting their identities'.

Development communication

Development communication refers to the use of communication to facilitate social development. Development communication engages stakeholders and policy makers, establishes conducive environments, assesses risks and opportunities and promotes information exchanges to create positive social change via sustainable development.Development communication techniques include information dissemination and education, behavior change, social marketing, social mobilization, media advocacy, communication for social change, and community participation.

Development communication has not been labeled as the "Fifth Theory of the Press", with "social transformation and development", and "the fulfillment of basic needs" as its primary purposes. Jamias articulated the philosophy of development communication which is anchored on three main ideas. Their three main ideas are: purposive, value-laden, and pragmatic.Nora C. Quebral expanded the definition, calling it "the art and science of human communication applied to the speedy transformation of a country and the mass of its people from poverty to a dynamic state of economic growth that makes possible greater social equality and the larger fulfillment of the human potential".

Melcote and Steeves saw it as "emancipation communication", aimed at combating injustice and oppression. The term "development communication" is sometimes used to refer to a type of marketing and public opinion research.

Definition of Development Communication

1. Development communication, as an interdisciplinary field, is based on empirical research that helps to build consensus while it facilitates the sharing of knowledge to achieve a positive change in the development initiative. It is not only about effective dissemination of information but also about using empirical research and two-way communications among stakeholders (Development Communication division, the World Bank )

2. It is a social process based on dialogue using a broad range of tools and methods. It is also about seeking change at different levels, including listening, building trust, sharing knowledge and skill-building policies, debating and learning for sustained meaningful change. It is not public relation or corporate communication (Rome Consensus of World Bank 2006)

There are five keywords in development communication: dialogue, stakeholders, sharing knowledge and mutual understanding. The first keyword associated with development communication is dialogue. No matter what kind of project, it is always valuable and essential to establish dialogue among the stakeholders. Dialogue is necessary ingredient in building trust, sharing knowledge and ensures mutual understanding.

Development communication has two modes of application: monologic mode and dialogic mode. The participatory model mainly deals with dialogic communication. The monologic mode is broadly equivalent to the diffusion perspective and is based on the transmission model. It adopts one-way communication to send messages, disseminate information, and awareness generation for changing behaviour. The dialogic mode is closely associated with the participation perspective and uses two-way communication methods to build trust, exchange knowledge and perception, achieve mutual understanding and asses the risk and opportunities. Dialogic approaches guarantee that relevant stakeholders have their voice to be heard.

In socio-development initiatives, inclusion of dialogic development communication often results in the reduction of political risks, the improvements of the project design and performance, increased transparency and enhanced people’s voice and participation. For example, many development projects initiated by the Government fail because from the beginning of the development project, key stakeholders were not involved in the preparatory and planning phases. The lack of proper communication at the initial stage generates suspicions among stakeholders and leads to misunderstanding and negative attitude towards the projects. The cause of these problems, and ultimately of the project failure, is the lack of two-way communication.


Participation ladder of stakeholders in development communication

Sustainable Civil Society Initiative – Shubh kal

Climate change is happening. The science is compelling and the longer we wait, the harder the problem will be to solve

Shubh Kal, an initiative of Development Alternatives and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation is a pilot project and supports measures that eventually lead to better income, improved resource management, lower carbon footprint and overall reduction in climate vulnerability of the population. This project has three target groups: farmers, artisans and women who are trying to improve their livelihood conditions in the drought-affected Bundelkhand region. The project area has been facing constant drought for the last few years; few livelihood options and low literacy level are major problems and, hence, the initiative has been trying to improve the lives of these three target groups by devising micro projects that are relevant to climate change adaptation. Due to the context, some complexities in the content and to the need for capacity building, here the communication strategy relies mostly on interpersonal and group methods like focus group discussion, knowledge mapping, exposure visits to other relevant project areas, etc. The key stakeholders have been associated with the process from the beginning so that no misunder-standing may take root in their mind. We are hopeful that the initiative will lead to the expected projects results within the timeframe.

