In the current historiography of the Internet, the years 1994 and 1987 are marked as two competing temporal nodes regarding the origin of Chinese Internet. As early as 1986,Chinese overseas students had begun to disseminate information and form communities through computer networks, resulting in the launch of the world’s first English electronic journal established by Chinese, the first Chinese electronic journal and the first Chinese online forum. This article examines the “prehistory” of Chinese Internet from 1986 to 1994 and finds that intellectual elites at the forefront of information technology as well as on the national borders were full of anxiety about China’s technological and cultural modernization, and were prompted to actively explore computer input method for Chinese characters and seek community-based public expression. Despite the gradual decline of these Chinese online communities, they still had inextricable intersections with China, bringing talent and technical enlightenment to domestic Internet construction, shaping foreign and domestic political imagination on China’s Internet in the post-Cold War context and providing a reference for exploring alternative Internet culture and understanding the global Internet histories.

The findings regarding the relationship between information attributes and communication effects on social media have predominantly been derived from textual information in previous research, while video information in the form of audiovisual symbols remains an area in need of further exploration. Questions such as: What is the relationship between its information attributes and communication effects? How do its formal and content characteristics intertwine to influence communication outcomes? —have yet to be fully addressed. This study conducts a full-sample analysis of short video content related to the 2017 NPC & CPPCC released by the official accounts of three central mainstream media outlets on Weibo. Employing computer-assisted and manual coding for content analysis, combined with participatory observation, the study examines the relationships between the communication effects and three dimensions of short video information, including the textual features of video titles, content characteristics, and audiovisual format attributes. Findings reveal that short videos with better communication effects tend to convey positive, equitable, and stable informational attributes. Compared to previous studies based on textual information, video information aligns more closely with the social attributes of social media, such as information communication and emotional management. However, the positive impact of formal features remains limited.

This paper empirically explores the access of large language models (LLMs) on a global scale, to examine their infrastructuralization and dilemmas towards general AI. Drawing upon the basic idea of connectivity from communication and media studies, and adopting “gateway” as the core concept of infrastructure, this study employs computer network experiments as the primary method and utilizes indicators including packet loss, latency, and jitter to examine the global access conditions including accessibility, speed, stability of LLMs as new digital infrastructure along with the potential inequality issues behind them. Through conducting nearly 200,000 network probes across 62 global network nodes, this study finds that compared to city nodes in the Global North, city nodes in the Global South generally exhibit a disadvantage in terms of accessibility, especially when accessing LLMs produced in Western countries. Furthermore, some LLMs have significantly surpassed “old-type” information infrastructures like search engines and databases in terms of accessibility and speed, with nodes in the Global South accessing LLMs notably faster than databases. However, LLMs have not yet demonstrated a significant superiority in stability over previous-generation information infrastructures. Although the emergence of LLMs metaphorically signifies a primary stage of global information exchange and human- machine interactions, it is still imperative to address and resolve geopolitical conflicts within connectivity. Addressing the factors like access, usability, stability, universalisation and value will be crucial for LLMs to realize their full potential and evolve into global gateways.

Employing complex systems theory, this study examines the mechanisms of issue competition and opinion synergy regarding the “Belt and Road Initiative” among global media and think tanks. Through computational communication methods, we analyzed 78,957 media texts and 2,090 think tank texts (2014-2024). The findings reveal that both media and think tank discussions demonstrate an increasing trend in quantity with highly synchronized changes. Emotionally, media expressions remain relatively stable and positive, while think tanks exhibit greater fluctuations. Overall, the volume of media discussions significantly influences that of think tanks, with media from participating countries having a persistent and significant impact on think tanks from non-participating countries. Thematic analysis reveals that non-participating countries maintain a relative advantage in political issues, economic issues present diverse interaction patterns, and cultural issues demonstrate the highest degree of interactivity and inclusiveness. The dynamic changes in power and discursive structures within “Belt and Road” communications challenge, to some extent, the traditional “center-periphery” communication model. This research introduces new theoretical perspectives to international communication studies, providing theoretical guidance and practical references for optimizing the international communication strategies of the “Belt and Road Initiative”.

This study transcends the social constructivist notion of “place-making” by adopting the theoretical framework of “place-weaving” to investigate the mechanisms that texture neighborhood space under digital platform-enabled community group buying. Through a four years of ethnographic fieldwork in three residential communities in Wuhan, the research reveals that dynamic and pluralistic couplings emerge between neighborhoods and platforms across diverse media practices, giving rise to multiple forms of community group buying and superimposed neighborhood spaces. Commercial platform-led groups, characterized by singular automated infrastructures and plain-weave coding, produce neighborhood spaces with homogeneous grid-like textures akin to plain-woven fabric. In contrast, resident-led groups employ collaborative automation and jacquard-style coding, generating refined and distinctive jacquard textures reminiscent of brocade through emergent processes. The study advances critical platform scholarship from a spatial perspective, demonstrating that the large-scale technical rationality of platforms undergoes unexpected qualitative transformations when translated into localized labor practices and everyday routines. This process generates micro-scale orders, affirming the persistent possibilities of “nearby practices” within digital-era neighborhood spaces.

