30 July 2025, Volume 15 Issue 4

    

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   How to Achieve “System”? Institutional Perspectives on  Systemic Change in Mainstream Media 

  Guo Quanzhong, Li Li

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 3-11.

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  To respond to the systemic challenges inherent in “systemic change”, we need to return to the analysis of institutional mechanisms. The history of the reform of New China’s news system is a history of marketization, and media convergence has, to a certain extent, opened the prelude to “remarketization”. Taking “systemic change” as the starting point, from the perspective of institutional economy, mainstream media should leverage institutional mechanisms to optimize resource development and create more scarce resources. While improving the property rights model to realize market incentives, we also need to pay attention to informal constraints, in order to foster cultural concepts and atmosphere that are compatible with systemic change. The allmedia communication system, as a mature concept of media integration and organizational transformation, should be more thoroughly implemented. Mainstream media at all levels should have the courage to change conventional work routines and move into the main battlefield. Institutional reform requires persistent exploration, and only by deepening the process can phased adjustment and staged optimization of institutional mechanisms be achieved.
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  “Remembered Time”: Temporal Genealogy and Party History Narrative in the People’s Daily’s July 1st Anniversary Coverage

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 12-20.

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  Through measures such as updating from the Republican era dating system to the Common Era dating system, embedding public temporal coordinates, and implementing “temporal addition” for the Party’s founding date, the People’s Daily achieves the ideologization of specific temporal moments and constructs a temporal genealogy for Party history narrative. However, the Narrative of Time of CCP history also constrains the selection, positioning, and allocation within the internal genealogy of the political temporal system. The Party history narrative using life as a metaphor also evokes reflections on the “historical cyclical law” of rise and fall in governance. Throughout the annual July 1st Anniversary celebrations, Party and state leaders have consistently maintained high vigilance against corruption, reflecting both a sense of crisis awareness in times of peace and an alertness to the historical cyclical law of governance rise and decline. It is precisely this unwavering sense of crisis and alertness that has enabled the Chinese Communist Party to find the answer of “developing people’s democracy and accepting people’s supervision“ and “comprehensive strict Party governance and advancing selfrevolution,” ensuring that the cause of the Chinese Communist Party can be transmitted through generations and maintain perpetual vitality within the continuous temporal genealogy.
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  The Mechanism of Media Memory Construction and Optimization in the Age of Digital Intelligence——Based on ActorSystemDynamics Theory Perspective

  Xu Xiangdong, Fan Linqin

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 21-29.

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  Digitalintelligence technology has reshaped the logic and practice of media memory construction, while the memory authority traditionally monopolized by newsrooms faces multifaceted challenges from platform decentralization, technological deconstruction, and the multiactor contention. From an organizational sociology perspective, this paper introduces the ActorSystem Dynamics (ASD) theory to construct a threedimensional analytical framework for media memory in the digitalintelligence age. The dimension of social structure reveals how platform rule systems shape professional ideals and pose ethical risks to media memory. The dimension of material environment analyzes the transcendent memory experiences and concerns about loss of control. The dimension of actors explains the complex network of collaboration and confrontation among multiple actors. Based on this framework, the study proposes three optimization pathways: building a valuesharing memory interpretation community to balance platform logic and memory value; reshaping humanmachine collaboration to achieve dynamic interplay between technological empowerment and humanistic orientation, and building interconnected performance space to stimulate the vitality of connective memory ecology and foster the cohesion of collective identity.
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  On Journalistic Expertise in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: From the Imagination of Automation to the Collaboration of HumanMachine

  Tian Hao

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 30-36.

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  With the popularity of key technologies such as largescale data mining, intelligent algorithms, and generative artificial intelligence, the concept of automated news has gradually moved from imagination to practice. In terms of production rules, identity recognition, and news roles, automated news production has gradually shifted to the concept of humanmachine collaboration, which has led to the expansion and renewal of journalistic expertise in the era of artificial intelligence in terms of connotation and extension. On the practical level, journalistic expertise in the era of artificial intelligence encourages news practitioners to clarify their own complex identities, attach importance to creative production concepts, explore creative production skills, and clarify the overall transformation direction of news culture. Digital journalism theory should also follow this logic to deeply explore the artificial intelligence news culture that is peoplecentered and centered on humanmachine collaboration.
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  From Institutions to Machines: Rethinking the Technological Dimension in the Discussion of Journalistic Truth

  Liu Songyin, Feng Yujie

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 37-46.

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  This study examines the significance of rethinking the technological dimension in advancing our comprehension of journalistic truth in the AIGC age. While traditional journalism’s construction of “journalistic truth” as a “godterm” has established a transcendental truth, it is now facing empirical and interpretive challenges under posttruth conditions and disruptive digital technologies. Synthesizing existing research into three paradigms—realism based on reflection theory, pragmatic objectivity, and phenomenological unconcealment—we contend that technology remains marginalized in the prevailing epistemological frameworks of journalism. Employing a “Journalistic TruthAuthorityTechnology” analytical lens, this study reconceptualizes technology not merely as an instrumental carrier but as an actor with mediating capacity and agency. Functioning as infrastructure for truth production and circulation, news technologies simultaneously enhance transparency while generating blackbox effects. By mediating audience truth experiences through its affordances and environmental shaping, technologies also transform passive recipients into active verifiers. Through shaping competitive multitruth regimes, news tech reconstructs the legitimacy boundaries of journalistic authority. Transcending the cyclical “euphoriadisillusionmentfear” pattern in digital journalism studies requires recognizing technology’s actant role in configuring both individual news experiences and institutional practices, ultimately enabling the reestablishment of a publicoriented conception of journalistic truth.
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  The Discussion between “Jishi” and “Xiaoxi”: Discourse Genealogy and Conceptual Production in the Classical Concepts of Chinese Journalism

  Gao Jialu, Wu Dongyang

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 47-56.