The Emerging Participatory Paradigm

The participatory model of communication for social change is mainly a new look at the newly emerging paradigm in development since it emphasises the importance of two-way horizontal communication and need to facilitate the participation of stakeholders in each step for empowerment. ‘Change is now expected to be defined with the people and not for the people, making communication for social change closely aligned with the participatory communication perspective’ (World Bank).

This model favours people’s active and direct interaction through consultation and dialogue. It shifts the emphasis from information dissemination to situation analysis, from persuasion to participation.

Participatory approaches are gaining worldwide importance in development programmes because they offer enough opportunities to any individual right from passive recipients to active agents of development efforts. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Action Research (PAR) are the two main approaches of development communication. PRA facilitates people’s involvement in the problem analysis process, while PAR aims at placing communities and local stakeholders in the driving seat of development efforts. Till such time as we do not include communication in a systematic and dialogic manner, any approach of communication will not be successful in the large scale. Participatory development communi-cation or the horizontal model of communication opens up new space for dialogue among stakeholders and facilitates the exchange of knowledge, empowering people to participate actively in the process affecting their own lives.

In the participatory approach, engagement of stakeholders is essential for assessing risks, identifying opportunities, preventing problems and identifying the needed change. This is the model communication to asses and to empower are its key focal points. In this model, the media is no longer the central element of communication. It can be used as one of the tools to be used according to the situation. The SMCR model has given way to the two-way model which is more appreciated, where the sender is at the same time the receiver and vice verse. The combination of these elements in emerging development paradigm is shifting its focus from media to people, and from persuasion to participation.

Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. ... Rogers proposes that four main elements influence the spread of a new idea: the innovation itself, communication channels, time, and a social system.



Definition

Diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system (Everett Roger, 1961). An Innovation is an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption (Rogers, 2003).

Theory

The diffusion of innovation theory analysis how the social members adopt the new innovative ideas and how they made the decision towards it. Both mass media and interpersonal communication channel is involved in the diffusion process. The theory heavily relies on Human capital. According to the theory , innovations should be widely adopted in order to attain development and sustainability. In real life situations the adaptability of the culture played a very relevant role where ever the theory was applied. Rogers proposed four elements of diffusion of innovations they are


Innovations – an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual. It can also be an impulse to do something new or bring some social change
Communication Channel – The communication channels take the messages from one individual to another. It is through the channel of communication the Innovations spreads across the people. It can take any form like word of mouth, SMS, any sort of literary form etc
Time – It refers to the length of time which takes from the people to get adopted to the innovations in a society. It is the time people take to get used to new ideas. For an example consider mobile phones it took a while to get spread among the people when it is introduced in the market
Social System – Interrelated network group joint together to solve the problems for a common goal. Social system refers to all kinds of components which construct the society like religion, institutions, groups of people etc

Who made the decision to accept the innovation? Rogers says that in a social system there are three ways the decisions are taken. He suggested the three ways considering the ability of people to make decisions of their own and their ability to implement it voluntarily, the three ways are as follows..


Optional – Individuals made a decision about the innovation in the social system by themselves
Collective – The decision made by all individuals in the social system
Authority – Few individuals made the decision for the entire social system

Further Roger identifies the Mechanism of Diffusion of Innovation Theory through five following stages

Knowledge :

An Individual can expose the new innovation but they are not showing any interest in it due to the lack information or knowledge about the innovation

Persuasion :

An Individual is showing more interest in the new innovation and they are always seeking to get details or information about the innovation

Decision :

In this stage, an individual analysis the positive and negative of the innovation and decide whether to accept / reject the innovation. Roger explains “one of the most difficult stages to identify the evidence”

Implementation :


An individual’s take some efforts to identify the dependence of the innovation and collect more information about the usefulness of the innovation, then its future also

Confirmation :

An individual conforms or finalize their decision and continue to use the innovation with full potential

Example

During the last years of 90’s the mobile phones were introduced to common people even though it was there in market the cost was much higher. Roger’s theory of diffusion of innovation can be apprehended by understanding how the people accepted and get used for mobile phones. When it was introduced it wasn’t something which comes with 500+ killer applications as today it was merely a portable land line.