In the Song Dynasty, Fenbi Xiaoshi was an important means of disseminating information, used for communication between officials and the public. This activity involved posting thecontents of the document on the wall for people to read. Fenbi Xiaoshi was widely used in prefectures, counties, townships and other places to clearly announce the relevant content of government orders, regulations and public affairs. Through the Fenbi Xiaoshi, the official could effectively convey a variety of important information, including sovereign edicts, government orders, laws and regulations, etc. At the same time, the public could also understand the government’s policies and regulations by reading the public content on the Fenbi, so as to better adapt to the social environment and comply with laws and regulations. In the Song Dynasty, Fenbi Xiaoshi played an important role in maintaining social order and strengthening communication between the government and the civilians, and contributed to the stability and development of society at that time.

Human memory practice cannot be separated from technology, the social platform is like digital archives, allows many memories to be stored and displayed in an open and online environment. Seemingly unrelated “strangers” have also become the focus of reminiscers’ memory practice under the interconnection of human and object, and have transformed into the “ memory of the multitude” in the public search of the subject. Behind the practice of “seeking memories of strangers”, old photos, algorithms, and other factors together form triggers for memory and relationship connections. In the interactive trajectory laid out on social platforms, the “past” and “present” are connected across time and space, shaping a dynamic “vertical synchronicity”. More importantly, the unfolding of memory practice is not the end point of the activity. The “connection” between the reminiscer and the “stranger” establishes a new communicative relationship, continues to write new memories, and the “past” “present” also approaches the “future” in this artistic conception. However, there is also a situation of "inability to connect" behind the connection and memory outreach, which not only reflects the exercise of temporal and spatial power by memory stakeholders, but also highlights the significance and value of connection, as well as the “instability” and “unknowns” of connection itself, and provides us with a new perspective to rethink and extend Connective Memory.

With the rise of online videos, the dissemination of emerging technologies and technological achievements in the country has become more vivid. The younger generation, who have grown up amid the national rejuvenation, has also demonstrated stronger confidence and identification in the nation’s science and technology in the comment area. This paper takes the comment text of science and technology videos on Bilibili as the research object, and applies sentiment analysis, semantic network analysis, BTM topic model and other techniques to examine youth audience’ attitudes towards national identity after watching science and technology videos through the cognition-affect-conation model. The results show that after watching science and technology videos, youth audience always take the country as the core subject in cognition process; they also show strong positive emotions in terms of affect and mainly express their emotions through four ways: comparing China to other countries, endorsing local brands, honoring researchers, and forming collective memories; in terms of conation, they mainly show positive behavior intentions such as support, expect and tribute. This paper aims to explore cognation, affect and conation towards national identity among youth audience which shown in comments on science and technology videos, and to provide a new research perspective for the research on the effect of science and technology video communication.

The tradition of “Shu Er Bu Zuo” in ancient Chinese classics and its evolution within specific historical contexts are fundamentally intertwined with communication. Communication bias of orality and literacy under the dispute of the New Text Classics and the Old Text Classics requires further interpretation. The New Text Classics, exhibiting the oral communication bias, fostered a classicl knowledge system characterized by accessibility, open-ended meaning, and memorability. The New Text Classics demonstrated an anthropological presence in their oral tradition. By contrast, the Old Text Classics in written form developed exegetical formats like “shu”, “jian” and “zhangju”, which were well-suited to silent reading. Due to the ideographic nature of Chinese characters, endogenous authority was conferred upon the written words. Consequently, the Old Text Classics established a stable knowledge system. Distinct communication bias shaped corresponding knowledge systems, thereby providing pivotal mechanisms for different political culture. The flexibility and openness of the New Text Classics enabled people to reform to address societal and institutional anxieties. Conversely, the stable knowledge of the Old Text Classics was closely linked with a political mindset inclined to uphold authority and restorationism. The communication bias was not passively projected onto the political field, but was actively constructed as mutually exclusive clues by historical agents. The mediality of the New Text Classics and the Old Text Classics shaped distinct knowledge systems and political cultures.

