At present, the distribution of benefits  between search engines and media is out of  balance.  How to deal with the relationship between the interests  of       them has always been a  complicated problem. From the view of balance  of  interests in copyright law, this paper systematically analyzed the protection and limitation of the media’s internet copyright. The study also discriminated the respective different legal liability of  general links,deep links, frame link,       snapshot,news title,and a few lines of  text search results  provided  to draw a clear boundary between infringement and no infringement.

Media create unique news culture. In the process of producing such culture, media act both as creator and consumer. Nonetheless, copyright infringements happen sometimes. In the process of dealing with copyright disputes, media, as the defendant, commonly try to persuade plaintiff to compromise and withdraw claims. Even in judicial proceedings, courts, as well, prefer to encourage both sides make compromise. As result, the majority of such cases ended with compromising and the plaintiffs withdrawn their claims. This article aims to analyze and criticize this phenomenon in media copyright disputes.

Social media play a mainstream role for users to get information. But in recent years users feel fatigue about it. Previous studies have attributed the causes of fatigue mainly to the excessive amount of information (perceived overload). This paper argues that in addition to the “quantity” reason, the fatigue of social media should have “quality” reasons such as perceived value. Combining the methods of in-depth interviews and survey, this paper studied Chinese WeChat and Weibo users’ minds and behaviors. Social media fatigue among Chinese users was common and affected by perceived benefit and perceived cost. Cognitive cost applied the greatest influence on user’s fatigue, followed by time cost, function value, information quality and social value. Cognitive cost and information quality were first found dimensions of perceived value in local circumstances.

This paper is a review of communication studies published in Greater China in 2021. Articles and other publications are selected by ten researchers based on the value of research questions, the solidarity of research methods, the significance of the findings and research innovativeness. Studies are categorized into eight topics: media theory, temporal and spatial dimensions of media, platforms and digital labor, fan culture, the empowerment of digital media, COVID-19 and health communication, the materiality and embodiment of communication, algorithm and artificial intelligence.

With the booming of short video / live streaming, the two different and related theoretical approaches of online emotional labour and online affective labour are increasingly integrated in digital labour. This paper mainly expounds how the cross connection of the two different theories can better serve our understanding of the current digital platform and digital labour. Online emotional labour provides an individual approach for digital labour, emphasizing the subjectivity of labourers; online affective labour provides a collective one, which is more oriented to digital platform. The digital labour of short video / live streaming platform requires online emotional labour based on individual labourers, such as Internet anchor. The collection of all online emotional labour constitutes the online affective labour of the platform, thus constituting the characteristics of the digital platform. Defined by these characteristics, the platform operation logic, which can be recognized as the platform style, also acts on each online emotional labour. The digital labour of short video / live streaming platform represented by Kuaishou shows four main characteristics: emphasizing appearance and body, paying attention to language and speaking, recognizing imitation and copying, emphasizing persona and acting. In terms of future case studies, this research on the integration of online emotional labour and affective labour provides a useful method, perspective and framework. Also, relevant research needs to pay attention to the labour characteristics in the era of short video / live streaming, and place it in the specific online platforms, so as to further understand the Internet anchor and its digital labour in the context of Chinese practice. What also needs to be further expanded is the understanding and reconstructing of the theory of online emotional labor and online affective labour.

This study conducted a survey of 389 smartphone users aged 60 years and above to examine their received support provided by families, friends and communities in the process of bridging the digital divide of the elderly. The direct and indirect effects of social support on subjective well-being were also examined. The results suggested that family members, friends, and communities all provided informational, emotional and instrumental support, with younger generations in families provided all types of support most frequently. The results also showed that social support provided by younger generations in families could significantly affect subjective well-being in older adults, while social support provided by friends could affect subjective well-being through perceived efficacy. This study explored the impact of social support in the context of digital divide, and extended the buffering effect model of social support. The findings also had some practical implications for improving subjective well-being of older adults in the digital age.