Diffusion of Innovation Theory

Diffusion research examines how ideas are spread among groups of people. Diffusion goes beyond the two-step flow theory, centering on the conditions that increase or decrease the likelihood that an innovation, a new idea, product or practice, will be adopted by members of a given culture. In multi-step diffusion, the opinion leader still exerts a large influence on the behavior of individuals, called adopters, but there are also other intermediaries between the media and the audience's decision-making. One intermediary is the change agent, someone who encourages an opinion leader to adopt or reject an innovation (Infante, Rancer, & Womack, 1997).

Innovations are not adopted by all individuals in a social system at the same time. Instead, they tend to adopt in a time sequence, and can be classified into adopter categories based upon how long it takes for them to begin using the new idea. Practically speaking, it's very useful for a change agent to be able to identify which category certain individuals belong to, since the short-term goal of most change agents is to facilitate the adoption of an innovation. Adoption of a new idea is caused by human interaction through interpersonal networks. If the initial adopter of an innovation discusses it with two members of a given social system, and these two become adopters who pass the innovation along to two peers, and so on, the resulting distribution follows a binomial expansion. Expect adopter distributions to follow a bell-shaped curve over time (Rogers, 1971).  

The criterion for adopter categorization is innovativeness. This is defined as the degree to which an individual is relatively early in adopting a new idea then other members of a social system. Innovativeness is considered "relative" in that an individual has either more or less of it than others in a social system (Rogers, 1971).
Fig. 1 - Adopter categorization on the basis of innovativeness
Adopter distributions closely approach normality. The above figure shows the normal frequency distributions divided into five categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Innovators are the first 2.5 percent of a group to adopt a new idea. The next 13.5 percent to adopt an innovation are labeled early adopters. The next 34 percent of the adopters are called the early majority. The 34 percent of the group to the right of the mean are the late majority, and the last 16 percent are considered laggards (Rogers, 1971).

The above method of classifying adopters is not symmetrical, nor is it necessary for it to be so. There are three categories to the left of the mean and only two to the right. While it is possible to break the laggard group into early and late laggards, research shows this single group to be fairly homogenous. While innovators and early adopters could be combined, research shows these two groups as having distinctly different characteristics. The categories are 1) exhaustive, in that they include all units of study, 2) mutually exclusive, excluding from any other category a unit of study already appearing in a category, and 3) derived from one classificatory principle. This method of adopter categorization is presently the most widely used in diffusion research (Rogers, 1971).

Adopter Categories
Innovators are eager to try new ideas, to the point where their venturesomeness almost becomes an obsession. Innovators’ interest in new ideas leads them out of a local circle of peers and into social relationships more cosmopolite than normal. Usually, innovators have substantial financial resources, and the ability to understand and apply complex technical knowledge. While others may consider the innovator to be rash or daring, it is the hazardous risk-taking that is of salient value to this type of individual. The innovator is also willing to accept the occasional setback when new ideas prove unsuccessful (Rogers, 1971).

Early adopters tend to be integrated into the local social system more than innovators. The early adopters are considered to be localites, versus the cosmopolite innovators. People in the early adopter category seem to have the greatest degree of opinion leadership in most social systems. They provide advice and information sought by other adopters about an innovation. Change agents will seek out early adopters to help speed the diffusion process. The early adopter is usually respected by his or her peers and has a reputation for successful and discrete use of new ideas (Rogers, 1971).