Previous studies on the 1905 Anti-American Boycott have generally acknowledged the important role played by newspapers, yet few have examined how and why the press collectively engaged in reporting the movement. Drawing inspiration from the “interactive” mechanisms among chambers of commerce, this paper conceptualizes newspaper coverage as a form of “chorus” and explores how nationwide press coordination emerged in the absence of a unified organization. In the initial stage, Eastern Times and Shen Bao jointly launched the coverage; a week later, newspapers across the country followed suit, significantly expanding the boycott’s reach. During the sustained stage, newspapers amplified the movement’s voice by participating directly, establishing dedicated columns, reprinting peer coverage, and offering targeted support. While leading newspapers such as Eastern Times, Shen Bao, and Ta Kung Pao provided national perspectives, many others focused on local mobilization. This “variation” helped embed the movement deeper into local societies. This paper argues that the press linkage in 1905 was enabled not only by nationalist sentiments but also by the press’s own growing institutional development—shaped by evolving media structures and a belief in journalism as a public duty.

During his early years on the throne, Emperor Yongzheng was besieged by rumors accusing him of illegally seizing power. When the Zengjing case broke out—an incident fueled by these very rumors—Yongzheng decided to use the case as a weapon to thoroughly destroy the influence of what he believed were fabricated by his rival brothers. As part of his bold strategy, Yongzheng published a book that compiled all the rumors alongside his rebuttals and distributed it to every local school, town, and village. Furthermore, he ordered local governments to preach the book’s content to ordinary people twice a month. However, instead of eliminating the rumors, Yongzheng’s campaign ironically amplified them, making them more widely known and longer- lasting.

As a concept of communication, “Gao” means carrying on ritually communication by means of language or characters. Since Shang Dynasty, the original “Gao” has meant sacrificial ceremony’s communication by oral language, and later meant politically ritual communication and ceremonial communication by language or characters and so on, which reflects the process of social secularization. Institutionalized “Gao” of Shang, Xi Zhou and Chun Qiu Dynasty, and bulletins of Han and after Han Dynasty indicate that ritual communication is a salient feature of Chinese ancient political communication, with the feature of transitive communication breaking the space limits, which differs from political communication in the Western countries, whose transitive communication is more prominent. The usage of “Gao” as ritual communication continues until today, and its core connotation is to resort to the recognized values or some consensus of both sides to communicate, which is of great significance to promote mutual understanding, solidarity and cooperation in human society.

Imaginary serves as a crucial tool for understanding the early internet, reflecting the intertwined relationship between the internet and society. It provides a valuable pathway for exploring the early stages of internet development. Adopting a “long duration” analytical perspective and drawing upon the framework of sociotechnical imaginaries, this study integrates language, rhetoric, and action to investigate public and memory discourses about early Chinese internet imaginaries (1984–1999). The findings reveal that early internet imaginaries, as assemblages of materiality, meaning, and normativity, unfold across technological, value, and social dimensions, centering on connecting the world, realizing national revival, and reconfiguring daily life. These imaginaries exhibit characteristics of macro-level comprehensiveness, strong technological optimism, and pronounced pragmatism. Within the narratives of “catching up” and “revival,” the internet, as embedded in Chinese society, was envisioned as a means for underdeveloped regions to leapfrog in development, reflecting its unique socio-cultural significance in modern China. Significantly, 1995 emerges as a pivotal exploratory node in this “long duration,” marking the transition of the internet from an abstract concept to practical implementation. This period witnessed profound changes across technical infrastructure, policy support, commercialization, and social applications, with imaginaries shifting from elite-driven narratives to broader public participation, and themes extending from macro-level visions to everyday experiences. Internet imaginaries serve as an analytical lens, offering insights into the evolving perceptions of the internet in Chinese society and presenting a promising avenue for studying the social history of the internet in China.

Over three decades ago, the internet entered China as a new medium inherently equipped with international communication attributes. Today, international communication has risen to the level of a national strategic priority—an outcome not only of China’s own developmental trajectory but also of the global proliferation of the internet. To fully grasp China’s strategic position and contemporary mission in international communication, it is imperative to re-examine the internet’s essential role and historical evolution as foundational infrastructure for cross-border communication. It also calls for a critical reflection on the long-standing cognitive separation between international and domestic communication. Revisiting this trajectory and re-centering the internet’s transformation from an “inward-facing” to an “outward-facing” infrastructure is key to achieving breakthroughs in China’s international communication. Looking ahead to the next thirty years of the internet, the challenges of China’s international communication will not only be limited to the traditional levels of technology, application, market and policy, but will also go deeper into the “deep-water zone” of how China can truly go global and deeply integrate with the rest of the world.

In the mobile Internet era, Internet cafes are disappearing in both rural and urban areas. While a minority of urban Internet cafes have been transitioned into eSports arenas, rural Internet cafes have not undergone such a transformation and are thus closing down. The rise of the platform society in the mobile Internet era has led to a triple disembedding of rural Internet cafes, fundamentally undermining their operational foundation. Therefore, the prevailing wave of closures in the Internet cafes industry cannot be merely attributed to the widespread adoption of smartphones. Instead, it reflects a broader social transformation driven by the iteration of ICTs. In this major transformation, emerging platform technology systems have exerted a profound impact on the outdated infrastructure of Internet cafes, leading to their gradual disembedding from rural society and eventual decline. This also reflects the progress of China’s Internet over the past 30 years, as rural society moves beyond the era of underdeveloped network infrastructure characterized by the use of Internet cafes, and gradually integrates into the platform systems of the mobile Internet era.

