Online Journalism in Social Transformations - A Community Structure Approach

This framing and discourse analysis documents the news coverage of a fire in Shanghai by the Chinese press, represented by a party-organ newspaper and three metro dailies. The findings illustrate the way commercial metro dailies side with their urban civic-minded readers to create an alternative news discourse that differs from that of the party journalism in China. The discourse analysis provides an empirical illustration of a new constructionist approach to community structural analysis. The interaction between the press and the online public, and the convergence of news production and consumption processes, have essentially changed the news framing process. This signifies a shift of the journalist paradigm towards a participatory model in the contemporary Chinese news environment.