Open Access(IN)DEPENDENCY ON THE HEGEMONIC TO BE HEARD: NEWS-FOCUSED WECHAT OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS IN AUSTRALIA AS A CASE STUDY
Author(s) -
Fan Yang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12077
Subject(s) - hegemony , media studies , journalism , digital media , news media , cultural hegemony , sociology , public sphere , political science , diaspora , independence (probability theory) , critical discourse analysis , gender studies , law , politics , statistics , mathematics , ideology
This paper contextualizes an alternative perspective to a commonacademic discourse that ethnic media in the West provide a voice for the marginalized fromthe original bourgeois public sphere. The paper investigates an emergent industry –news-focused WeChat Official Accounts (hereafter WOAs) in Australia. The WOA is aninformation broadcasting feature launched on WeChat in August 2013 and then adopted byAustralian-Chinese media entrepreneurs to produce and circulate the ethno-specific newsstories among the Chinese diaspora in Australia and even beyond. From 2019 to 2020, Iinterviewed 24 media professionals to understand the internal working of news-focused WOAsin Australia. I argue that the anatomy of these Chinese-language digital media organizationsreveals their financial independence from the nation-state in contrast to Australianhegemonic taxpayer-sponsored media. Contrary to many media scholars have argued,news-focused WOAs do not completely represent antithetical voices to Australian Englishmedia. The commercial imperative does not translate well into agonistic pluralism.News-focused WOAs are attached to the hegemonic journalism and internalize interethnicracism alongside white supremacist discourse against black people in order to be part of thedominant media structure.