Websites that have disappeared are crucial objects of study in web history. This article examines the life span of an online BBS (Bulletin Board System) called “Journalists’ Home” and explores its interactions with Chinese journalism. At its peak, the website attracted a large number of journalists who integrated it into their daily work, engaging in various stages of news production and fostering a professional community. It served as a key intermediary for journalists in China’s commercial media, facilitating informal socialization beyond the formal workplace. This study finds that “Journalists’ Home” emerged at the intersection of web history and China’s journalism reform. It illustrates how professional socialization in journalism occurs within informal settings, such as online social networks. Informal socialization contributed positively to community cohesion by shaping work practices and fostering collective interpretation.

Public health crises pose acute challenges to the aging population in rural China. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, this study analyzes 321 valid questionnaires to verify the integration of social support theory and coping appraisal framework. Through in-depth interviews with 24 villagers in southern Anhui, it reveals how grassroots strengths and new media technologies synergistically enhance health-protective behaviors among elderly residents by providing instrumental, emotional and informational support, demonstrating the core role of grassroots forces in crisis communication and public health protection. Based on social support theory, findings demonstrate that these three dimensions of support significantly strengthen self-efficacy and response efficacy of the residents, highlighting grassroots governance’s irreplaceable role in bridging the “last mile” of health communication and emphasizing social environments as key drivers of rural health behavior patterns.

Based on the perspective of affect theory, this article is dedicated to an interpretation of individuals’ affective experience when they use online crazy literature, focusing on the discussion of line of flight generated from the sequence-structure in their daily life, and its liberating potential in the ethical dimension. This research indicates that the affect of madness is mainly triggered by the preconditioned dilemma linked to power and emotion in communicative action,while the expressing practice of crazy literature leads to an experiment with stuff-stacking, as an overflows of the symbol system, by virtue of its deterritorialization of language. Hence, the subjects of the discourse expose their own entities during the differential setting process of “to become others”. The affect genealogy of crazy literature also highlights the fundamental significance of the body and its affective dimension in communication, so that the individuals’ events are endowed with an angle detached from the limited stipulation of the representational mechanism, through which people are enabled to find out their true life styles and forms in the practice of technologies of self.

Douyin’s sparks have created virtual digital contracts for intimate relationships and shaped new social behavior and culture. This study adopts observation and in-depth interviews to analyse the symbolic significance of sparks in intimate relationships, the process of relationship development based on sparks, and the impact of sparks on intimate relationships. Research shows that, sparks, as virtual mediators, influence and regulate user behavior. The process of maintaining sparks reveals dynamic developmental features. Based on social penetration theory and the ladder model, this study proposes the “contract metaphor”, which divides the process of sustaining sparks into six stages: “contract signing”, “contract compliance”, “contract strengthening”, “contract negotiation”, “contract internalization” and “contract breaking”. Sparks impact intimate relationships, either intensifying, downgrading, or reconciling them. This study triggers reflections on the role of sparks as virtual mediators and deepens existing understanding of how virtual mediators affect intimate relationships, which is conducive to exploring the path to the creation and positive development of intimate relationships.

In the process of technological change and the development of a media society, the interaction and functional evolution between media and society are gradually intensifying. Interpreting the relationship between media, society, and people from the perspective of structural function is an important path for modern social media practice and theory. The function of Chinese media is constructed and developed in the process of the Chinese path to modernization, which is not completely equivalent to Western definition of media function and value, but has its own connotation, characteristics, and reference. Based on this basic position, based on rethinking western functionalism and developing communication science, this paper proposes to return to the real world and reveal the formation mechanism and core performance of social functions of Chinese media in China’s specific social context, in the context of China’s long history and culture, the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, and the historical process of Chinese path to modernization. Based on the social system theory as the fundamental theoretical perspective and empirical materials, it is found that the social function of Chinese media is formed and constructed in a system of “unity and isomorphism” between the state, society, people, and media. Its unique function is mainly manifested in two aspects: 1) serving the country and social governance, providing systematic government services; 2) shaping modern lifestyles and promoting human modernization.