Members of the early majority category will adopt new ideas just before the average member of a social system. They interact frequently with peers, but are not often found holding leadership positions. As the link between very early adopters and people late to adopt, early majority adopters play an important part in the diffusion process. Their innovation-decision time is relatively longer than innovators and early adopters, since they deliberate some time before completely adopting a new idea. Seldom leading, early majority adopters willingly follow in adopting innovations (Rogers, 1971).

The late majority are a skeptical group, adopting new ideas just after the average member of a social system. Their adoption may be borne out of economic necessity and in response to increasing social pressure. They are cautious about innovations, and are reluctant to adopt until most others in their social system do so first. An innovation must definitely have the weight of system norms behind it to convince the late majority. While they may be persuaded about the utility of an innovation, there must be strong pressure from peers to adopt (Rogers, 1971).

Laggards are traditionalists and the last to adopt an innovation. Possessing almost no opinion leadership, laggards are localite to the point of being isolates compared to the other adopter categories. They are fixated on the past, and all decisions must be made in terms of previous generations. Individual laggards mainly interact with other traditionalists. An innovation finally adopted by a laggard may already be rendered obsolete by more recent ideas already in use by innovators. Laggards are likely to be suspicious not only of innovations, but of innovators and change agents as well (Rogers, 1971).

Uses and Gratification

Uses and gratification is more a concept of research than a self-contained theory. Even contributors in this field of research find problems with the scope of the research and call uses and gratification an umbrella concept in which several theories reside (Infante et al. 1997). Researchers in this field argue that scholars have tried to do too much and should limit the scope and take a cultural-empirical approach to how people choose from the abundance of cultural products available.

Critics claim the theory pays too much attention to the individual and does not look at the social context and the role the media plays in that social context. Rubin (1985), as cited in Littlejohn (1996), suggests that audience motive research based on uses and gratification research has been too compartmentalized within certain cultures and demographic groups, leading to the assumption this has thwarted synthesis and integration of research results, which are two key ingredients in theory building.

The uses and gratification theory is a basic extension of the definition of an attitude, which is a non-linear cluster of beliefs, evaluations, and perceptions. These beliefs, evaluations, and perceptions give individuals latitude over how they employ media in their lives; in other words, how individuals filter, interpret, and convey to others the information received from a medium. Basically, a person’s attitude toward a segment of the media is determined by beliefs about and evaluations of the media. A key to this research is that the consumer, or audience member, is the focal point instead of the message. The research views the members of an audience as actively utilizing media contents, rather than being passively acted upon by the media, according to Katz, Blumer, and Gurevitch (1971) as cited in Littlejohn (1996). When audience members, not the media, are the action takers, the variations taken from the messages received are the intervening variables.

A core assumption of uses and gratification research is the assumption that individual needs are satisfied by audience members actively seeking out the mass media (Infante et al., 1997). Rubin (1983), as cited in Littlejohn (1996), designed a study to explore adult viewers’ motivations, behaviors, attitudes and patterns of interaction to see if behavioral and attitudinal consequences of the viewer could be predicted. In 1984, the researcher identified two types of television viewers. The first type is the habitual viewer who watches television for a diversion, has a high regard for the medium, and is a frequent user The second type is the non-habitual viewer who is selective, likes a particular program or type of programs and uses the medium primarily for information. The non-habitual viewer is more goal oriented when watching television and does not necessarily feel that television is important. Rubin (1983) argues that habitual viewers use the medium as a companion and that non-habitual viewers are more actively involved in the viewing experience (Littlejohn, 1996).

Expectancy-value theory
Another theory to consider under this umbrella of uses and gratification research is expectancy-value theory from information-integration theorist Martin Fishbein (Littlejohn, 1996). The researcher proposes there are two kinds of belief; belief in something and belief about something. The example used by Fishbein is the person who believes in marijuana as a recreational drug or the person who believes that using marijuana will move on to other drugs and serious crimes in order to continue the habit.