This research focuses critical and empirical attention on the resistance tactics of algorithm audiences in the control society. The algorithm society presents the characteristics of weak spatialization, heavy predictability, and dividuality. It seems to create personalized and independent exclusive content and services for individuals, but the essence is to conquer the world with a set of extremely single standard codes. Precisely put user needs into the code calculation, in this way, the largest range of deviations from conventional folk practices can be eliminated. When the performance of the algorithm cannot provide a good user experience, the audience begins to build their own tactical practice space, and a series of "low-level operations" such as escaping, reorganizing, embedding and backlashing the algorithm text. Audience resistance tactics, as an inherent form of low-level politics that is very different from the rules of upper-level technology and politics, acting in a way outside the visible spectrum of formal activities recognized by technical activities. However, there is no absolute deviation in the algorithm (control) society. Any deviation is a new form of participation. Users are locked in the services and rules provided by the platform through "technical tolerance" and "participation culture". Individuals are conquered, defined and reshaped by technology, which looks like giving participants a more social illusion. Users think they are smart and they resist. In essence, it has become a self-reinforcing inequality.

Social media has driven the worldwide spread of femvertising. While achieving great monetization benefits, femvertising has also been criticized for its post-feminist discourse, which may worsen gender inequality. Focusing on femvertising practices in Weibo, the paper uses thematic analysis and semantic network analysis to investigate post-feminist discourses in advertising, as well as audience responses to post-feminist discourses and meaning production. It is found that the confidence culture discourse and the positive mentality discourse are largely echoed. “Empowerment” is constructed as the process of individual “realizing beauty”, and the self-discipline of “confidence” and “positive mentality” is regarded as the key way of “empowerment”. Consumption is also given a “rewarding” meaning to advertisers. Finally, the paper introduces the theoretical perspective of Marxist feminism, examines the unequal economic relations and ideology reflected by post-feminist discourse, and explores the “true empowerment” approach of femvertising.

Functionalism, as a key concept throughout the history of the communication research, not only lacks a unified and clear definition, but also implies ambiguous and imprecise interpretation in Communication. Tracing functionalism in the context of social theory and communication research, this paper first reviews how Harold Lasswell and Robert Merton clarified functionalism in response to the transition of the American social sciences in the 1940s. Then this paper explores how their functionalist approaches are revised and how communication research is labeled by “functionalism” by Charles Wright and Elihu Katz. Under the rigid label of “functionalism,” use and gratification research resonates with media effect research, although it was once regarded as the hope of settling the restriction of the short-term effect research. After the 1960s, the traditional functionalist paradigm stressing systematic equilibrium has been gradually reconstructed with the change of the society. Communication research absorbing the functionalist trend containing more theoretical approaches keeps developing on the basis of disrupting tradition.

From “gatekeeping” the content gate of journalism and communication to “gatekeeping” the social gate of platform governance, the paradigm shift of the concept of “gatekeeper” reflects the inevitable trend of technological progress and the development of the times, continues the internal consistent spirit of human civilization, and also represents the paradigm shift of human social communication and governance in the whole digital age. This study traces the origin of the concept of “gatekeeper” and combs its connotation and paradigm transformation process through literature research and interdisciplinary comparative research. From the “gatekeeper” in the field of journalism and communication to the “gatekeeper” on the Internet platform, this paper analyzes the changes and invariance, and discriminates the essence of the change in the digital age and the difficulties faced by today’s human social governance. From the “gatekeeper” of journalism and communication to the “gatekeeper” of the platform is essentially a paradigm shift in the role and role of information communication in human society. Under the guidance of the new human communication behavior with data as the core, the theoretical basis and knowledge system of communication need to be reconstructed in order to realize the real paradigm transformation of communication. The change of the concept of “gatekeeper” provides important enlightenment for the transformation and reconstruction of communication.

Digital platforms such as social media have become space to raise gender consciousness, foster women’s solidarity and call for social change. Through qualitative methods such as in-depth interview and participatory observation, this study explores the process of gender consciousness among young female users who actively speak out on gender issues in local digital space. In addition, this paper proposes the concept of “mediated affective solidarity” to understand how individuals who suffer from affective dissonance, experience gender consciousness and become affective alien can connect, support with each other and make collective voices to form a sense of solidary as affective communities based on the connective affordance of social media. This study argues that social media and other digital platforms have reconfigured the relationship between individual, collective and space, and shaped the feminist politics of transformation in contemporary China, in which affect plays a significant role.