On the basis of existing studies on geeks, this paper adopts a perspective of philosophy of technology and conducts qualitative interviews with technical enthusiasts to explores their human-computer interaction practices in the era of generative artificial intelligence. As a form of digital object, artificial intelligence technology continuously evoles through individualization. While technical enthusiasts combine technical elements to invent technical individuals and deploy technical infrastructure, they also act as technical individuals to co-create associated milieu with AI technology and develope discursive and existential relationships in both technical and material senses. These enthusiasts can grasp the causal logic and temporal relationships within AI systems, then the technology is ready-to-hand and the elixir could be refined, promoting the process of technical infrastructure. In the meantime, drawing on the phenomenological concepts of protentions and retentions, AI technology can serve as a kind of tertiary protention and tertiary retention, intervening in the infrastructure processes at both psychological and collective levels. And in this process, technical enthusiasts act as curcial transducteurs. Since AI technology can be both a poison and an antidote, the possibility of technical alienation could not be excluded from practices of human-machine. However, this paper prefers to emphasize the potential of technical enthusiasts as alchemists and the magical abilities possessed by human beings, thus highlighting the agency of the subject.

Migrant children have become a focal point in contemporary discussions of urbanization and population mobility. The urban-rural duality of their identity places them in a predicament- unable to return home yet struggling to integrate into urban life. Grounded in Lefebvre’s spatial triad theory and employing an action research approach, this research engaged 19 fourth-grade students from Class 3 at X Primary School in Beilin District, Xi’an, in a year-long intervention comprising seven interactive new media courses, three collaborative new media practices, and three urban exploration sessions. By framing new media as both a pedagogical tool and a participatory platform, this research establishes an organic interconnected framework linking urban space, media use, and social relations. The findings demonstrate that implementation of structured interventions effectively enhanced migrant children's new media literacy and skills, facilitating a shift from passive media consumption to active use of media for self-empowerment. Specifically, their improved media communication skills strengthened their ability to express themselves and participate in urban spaces. Through city exploration and engagement with digital platforms, migrant children co-constructed a sense of shared identity, fostering localized social networks and enhancing their sense of urban integration.

The emergence of hometown newspapers represents a fusion of hometown sentiments and the demand for information within a mobile society. These publications, a unique form of local newspaper published in Shanghai but maintained a strong focus on their hometowns, yet they have not received sufficient attention from academia so far. This paper takes “place” as the keyword and combines the history of local journalism with human geography, to analyze the multiple dimensions and meanings of hometown newspapers in “place” reconstruction, from aspects such as origin from place, visible place, from space to place, transformation of place, and beyond place. This study reveals that hometown newspapers make efforts to maintain a visible and enduring social, cultural, and emotional connection between immigrants and their hometowns, which is beneficial for the recognition and cohesion of local communities among immigrants. These newspapers also demonstrate a distinct critical consciousness of local issues, striving to reform local society in fulfillment of their local responsibilities and historical mission of “supervising the locality and guiding the villagers”. Furthermore, they guide readers to transcend localism, cultivating their national consciousness and ethnic concepts, thereby shaping the villagers into citizens, which is conducive to the production and reproduction of their national identity. However, outside of the home village and the country, there is no place for Shanghai. Hometown newspapers do not encourage immigrants to identify with Shanghai, which is different from the American immigration press.

After the Southern Anhui Incident, the Communist Party of China timely proposed the strategic concept of “establishing a new Subei” (Northern Jiangsu). In the context of this era, the “intellectuals” of the New Fourth Army participated in the struggle against the enemy a democratic construction through propaganda practices. The group went from “being cultural warriors of the proletariat” to becoming cadres of propaganda and culture, and then created a “new culture” through collective actions, and eventually became a key force in “establishing a new Subei”. Taking the cadres of propaganda and culture of “a new Subei” as the subject perspective of historical interpretation, the organic process and logical occurrence of this historical event can be clarified through examining individual actions and collective practices. The historical process from “a cultural city” to “an exemplary base area” and eventually becoming “a part of the new democratic republic” was essentially a process of the dual creation by the cadres of propaganda and culture of “a new Subei”. In this process, the cadres of propaganda and culture of “a new Subei” not only participated in revolutionary practices and transformed the objective world, but also they transformed the subjective world and eventually shaped themselves into a historical subject within the New Democratic Movement.

This paper attempts to explore the specific mechanisms and processes of the microscope’s influence on disease discourse. The microscope mediates human’s sense towards the world and also mediates the presentation of the world towards human. The former regards the microscope as an extension of the naked eye, and research inevitably falls into the premise that the microscope enhances vision in a similar way. The latter jumps out of the body-centered perspective, as a result, the specificity of the microscope’s visible way is highlighted in the process of presenting the world. Based on the latter, this paper introduces Foucault’s concept of discursive practice and proposes that the microscope frames the possibility of discourse formation by stipulating the visible way of the object of disease discourse. Unlike visual inspection with the naked eye, the microscope makes the object of disease discourse visible in the form of technical images, which represents an entity independent of the patient’s body, and the pathogenicity is judged by the “whether” relationship between technical images. On this basis, the disease discourse needs to be developed around professional terms, accurately and objectively pointing to visible, static and fragmentary disease entities. This paper attempts to open up the media research perspective of technologies such as microscopes.