In Fishbein’s theory development, attitudes are different from beliefs in that they are evaluative and are correlated with beliefs and predispose a person to behave a certain way toward the attitude object. The two beliefs about marijuana mentioned above would change dramatically if more serious drugs and crime were evaluated as bad. Also cited in Littlejohn is Philip Palmgreen, an early uses and gratification researcher, who claims that gratifications are sought in terms of a person’s beliefs about what a medium can provide and that person’s evaluation of the medium’s content (Littlejohn, 1996).

Political economy/The propaganda model

 Political economy is the study and use of how economic theory and methods influences political ideology.

What is Political Economy?

Political economy is a social science that studies production, trade, and their relationship with the law and the government. It is the study of how economic theories affect different socio-economic systems such as socialism and communism, along with the creation and implementation of public policy.

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which corporate media is structured (e.g. through advertising, concentration of media ownership, government sourcing) creates an inherent conflict of interest that acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.

In Sum

The propaganda model seeks to explain the behavior of news media operating within a capitalist economy. The model suggests that media outlets will consistently produce news content that aligns with the interests of political and economic elites.

The propaganda model seeks to explain media behavior by examining the institutional pressures that constrain and influence news content within a profit-driven system. In contrast to liberal theories that argue that journalism is adversarial to established power, the propaganda model predicts that corporate-owned news media will consistently produce news content that serves the interests of established power.

First introduced in 1988 in Edward S. Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model argues that “the raw material of news” passes through five filters that ultimately shape the news audiences receive. These filters determine what events are deemed newsworthy, how they are covered, where they are placed within the media and how much coverage they receive.

The five filters are as follows:

Concentrated ownership, owner wealth and profit-orientation of the dominant mass-media firms. Corporate media firms share common interests with other sectors of the economy, and therefore have a real stake in maintaining an economic and political climate that is conducive to their profitability. They are unlikely to be critical of economic or political policies that directly benefit them.

Advertising as primary source of income. To remain profitable, most media rely on advertising dollars for the bulk of their revenue. It is therefore against the interests of the news media to produce content that might antagonize advertisers.

Reliance on information provided by “expert” and official sources. Elites have the resources to routinely “facilitate” the news-gathering process by providing photo-ops, news conferences, press releases, think-tank reports and canned news pieces that take advantage of the news media’s need for continuous and cheap news content. Business leaders, politicians and government officials are also typically viewed as credible and unbiased sources of information, jettisoning the need for fact-checking or other costly background research. This filter was clearly demonstrated during the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, when the U.S. news media took official pronouncements at face value, refusing to investigate their veracity or accuracy.

Flak as a means of disciplining the media. Flak refers to negative commentary to a news story that can work to police and discipline journalists or news organizations that stray too far outside the consensus. Flak includes complaints, lawsuits, petitions or government sanctions.

An external enemy or threat. Manifesting as “anti-communism” during the Cold War period when Manufacturing Consent was originally published, this filter still operates, particularly in the post-9/11 political climate. This filter mobilizes the population against a common enemy (terrorism, energy insecurity, Iran…) while demonizing opponents of state policy as insufficiently patriotic or in league with the enemy.

The propaganda model suggests that corporate media ultimately serve to “manufacture consent” for a narrow range of self-serving élitist policy options. It allows us to understand the institutional pressures that ultimately color how activists’ causes and actions are covered. By understanding the limits of “objectivity” and the contradictions within corporate-sponsored journalism, we can develop media tactics that take advantage of these contradictions while also bypassing the filters of the corporate press, and directly appealing to the public through alternative forms of media. As Herman himself suggests, “we would like to think that the propaganda model can help activists understand where they might best deploy their efforts to influence mainstream media coverage of issues.”

CRITICAL APROCHES OF MASS COMMUNICATIONS

FRANKFERT SCHOOL OF THOUGHT


In contemporary usage, the term Cultural Marxism is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt School is part of a continual academic and intellectual effort to undermine and destroy Western culture.