This study aims to explore the public’s perception, assessment and use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in human-computer interaction. With the help of science communication theory and the AIDUA research framework, and structural equation modeling analysis of 1805 sample data, the study deeply explores the factors that form the public’s multidimensional cognitive attitudes towards Generative Artificial Intelligence, as well as the paths that influence the public’s segmented content production behaviors. The study finds that the public’s cognition, assessment and use of generative AI take place in a context of intertwined and Interco structed technological imagination and technological practice. In the primary assessment stage, the public’s technological outlook is shaped by peripheral, front-end factors, including an individual’s optimistic technological disposition, prior technological experiences, and the influence of their local community. These elements drive their perceptions and practical engagement with GAI. In the subsequent evaluation stage, the public’s understanding of GAI’s usage, advantages, and potential risks, informed by their own technological activities, gives rise to a complex cognitive attitude that encompasses both favorable and unfavorable elements. Ultimately, at the behavioral outcome stage, these multidimensional cognitive attitudes significantly impact the public's intricate content creation decisions.

What are the challenges and possibilities in promoting the adaptation and understanding of Chinese culture among members of other cultural groups through cultural identity adjustment in the practice of cross-cultural communication? This research explores a new path for cultural identity studies by introducing Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), and conducts interviews and practical investigations with Chinese personnel from 14 Confucius Institutes worldwide, as well as “cultural contactees” from different countries. It is found that the “the third culture space” represented by “festival culture” is a domain that requires attention in crosscultural communication research. The perceived security of cultural participants’ identity after encountering Chinese festival culture is influenced by factors such as identity gaps, effectiveness of dialogue, and bicultural identity backgrounds. Furthermore, the challenges in understanding cultural identity are mainly attributed to identity gaps created by conceptual boundaries. Festival culture, through the construction of a community of shared meanings and open dialogue, connects the fourfold identity in the framework of CTI. It achieves enchantment through setting micronarratives,creating cultural experiences, and promoting two-way integration, thus facilitating the “awakening-integration-belonging” of cultural participants’ cultural identities.

With short-video platforms rapidly developing, middle-aged and elderly people, the so-called “digital immigrants”, are increasingly engaging in short-video apps. The low media literacy among this group has aroused great concerns. This study interviewed 19 middle-aged and elderly people by asking them to identify the fake information on several short videos. Through in-depth interviews, we obtained the participants’ analyzing logic and their identifying approaches. Applying the Grounded Theory, we constructed a model explaining their approaches of identifying information on short videos, including systematic route, peripheral route and social route. This paper also portrays three different types of profiles of the middle-aged and elderly people in the field of information identification of short videos: emotionally dominant ones, experience-dependent ones and integrative analysts. In the end, this study attempts to offer specific strategies to guide middle-aged and elderly people to avoid information pitfalls and also mentions the governance responsibility of content production.

With the rapid development of digital information technology, global mobility has become a low-cost, normalized existence. With the dual boost of economy and politics, cross-border e-commerce has gradually become an important practice of economic globalization. This research adopts the research method of participatory observation and in-depth interview, taking a cross- border e-commerce company in Fujian as an example, from the perspective of infrastructure theory, this research has insight into the multiple relationships among cross-border e-commerce platforms, people and digital capital operations. This study believes that visibility and invisibility have ontological significance for the research of media infrastructure. Therefore, the analysis framework of visibility and invisibility is divided into three levels: visual/physical, feeling/consciousness, and regulation/ideology. Through empirical research, the specific orientation and reference dimensions are discussed to enrich the theoretical level and academic texture of this concept. Since the separation between the surface characteristics of objects and the internal operation structure of the system, this study further points out that the technical system of physical structure has the characteristics of autopoiesis. At the same time, the technology system relies on the mutual transformation of “commodity datalization” and “data commercialization”, which has a matrix impact on the form of commodity economy and the real society, and has created the attribute change of economic activities in the practice of platform infrastructure.