Unlike existing human–computer interaction studies focused on functional exchanges,this research investigates emotional relationships between humans and computers. It examine show users, driven by psychological motivations and needs, engage in emotional transmission and communication with Affective AI Agents (AI agents with emotional communication capabilities) within specific contexts, thereby exploring the possibility and mechanisms of human-computer empathy. Focusing on users’ recent generative emotional empathy practice with Affective AI Agents, the study employs in-depth interviews to gather empirical data on emotional communication. It analyzes human emotional perception and empathy toward Affective AI Agents, alongside the underlying empathy dilemma. Key findings reveal that users’ psychological motivations are central to Affective AI Agents’ generation of emotional responses, with the agents’ “digital memory” serving as the primary basis for expressing and responding to human emotions. Concurrently, users’ contextual framing and agents’ capture and interpretation of situational cues emerge as critical elements for empathy generation. As human-computer empathy becomes a social strategy in an alienated society, fluid emotions arise from the interplay between flesh and computer. The “sense of witnessing” engendered by technological embodiment forms a vital foundation for empathy and offers new directions for re-evaluating the ethics and values of intelligent agents.

The Conference and Alliance of Mibing was held by Jin and Chu in 546 B.C. largely due to the interstate public opinion, which was one of the most important interstate meetings constructing the interstate order in the middle-late of Spring and Autumn Period. Jin and Chu belonged to different cultural community and didn’t trust each other, but both of them had difficulties to keep competing on the leadership of interstate society. With the signal of Mibing (peace) released, Song took the responsibility to communicate message between different states, Mibing was becoming the main interstate public opinion and the Conference and Alliance of Mibing finally was held at the capital of Song. The following can be inferred from the Conference and Alliance of Mibing: In the Spring and Autumn Period, although the spreading of interstate opinion information was constrained by the environments and dependent on interpersonal transmission, the rules of state power and “Xinyi” as the fundamental of interstate public opinion are still working today.

In their work The German Ideology, Marx and Engels creatively introduced several core concepts, including “intercourse” (Verkehr) and a range of compound words derived from it.These concepts played a crucial role in the development of the materialist conception of history and communist theory. However, due to historical circumstances, both “intercourse” and its related compounds have long been obscured. The discourse on historical materialism has largely been dominated by terms such as material production, productive forces, and relations of production, while Marx’s sociological insight that “ human nature is the true community of men” has been overlooked. This article discusses four reasons for the neglect and misinterpretation of the concept of “intercourse.”; examines all 168 instances of Verkehr in The German Ideology along with their corresponding Chinese translations; analyzes 608 occurrences in Marx and Engels’ other works and their Chinese translations; briefly surveys 1,119 instances found in their published notebooks (most of which remain untranslated); and studies the textual variants compiled in MEGA2. These investigations collectively demonstrate that “intercourse” ( Verkehr) and its compound forms constitute one of the core concepts of The German Ideology and of the theory of historical materialism

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the proposal of the new mainstream media strategy, this study is based on the local social context framework and communication system, focusing on constructing a scientific and systematic credibility assessment scale for new mainstream media. It aims to solve the problem that traditional evaluation tools cannot adapt to the new communication field and new mainstream media, enrich the practical exploration with Chinese characteristics, and also contribute to the further improvement of media credibility theory. This study strictly follows the scale development procedure to construct a two-factor, four- dimensional credibility scale of new mainstream media from the public perspective. Supported by relevant literature, it screens the potential measurement items of new mainstream media credibility through in-depth interviews and expert consultations; using questionnaire methods, it conducts the initial scale test with exploratory factor analysis (n=500), and determines the fitting situation of the scale through confirmatory factor analysis and reliability and validity tests (n=1723). Finally, this study constructs a credibility scale of new mainstream media covering four dimensions: “authenticity/professionalism”“national image/authority”“public value” and “broadcasting skills”. It also engages in theoretical dialogue with previous studies, exploring the continuity and development of media credibility theory.

The rise of social and networked communication has increasingly blurred the boundaries between public and private spheres. The interplay of rationality and emotion among diverse actors posed significant challenges to traditional social and communication theories, which are largely based on the assumption that consensus and agreement emerge from human reasoning and rationality. As a result, the goal of communication has shifted from consensus-building to fostering connectedness and reciprocal understanding, with empathy conceptualized as a key factor in facilitating meaningful connections, dialogue, and understanding. We argue that empathy does not arise spontaneously. Instead, the emergence of empathy requires specific antecedent factors as prerequisites. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of common ground and common knowledge from the field of psycholinguistics and game theory, we use shared knowledge to encompass the key connotations of both theories. We explore the antecedent role of shared knowledge, both foundational and emergent, in digital interactions, and discuss the impact of experiential appeal and linguistic expression and cultural identity on the formation of shared knowledge. On this basis, an entry point with theoretical value and practical significance is proposed for common and reciprocal understanding and even consensus in the present and future. Compared with traditional theoretical frameworks of interaction, such as intersubjectivity and rationality of interaction, shared knowledge is more adaptable, explanatory and practical in the ecology of digital interaction.