The Frankfurt School refers to a collection of scholars known for developing critical theory and popularizing the dialectical method of learning by interrogating society's contradictions and is most closely associated with the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. It was not a school, in the physical sense, but rather a school of thought associated with some scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany.

One of the core concerns of the scholars of the Frankfurt School, especially Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse, was the rise of what Horkheimer and Adorno initially called "mass culture" (in Dialectic of Enlightenment). This phrase refers to the way technological developments had newly allowed for the distribution of cultural products—like music, film, and art—on a mass scale, reaching all who were connected by the technology in society. (Consider that when these scholars began crafting their critiques, radio and cinema were still new phenomena, and television had not yet hit the scene.) Their concern focused on how technology-enabled both a sameness in production, in the sense that technology shapes content and cultural frameworks create styles and genres, and also, a sameness of cultural experience, in which an unprecedented mass of people would sit passively before cultural content, rather than actively engage with one another for entertainment, as they had in the past. 

They theorized that this experience made people intellectually inactive and politically passive, as they allowed mass-produced ideologies and values to wash over them and infiltrate their consciousness.

Critical theory maintains that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.

In Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), Max Horkheimer defined critical theory as social critique meant to effect sociologic change and realize intellectual emancipation, by way of enlightenment that is not dogmatic in its assumptions. The purpose of critical theory is to analyze the true significance of the ruling understandings (the dominant ideology) generated in bourgeois society, by showing that the dominant ideology misrepresents how human relations occur in the real world, and how such misrepresentations function to justify and legitimate the domination of people by capitalism.

FREEDOM OF PRESS IN CHINA

FREEDOM OF PRESS
Freedom of the press protects the right to obtain and publish information or opinions without government censorship or fear of punishment. ... This freedom was considered necessary to the establishment of a strong, independent press sometimes called "the fourth branch" of the government
FREEDOM OF PRESS IN CHINA
INTRODUCTION
The Media of the People's Republic of China or Media of China, Chinese Media) consists primarily of television, newspapers, radio, and magazines. Since 2000, the Internet has also emerged as an important form of communication by media, and is placed under the supervision of the Chinese government.
Since founding of People’s Republic of China in 1949 til 1980s all media outlets were under supervision of the government .Independent media outlets were launched but only focusses on economic reforms .State run media such as Xinhua ,cctv and people’s daily holds the major market shares.now Independent media are no longer follows the guidelines by government but are still witnessing increasing complains about self-censorship
OFFICIAL MEDIA POLICY
1:chinese constitution gives its citizens freedom of speech and press but chinese media regulations can crack down on any news stories by claiming that they expose state secrets and endanger the country.
CFR Senior Fellow Elizabeth C. Economy says the Chinese government is in a state of “schizophrenia” about media policy as it “goes back and forth, testing the line, knowing they need press freedom and the information it provides, but worried about opening the door to the type of freedoms that could lead to the regime’s downfall.”
2:The government issued in May 2010 its first white paper on the internet,Chinese internet companies are now required to sign the “Public Pledge on Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry,” which entails even stricter rules than before
In February 2016, Xi announced new media policy for party and state news outlines: “All the work by the party’s media must reflect the party’s will, safeguard the party’s authority, and safeguard the party’s unity,” emphasizing that state media must align themselves with the “thought, politics, and actions” of the party leadership. A China Daily essay emphasized Xi’s policy, noting that “the nation’s media outlets are essential to political stability.”
They even suspended permission for websites to repost content from the prominent news site Caixin.