The accelerated development of many new technologies and applications such as metaverse and artificial intelligence not only highlights many problems and contradictions between people, technology and society, but also has a subversive impact on the information dissemination structure of the current society. The new media research in 2022, in response to the above- mentioned problems, has carried out in-depth thinking and exploration at different levels such as social practice, technical philosophy and ethics. This paper summarizes the themes of new media-related research papers in core journals of journalism and communication in 2022, and extracts five major topics: metaverse research, embodied communication research, digital human and social robot research, human-machine communication research, health code And data research, and give a brief review by category, in order to provide some reference and reference for relevant researchers through this limited sorting and integration.

In the era of deep mediatization, digital technology, as the underlying logic, constructs a decentralized relationship space of “everyone connected”, which enables individual opinions to be manifested as a scale force in group interaction and collective behavior, that is, “unorganized organizational force”. As an “Unorganized Organizational Power”, network public opinion is a typical manifestation of the collective power in cyberspace. How to deal with and guide the network public opinion, such a “Unorganized Organizational Power”, is an important issue in the current social governance. Based on the background of the post-epidemic era, this paper observes the network public opinion caused by “Epidemiological investigation” and finds that there are three kinds of powers, “gaze, consumption and construction”. By analyzing the “Unorganized Power” organizational process and the social function mode of “organizational power”, this article aims to discusses the public value and potential risks contained in it.

In the foreign-related communication and disputes on social media platforms of China, international nickname is a kind of relatively popular form of non-mainstream folk discourse. By attaching nickname to other countries, some Internet participants even launch the patriotic mobilization of online nationalism. International nicknames are partly new words generated in social media, and partly old words whose semantics have changed in social media. Some epithet will produce a populism and language ethics crisis, through metaphor or metonymy rhetoric of irony, which will lead to passive situation, weaken international discourse power, and influence the aesthetic language of Chinese language in international communication. As a consequence, some international nicknames will destroy the national image of China, eliminate the temperament of openness, confidence, humility.

According to the 45th Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development, as of March 2020, live-streaming show in China, which attracted 207 million users, has become an important economic industry. Previous studies often employed concept of emotional labor to investigate how live-streaming platforms alienated and exploited the practitioners. However, on the one hand, this approach largely ignored the live-streamers’ subjective experience; on the other hand, the use of emotional labor also showed limitations in explaining the live-streamers’ working practice. Therefore, based on a 12-month digital ethnography, this study combines “relational labor” and “platformization” to examine how live-streamers negotiate the economic and intimate relationships with their audiences inside/outside the live-streaming platform, and concludes three strategies of “pricing”, “differentiation” and “boundary”. The study also makes a further theoretical reflection on relational labor, platformization and the subjectivity of live-streamers.

On the base of the new information technology and app’s innovation with digitization, intelligentization and virtualization as its core, the new media shows an obvious trend of virtual and real mixture, human-computer interaction and platform orientation. The new media research in 2021 has made an in-depth exploration and reflection on the new trend that have led to some issues including man and media, virtuality and reality, platform and governance. This paper summarizes five major topics from the new media research in 2021, namely, new relationship between man and media, algorithm research, social platform, digital labor as well as social media. By sorting out the current research and making a brief comment on them, the article can provide useful reference for related researchers.

As a unique group of internet anchors, the popularity of the bottom internet anchors and their fatalistic fading out show the logic of digital survival and digital destiny of the bottom people. The paper takes MC Tianyou’s media life history as a case study to explore how bottom internet anchors perform digital labour through short videos/live streaming. Facing the similar media life history of the bottom internet anchors, this paper argues that they complete the dual production of self and profession in the process of digital labour, and generate the media identities that make their fame and reputation flow on various platforms. At this point, when they are unable to deal with the conflict brought by the media self in their self-identity, this “tragedy of the self” makes their media lives end. In addition, with the analysis of the digital labour and identity of the bottom internet anchors, as well as the presentation of the results of governance, the paper emphasizes that the affordance of the platform can be the landing point of governance in the cultural pluralism space, and that the continuity of two-way thinking is needed to connect the subject and the object of governance, so as to explore the digital governance strategy in China in the thinking of good governance. A negotiated governance path will give the bottom internet anchors more space to survive, and will make their cultural production more dynamic and vitality.