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  As a foundational journalistic genre, “Xiaoxi” was initially conflated with the historiographic discourse “Jishi” in its early development. In journalism textbooks by authors such as Kumpei Matsumoto and Edwin Llewellyn Shuman, the historicallyinfused concept of “Jishi” was introduced by translators into the local journalism discourse. However, through reflection by modern scholars, the stylistic concept of “Xiaoxi” gradually became established after 1920, initiating the localization of journalism and propelling the disciplinary separation of journalism from historiography.The conceptualization of “Xiaoxi” stemmed from technological innovations in media during the 1920s, as well as influences from the spread of Western journalistic concepts, professionalization, and educational development. By the 1950s, articles such as “How to Write News Xiaoxi” by Xiao Yin and “On News in Newspapers” published in the People’s Daily, signified that the discourse construction of “Xiaoxi” by the Chinese Communistshad entered a conscious stage, further emphasizing the principle of Party Spirit.This process of conceptual formation both reflects the path of journalism’s localization and reveals the inherent logic behind the construction of China’s modern journalistic discourse system.
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  “Write” Has Not Disappeared and What It Implies——Multidimensional Interpretations for A Daliy Mistake

  Bao Guoqiang, Chen Taixu

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 57-65.

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  Contemporary writing practices have undergone significant changes in both tools and bodily posture. While people now primarily type rather than handwrite, the term “write” remains widely used in everyday expressions and has not been replaced by “type”. This paper examines this linguistic incongruity through the lens of linguistic philosophy and media ecology. By tracing the etymology of “write”, it argues that the word does not denote a specific technical operation but rather signifies a transformation in the ontological status of words—namely, their displacement from the realm of thought to the realm of media. This semantic flexibility allows “write” to persist in common usage despite shifts in writing technologies. Interpreted as a slip of the tongue, this phenomenon also reveals the writer’s unconscious desire for temporal harmony between writing and the body.
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  Evaluating the Influence of Dai WaterSplashing Festival Videos in Intercultural Communication: Application and Analysis of the SSLDA Model

  Cui Yixin, Zhang Tao, Li Pengxiang

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 66-75.

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  As an important ethnic festival in Yunnan, China, the Dai Water Splashing Festival has gained increasing visibility on international social media platforms. However, research on the influence of ethnic festival videos in intercultural communication is still limited. This paper uses the SSLDA model to analyze YouTube comments on the Dai Water Splashing Festival, incorporating the media effects framework to build a theoretical model. The study highlights the festival videos’ positive role in accumulating and transmitting cultural capital, while also identifying potential cultural misinterpretations. Additionally, it finds that overseas viewers’ positive emotions and attitudes towards the festival significantly influence their behavioral intentions. These findings deepen the understanding of the festival’s intercultural impact and provide empirical support for enhancing the global dissemination of the Chinese culture.
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  The Affective News Field of Urban Centralized Resettlement Community: From the Aestheticization of Everyday Life to Live Aesthetics

  Fang Jieyun

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 76-86.

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  Under the guidance of central and provincial and municipal media, the district and county media convergence centers have focused on the current living conditions and development status of resettled populations. In the process of constructing news practices for urban centralized resettlement areas, a new news field has emerged. The significant transition from rural to urban living environments, as well as the interplay of traditional and modern media environments and conditions, have had a noticeable impact on the news cognition, perceptions, and attitudes of resettled residents. This study conducts field investigations and semistructured interviews in the centralized resettlement area of X Community in Guizhou Province, employing Bourdieu’s field theory and Latour’s actornetwork theory to specifically explore how the unique communication strategies formed in the resettlement area enhance residents’ agency in news production and shape distinctive news fields. The findings reveal that the technological progress and the synergistic effects between traditional and modern media have significantly enhanced residents’ news participation and social identity, thereby giving rise to an affective news field with regional characteristics. These findings not only expand the boundaries of news communication theory research but also deepen our understanding of the logical processes of news practice, demonstrating the support of empirical research for theoretical development.
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  Visual Nurturing: Lianhuanhua’s Visual Shaping of National Identity in Early PRC

  Li Yong, Li Siying

  Journalism Evolution. 2025, 15(4): 87-95.

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  In the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, as a visual medium, comic strips (lianhuahui) were an important channel for shaping national identity. Based on the theory of political culture, this study reveals that through ideological transformation and narrative reconstruction, comic strips became a visually disciplinary tool led by the state. On the basis of media operation and management, transformation of work content, and control of theme orientation, the state relied on three narrative strategies—stimulating patriotic feelings through revolutionary struggles, strengthening the legitimacy of the political power through legal propaganda, and reconstructing collective memory through traditional allusions—to appropriate comic strips as a political propaganda medium, constructing an ideological connection between the “state and the people”. The abstract state was transformed into a concrete entity in the translation of political symbols and the reconstruction of cultural memory, and the construction of a visual community was completed through symbolic consumption and emotional projection. The comic strips in the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China were not only a form of popular culture, but also an ideological machine for national governance, concept production, and identity shaping, providing a new perspective for understanding the interactive mechanism between political propaganda and cultural hegemony.