How Free Is Chinese Media?
1:In 2016, Freedom House ranked China last for the second consecutive year out of sixty-five countries that represent 88 percent of the world’s internet users. The France-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders ranked China 176 out of 180 countries in its 2016 worldwide index of press freedom.
2:Certain websites that government deems potentially dangerous like wikipedia , facebook, twitter, youtube and some google services are fully blocked or temporarily blacked out.
3: There is no press law that governs the protection of journalists or the punishment of their attackers.The total of 38 journalists behind bars at year’s end represented a slight decrease compared with 2015, at least 111 journalists, bloggers, online writers, activists, and members of religious or ethnic minorities were sentenced during 2016 to prison terms of up to 19 years for alleged offenses related to freedom of expression or access to information
For example, in July 2016, Wang Jianmin, the publisher, and Guo Zhongxiao, a reporter at two Hong Kong magazines, New-Way Monthly and Multiple Face, were charged in China with illegal business operations and sentenced to five years and three months and to two years and three months in prison, respectively. Guo, having served his sentence, was released in September.
4:The CCP maintains direct control over news coverage through the CPD and corresponding branches at lower administrative levels. Routinely forbidden topics include calls for greater autonomy in Tibet and Xinjiang, relations with Taiwan, the persecution and activism of the Falun Gong spiritual group, the writings of prominent dissidents, and unfavorable coverage of the CCP and its leaders. In addition to these standing taboos, the CPD and provincial censors issue confidential directives on other subjects that are communicated regularly to news editors and website administrators.
The websites of the Economist and Time magazine were blocked in April 2016 following their publication of cover images that compared Xi Jinping to Mao Zedong. Apple’s iBooks and iTunes Movie services were also blocked, six months after being introduced in China with government permission.
Microblogging sites like Weibo have also become primary spaces for Chinese netizens to voice opinion or discuss taboo subjects
5:Reforms in recent decades have allowed the commercialization of media outlets without the privatization of ownership. The CCP and the government operate or have majority stakes in virtually all print and broadcast media, though privately owned online media are more common. Most cities feature at least one official newspaper published by the local government or CCP branch, as well as more commercialized subsidiaries. State-run CCTV remains the only licensed national television broadcaster, and all provincial and local stations are required to air its evening news programs.
6:China requires foreign correspondents to obtain permission before reporting in the country and has used this as an administrative roadblock to prevent journalists from reporting on potentially sensitive topics like corruption and, increasingly, economic and financial developments.
In response of Arab spring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to continue U.S. efforts to weaken censorship [PDF] in countries with repressive governments like China and Iran. In response, Beijing warned Washington to not meddle in the internal affairs of other countries.
The year’s top priorities for censorship officials included protecting the reputations of Xi and other leading figures and influencing coverage of health and safety issues, foreign affairs, and government wrongdoing.
Despite the mounting risks and obstacles, several prominent journalists, news outlets, and social commentators publicly criticized official efforts to increase media controls in 2016, while many citizens continued to seek out alternative means of obtaining and sharing uncensored content.
A number of developments in recent years have threatened the economic position of various media sectors.
For example, as provincial television stations have gained viewers and fewer young people in particular turn to CCTV as their primary news source, media regulators have responded with a string of new rules that restrict entertainment programming, especially during prime time, and starve provincial stations of related revenue. Rules that came into effect in March 2016 codified restrictions on foreign investment in companies publishing online content.
Meanwhile, the government has devoted resources to new media projects of its own. In 2015, the Paper was launched by the Shanghai United Media Group. Funded by the state, it has attracted many young Chinese readers with its incongruous combination of propaganda-like pieces, arts and culture news, and social exposés that are occasionally censored. In April 2016, the publication’s owners rolled out an English-language affiliate called Sixth Tone.
CONCLUSION
China is home to one of the world’s most restrictive media environments and its most sophisticated system of censorship. The ruling CCP maintains control over news reporting via direct ownership, accreditation of journalists, harsh penalties for online criticism, and daily directives to media outlets and websites that guide coverage of breaking news stories. State management of the telecommunications infrastructure enables the blocking of websites, removal of mobile-phone applications from the domestic market, and mass deletion of microblog posts, instant messages, and user accounts that touch on banned political, social, economic, and religious topics.