This article takes “media navigation” as the key concept and adopts Odysseus’s “oar”, from the philosophy of technology, as the image of media navigation. By analyzing the role of the mouse in navigating the virtual space and that of the mobile phone in urban cyberspace in an era of mobile internet, this paper explores and illustrates the historical process of dual navigation in Plato’s sense, namely how, as technology develops, including computers, mobile internet, artificial intelligence etc., navigation practices in physical and discursive spaces are becoming increasingly integrated. During this process, the “audience” of the mass media has become “user” and “steersman”, and the relationship between media, human and society has been expanded and reinvented. The media, as a technological machine system, in its deep association with the organic and the social, has become the force and mechanism that drives the human society.

In this paper, 113 studies were selected from 23 Chinese academic journals (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) in 2023, and the selection criteria were mainly concerned with the articles’ sense of problem, realistic concern, empirical vision and thinking method. In the end, eleven topics, including COVID-19 and health communication, human-computer interaction in the age of intelligence, social significance of technology, digital connections and interactions, privacy issues in the digital age, the history and development of platforms, media materiality and infrastructures, media theories, media cultures, media-family interactions, and the politics of mediatization, are selected to present a picture of the knowledge of Chinese communication in the past year.

Affordance, a pivotal concept in media studies, has lost its kernel during the appropriation in communication studies, which showcases the complexity of grasping its original and nuanced complications. Teasing out its origins and contexts, this paper examines the junctures of appropriation to delineate the paradigm shift and conceptual translation behind it, which draws our attention to the mistranslation “Kegongxing”. This paper proposes the term “Shineng” to replace it. As an interdisciplinary concept, “Shineng” highlights trifold properties, including embodiment, materiality, and object-subject’s symmetry, serving as a possible way-out for the predicaments of media studies as such and an advantageous pinpoint for the shift and reconstitution of communication studies as a whole.

Using corpus approach and critical metaphor analysis method, we analyze 1110 coverages of the COVID-19 in three media, The People’s Daily, The Caixin Weekly, and The Sanlian Lifeweek Magazine, to examine the rich metaphors used in the coverages. We found that war metaphor dominates the framework of coverages. Combining with hero-center narrative, it achieves a wide range of emotional mobilization, and plays down the impact of public health emergency on social order. With family metaphor and body metaphor, media coverages connect the traditional concept of the state as a body and the family-country Imagination to construct the sense of national community. The party organ and commercialized media adopt divergent metaphor construction strategy. We argue that, the generalization of a single metaphor has negative functions, which is not conducive to in-depth understanding and rational reflection on the epidemic situation.

In the context of the rapid growth of the application scale of virtual reality technology, it is of great significance to explore the dynamic interactive mechanism between user-embodied experience and knowledge cognition in the context of 360-degree knowledge short video to effectively improve its communication effect. Based on embodied cognition theory, this study constructs a coding framework from two dimensions of embodied experience and video content cognition of users. On this basis, cognitive network analysis is used to encode the data and construct the user cognitive network. The correlation between different cognitive elements is analyzed by taking the bullet-chatting released by users of 360-degree knowledge short videos on Bilibili website as the data source. The dynamic evolution of user cognitive network is explored. It is found that users’ cognitive experience is related to cognition of video content. There is a highest relationship between the participation, presence in cognitive experience and focus on the plot, and outcome in content cognization. Users’ cognitive network differs at different times. In the learning process, users significantly enhance the focus on deep content cognitive elements and the invocation of embodied experience. The depth and complexity of cognitive nodes association gradually increase, reflecting the continuous improvement of user cognitive construction in the process of 360-degree video viewing.