AI has disrupted the traditional certainty paradigm of advertising, which has historically focused on capturing attention. This paper examines the characteristics of the certainty paradigm in AI advertising, based on the impact of AI on advertising activities. It firstly proposes five stages of the certainty paradigm throughout the evolution of advertising: the uncertainty of the “product” searching for the “consumer” in the natural media era, the certainty of the “product” searching for the “consumer” in the mass media era, the certainty of the “consumer” searching for the “product” in the early internet era, the certainty of the “product” searching for the “consumer” in the early programmatic advertising era, and the certainty of the “consumer” leveraging the virtual-real world to serve themselves in the AI era. Then it further explores the fundamental mechanisms of certainty paradigm in AI advertising. Certainty is determined by the temporal, spatial, interactive, sensory, interoperable, and transparent dimensions of media technologies. The key characteristics of certainty are temporal immediacy, spatial three-dimensionality, intelligent reasoning, and ecological consumption. The aim of certainty is to achieve better return on investment among consumers, advertisers, and intelligent platforms ultimately. The “consumer-product-scene” is reconstructed through generated intelligence between “consumer-product”, embodied intelligence between “consumer-scene”, and IoT intelligence between “product-scene”. As a result, consumers can continuously pursue the certainty of their needs through intelligent interactions among the “consumer-product-scene”.

Disciplinary transformation has been an important topic of concern in the field of journalism since the beginning of this century. Transformation is a structural change, a shift from the “old type” to the “new type”. Transformation is a major event for a discipline, which is related to the overall trend and picture of its development. This article proposes that Marxism is the overall theoretical approach for discussing the overall transformation of contemporary Chinese journalism. The actual news in the digital and intelligent era and the existing knowledge achievements of journalism are the starting point for discussing the overall transformation of journalism. Taking “professional news and non-professional news”, “daily life news and non- daily news”, “human-subject news” and “intelligent agent news” as the unified objects is the object basis for discussing the overall transformation of journalism. The basic goal of the overall transformation of contemporary Chinese journalism is to build a “journalism with more prominent subjectivity”, a “journalism that unifies particularity and universality”, a “journalism that unifies practicality and theory”, a “journalism that unifies stability and openness”, and a “journalism with stronger interdisciplinarity or cross-disciplinary nature”. Only contemporary Chinese news that undergoes such an overall transformation has a greater possibility of building a relatively systematic and complete independent knowledge system in its future-oriented development.

As a prevalent soft communication tactic, cuteness has been widely studied in many fields, but it has not received enough academic attention in the field of political communication. We provide an empirical research to examine the persuasive effect and mechanism of acting-cute political propaganda on social media, supplementing the empirical evidence on this issue in political communication. First, we conceptualize acting-cute political propaganda. Drawing on important rules in political psychology, we then propose a double-soft model that emphasizes the congruence between the tactics and content of soft propaganda. It was tested using an online survey experiment in China. We found that soft content employing an acting-cute tactic in video form on Weibo significantly improves the specific support of young Chinese through emotional appeals. This indicates that under the conditions of adopting video format, disseminating soft content, targeting young audiences and conducting short-term measurements, the model has been verified. Our results will pave the way for research on soft propaganda and acting-cute propaganda in diverse political and cultural contexts, and provide important practical guidance for political propaganda and persuasion activities in the digital age.

This paper aims to explore, through a local perspective, the complex changes triggered by the downward expansion of large domestic platforms into local areas, as well as the indigenous modernization development directions embedded in the subjective daily practices. In Liangshan's Yanyuan County, platform sinking is an objective consequence of coordination among state power, platform commercial expansion, and local socio-cultural elements. On one hand, platforms provide employment opportunities for returning youth in the county town, and county- based riders have formed symbiotic strategic behaviors with the system through their connections with relatives and friends. On this basis, the youth have developed an amphibious local lifestyle rhythm between urban and rural areas, balancing work, leisure, and family, gaining both material support and emotional care. On the other hand, the actual operation methods of platforms integrated with the county's spatiotemporal structure have brought about a series of issues such as traffic management, market rule formulation, and enforcement. Local elites with multi-identity backgrounds can leverage their local social capital to coordinate differences in perspectives and interests among the government, platforms, and platform practitioners. During the interaction between platforms and localities, this kind of agentic strategic practice—which coordinates multi- party power relations based on locality—helps county youth obtain less alienated work and life, while reconfiguring the county's urban spatial form. This not only aids the adaptation between platforms and localities but also helps transform previously disadvantaged local elements into new development directions. The author argues that this subjective force rooted in locality harbors the future direction of China-style modernization development.

