He Zhiwu, You Zhenwu
Journalism Evolution.
2024, 13(2):
15-29.
The construction of countylevel converged media, as a hot topic in China’s media convergence and grassroots governance modernization, has sparked extensive and ongoing discussions in both academia and industry. In this paper, CiteSpace analysis tool is used to analyze 563 core journals and CSSCI journals of countylevel converged media research in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), providing a panoramic view of the current status, hotspots, and trends of this research. The study finds that research on countylevel converged media generally follows an inverted “U” shaped development trend, with explosive growth occurring after the 2018 National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference. The research community exhibits a characteristic of “large dispersion, small aggregation”, with significant room for collaboration among authors. Research topics, centered on “media convergence”, form interconnected research content, preliminary forming a knowledge production system of diverse themes interlinked with each other, and showing a shift from “media centric” to “governance centric” logic of mediamediated governance. The functional positioning, diverse models, multiple challenges of countylevel converged media construction, as well as the role positioning and functional expansion of countylevel converged media in grassroots social governance, are the main hotspots of research in recent years. Future research efforts should focus on building collaborative networks, expanding the “academic slots” of research topics, and strengthening research methods.