The Belt and Road Initiative provides a new context for intercultural communication research at home and abroad. Through reviewing and comparing existing literature in this area, it is found that scholars from both sides tend to be inward-looking and fail to resonate with each other. The “monological” thinking is reflected in dimensions such as the research focus, the span of time and space, the disciplinary background of researchers and the major fields of publications. Different scholarly interests are also rooted in ideological differences such as researchers’ epistemological views on cultural globalization and civilization. Moreover, it reveals the lack of subjectivity among Chinese researchers focusing on intercultural communication studies. This paper proposes that future research should transform from the fragmented and application-oriented mode of knowledge generation centering on the “self”, to a more enriching way of research that incorporates historical contexts, as well as broader and inclusive cultural values across the globe. Building on this, this paper also sheds light on the significance of cultural exchange and mutual understanding in the communication among researchers, and call for a reflexive interdisciplinary academic community that considers positionality, identity and power dynamics in producing knowledge.

In today’s culture of the internet, young women who have not yet married or had children are interested in “raising” virtual babies. The intersection of girl culture and motherhood studies has prompted a rethinking of how the connotation and extension of “motherhood” expand and change in the digital era. This study focuses on the practice of “cyber-motherhood” in recent years among online communities of plush doll players, with empirical data gathered through in-depth interviews and participatory observation methods. In contrast to previous studies that focused on how technology affects biological child rearing, “cyber-motherhood” focuses on the intertwined interaction of humans and technology through the concept of the cyborg. According to research, media technology, social structure, and the agency of girl players interact to shape the “cyber-mothering” practice, which is based on embodiment practice and visual techniques. It echoes the social institution of motherhood while also undermining its sanctity.While “cyber- motherhood” provides girls with a flexible strategy of dealing with life’s pressures, flowing eros emerges from the cracks of rigid binary logic, acting as a transient but widely spread force while also opening up new opportunities for various gender subject-positions.

With the development of social media, the internet has emerged as an increasingly important space for feminist activists. Based on the paradox of the participation of the privileged, this paper explores the exclusionary discourses that the male feminists as feminist advocators encounter from feminist solidarity when they participate in debates about the gender issues in network public sphere and analyzes the causes. The study shows that the exclusionary discourses mainly reflect that the feminist solidarity distrusts the motives of male feminists and their standpoints of epistemology, and alienates male feminist advocators, and that such discourses stem from complex technical and social factors, including the weak continuity between the discourses and actions, the epistemological conundrum of distinguishing the benevolent sexism from cultural behaviors without any intension of sexism, and the base of solidarity itself on experiencing some forms of oppression or injustice. The clarification and reflection of this paradox can lead to better understanding, less conflicts and stronger solidarity between two sexes so as to achieve genders equality eventually.

Existing studies on public opinion patterns in China generally find polarization within online public opinion. However, these studies stay at the level of descriptive analysis and pay less attention to the underlying formation mechanisms. Based on the 2021 Chinese Netizens Survey, this study analyses whether polarization of public opinion exists and its underlying causal mechanism. Contrary to prior findings, the results show that the structural attitudes of Chinese netizens is not bimodal but a unimodal distribution, of which the position of netizens on domestic controversial topics is relatively neutral and mild, and the attitude on diplomatic topics is a one-sided “strongly support” of the government’s position. Moreover, there are widespread “false consensus” effects in overestimating the proportion of the actual opinions held by others with individuals holding more extreme attitudes showing more “false consensus”. In terms of the formation mechanism, authoritarian personality, ideology, and media exposure can significantly predict the polarization of people’s attitudes, but the false consensus is the internal drive of attitude polarization. While contributing greater insight to public opinion in China, the research results also have significance for the construction of healthy and normal public opinion in China.

By interviewing with Professor Joseph D. Straubhaar, this article discusses how global media research can achieve its’ theoretical and methodological innovations in view of the development experiences of BRICS media. 'Cultural proximity’ and ‘multilayered cultural identity’ are two key concepts raised by Prof. Straubhaar to criticize ‘cultural imperialism’ based on the Brazilian reality. Theoretically, these two concepts intend to inherit the main ideas of globalization critically, emphasizing the significant influence of audience’ cultural identity on regional/local level to cultural production’s global flow. Methodologically, the two concepts attempt to highlight the position of qualitative method such as ethnographic interview and family history in audience research. Finally, the two aspects of innovations will make scholars better understand how to raise China’s soft power and intercultural communication ability trough the cross-cultural comparison among BRICS media.