This study investigates the persistence of offline gatherings in China’s day labor markets, where workers wait for job opportunities despite the rapid platformization of the gig economy. This phenomenon is particularly unusual in the context of the booming digital economy. Moving beyond a simplistic logic of media adoption, the study presents the concept of “digital rejection” as an analytical lens to better understand practices of digital non-use. Digital rejection highlights how individuals establish boundaries for digital engagement through active practices and relational connections, thereby achieving a sense of control over their preferred lifestyle. Within the context of day labor, traditional day-labor markets not only embody workers’ habits of limited digital use, but also sustain their social relationships and daily lives. As a result, the decision to wait for work offline and selectively reject recruitment platforms becomes a strategic choice for shaping their own way of life. By centering on the articulation of users’ interests and connecting their agency to their social lives, the concept of digital rejection offers a valuable framework for explaining daily practices of non-use in the digital age.

As a worthy “old-yet-new” question in digital journalism studies, there is still a lack of empirical studies on journalistic truth from the perspective of journalistic practice. Drawing on the “institutional work” theory, this study focuses on “verification”—a typical practice of journalistic truth, and explores how and why Chinese instant news practitioners in professional media maintain the institution of verification in their work. Findings indicate that practitioners have found it increasingly strict and difficult to verify information in recent years. As a response, they have strengthened the review process and the oral culture of verification within the newsroom, and intensified or transformed verification in individual practice, including verifying channels, news sources and ways of presentation. The institutional maintaining of verification is a result of the interaction between practitioners, organizations, and the institutional norms, as well as a kind of practical adjustment to the current institutional environment so as to ensure factual accuracy, obtain core information and avoid uncertain risks. Aside from the internal motivation to maintain cultural authority, the imagination of perfect journalistic truth and irrational anti-press pressure from external expectations are affecting verification more directly.

In the fast-paced world of journalism, time constitutes a critical issue of professional legitimacy. Existing studies have examined the influence of technological transformation, organizational routines, and user relations on the pursuit of timeliness, often critiquing the alienation of time within news production. However, the explanatory scope of timeliness remains to be further explored. Drawing on in-depth interviews and textual analysis, this study investigates the causes of the alienation of time in news production through three relational dimensions: the relationship between individuals and information, between individuals and others, and between individuals and time. The findings reveal that timeliness encompasses three dimensions: type, perspective, and medium. Furthermore, temporal value in news production is shaped by tensions between normative expectations and lived experiences across physical, social, and economic domains. While timeliness and temporal value constitute the explicit framework and implicit logic of journalistic production time respectively, the overloaded meaning of timeliness obscures the underlying sources of the alienation of journalistic production time. In contrast, the notion of temporal value provides a potential pathway for addressing this issue. A comparative analysis of the temporal reference systems underlying timeliness and temporal value suggests that understanding the alienation of time in news production requires an embodied perspective that takes into account the life courses of journalistic practitioners.

“Stream”, as media topoi, has always maintained its conceptual persistence and fluidity in the transformations of communication technologies, media forms, and social structures. While the topological discourse of stream becomes increasingly pronounced in the era of streaming video, its mediality and societal reconstructive power paradoxically manifest as a form of disruption of flow. Through interfaces, data, and the practice of “binge-watching”, streaming video restructures the logic of media programming, circulation, and reception, thereby revealing the essentially discontinuous nature of the flow. The medial factors driving this disruption-namely, immediacy, privatization, and interactivity—dismantle the spatiotemporal and organizational frameworks once shaped by traditional media. In their place, they foster a presentist temporality and unstable subjectivities, ultimately intensifying the fragmentation and imbalance characteristic of hypermodernism.

Based on a clarification of the connotations and essential characteristics of the CPC “international image construction” and “international image identity construction”, this paper conducts an overseas survey to examine international perceptions and identification with the CPC’s image. It further investigates the underlying factors influencing such identification. The paper argues that the essence of the CPC’s international image construction lies in the Party’s behaviors and the interpretations of those behaviors by both the CPC itself and the “others”. The essence of international image identity construction refers to the CPC’s efforts to “cultivate” “guide” or “attract” recognition from international audiences through its own actions, while counteracting the “disidentification” generated by externally constructed narratives. At present, there exists a considerable gap between the actual international recognition of the CPC’s image and the ideal projection. This gap is manifested in a range of perceptions among foreign publics, including a lack of understanding and curiosity, fear or anxiety, “hostility”, as well as varying degrees of recognition and support. The major impediments to international identification with the CPC’s image stem from low levels of strategic trust caused by conflicting interests; ideological aversion rooted in systemic and institutional differences; value divergences across cultural contexts; and cognitive and attitudinal barriers arising from both intentional distortions and unintentional misinterpretations.