From the perspective of Horton, this study discusses the communication situation between female anchor and audience through the screen and the construction process of para social relationship. The study found the webcast room is a dual joint situation. The first is the juncture between the commodity situation as the base and the daily encountered situation as the stage. Dual engagement is in the stage, female anchors, develop role-playing strategies and emotional strategies to connect multiple communication situations. It is found that the para social relationship is an intimate relationship manipulated by the anchor and imagined by the audience in a double joint situation. The mediation of the screen not only affects the cohesion of the situation , but also indicates the uncertainty of conflict and fracture of the situation. Finally, the article discusses the potential of social situation theory in the social media era.

Under the influence of Internet technology and its temporal logic, the convenience of social interaction and mobility of social relations have been greatly improved. Maintaining connections has become an important part of people’s work and life. According to the data from a national survey, this paper explored the implications of the collective media habit of maintaining connections, by investigating the influence of network circle participation on individual life satisfaction. The findings surprisingly showed that network circles had effects on people’s life satisfaction, moreover, their influences varied among groups and was prominently manifested in groups separated by the “institution” attribute of their work units. Although this study hasn’t yet been able to provide an explanation due to the data limitation, it is necessary to be sensitive to this result. This paper further believed that paying attention to people’s daily media habits has a different meaning from the past in the digital age. Media habits were highly contextualized, even a seemingly ordinary media habit will have diverse textures and meanings in different relational contexts and fields; media habits had the functions of standardization and institutionalization; the meanings of media habits of specific groups needed to be examined in their social positions and living conditions.

This study redefines the concept of digital hoarding from the perspective of communication and explores the psychological motivation associated with digital hoarding among young people through in-depth interviews. The research found that digital content hoarded by youth groups on social platforms pointed to “useful” self-optimization practices and “interesting” digital experience practices, the former stems from anxiety about coping with the dual performance of social space and real-life in the rat race, while the latter points to the need for positive emotional energy. We believe that the current widespread digital hoarding among young people is a kind of passive performance-oriented practice in the form of compliance and action laziness, and its psychological drive is the superposition effect of auto-exploitation and allo-exploitation, it can also be seen as a swaying practice of “enterprising lying flat” under the shadow of utilitarianism, which reflects the inner contradictions in the feelings and behaviors of the youth group. We need to be alert to the “suspension” mentality behind digital hoarding. Digital hoarding has the potential to magnify the risks of digital practices getting off track with reality. Beyond this case study, we need to continue to reflect on how the practice of negative-performancism based digital hoarding can address and whitewash the structuralism dilemmas of today’s society.

As a case orientation research method, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) has been widely spread and applied on social science research in recent 20 years. In this article, first we had an introduction and analysis on its research logic and applicable environment, then four research orientations were proposed to envision the application prospects of QCA in the field of journalism and communication. Based on these steps, we finally introduce its operation steps and hope to bring this method to more research on journalism and communication, therefore our methodology will be expanded and enriched.

This article selects innovative journalism papers in addressing research questions, offering unique perspectives, and employing novel argumentation methods from nearly 30 Chinese academic journals (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) published in 2024. In 2024, Chinese journalism research maintained a relatively stable focus on topics and continue advancing through innovative perspectives. Firstly, research on journalism theory, news production, media convergence, journalistic practitioners, and audience engagement has supported the core foundation of news knowledge production over the past year. Secondly, with the continuous reshaping of news practice by digital communication technology, theoretical explorations on journalism business models and diverse storytelling techniques have returned to the forefront of journalism research. In addition, researchers have made significant progress in tracking and comparing innovative practices in Chinese journalism, critiquing and revisiting classic journalism concepts, conducting cross-disciplinary research between journalism history and socio-political history, and exploring issues such as gender representation in news and its role in society.