Kecheng Fang
Biographic Data
| ID | 4448873 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kecheng Fang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kecheng |
| FAMILY NAME | Fang |
| SIGNATURE | FANG K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1674-1543 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 148 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Quality Journalism in China Is Not Dead; It’s Just More Dispersed Than Ever
‘I Am Patriotic, but…’
Radical boycotts and moderate buycotts
Hyperlocal citizen journalism in Hong Kong
Despite severe political pressures on journalism and civil society after the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, over 20 community newspapers have continued their operation. Through content analysis of 60 issues of the papers and in-depth interviews with over 20 individuals involved in their establishment and operation, this study aims to unravel their intriguing resilience. Findings reveal that these papers adopted two non-…
Transnational Citizen Journalism for Resistance and Solidarity
This study focuses on a new trend in journalism, which we conceptualize as transnational citizen journalism. We argue that the diasporic and transnational production and consumption of alternative and counter-hegemonic information by nonprofessional individuals have sparked fresh imaginations and opened up new spaces for journalism, particularly in authoritarian contexts. We specifically examine several prominent transnational citizen journalism …
Authoritarian Environmentalism as Reflected in the Journalistic Sourcing of Climate Change Reporting in China
This study investigates how Chinese news media cover climate change through the lens of authoritarian environmentalism, China’s alternative model of environmental governance. Combining computational methods and manual coding, we analyzed the sourcing patterns of climate change articles across three news media types (party media, financial media, and metropolitan media) from 2013 to 2021. Results showed three features: First, state officials were …
How dark corners collude
The rise of the ‘alt-right’ (alternative right) and their communications on the Internet are not unique to the West. This study follows a mixed-methods approach combining topic modeling, social network analysis, and discourse analysis to analyze the discursive and network structure of an online Chinese alt-right community on Weibo. We summarize the topics Chinese alt-right influencers discuss and examine how these topics are interrelated. We find…
Extending the research on digital China
The goal of this article is to reflect on and challenge some key presumptions in the existing research on digital China, and to critically extend this line of inquiry by engaging with the transnational perspective. We argue that the transnational lens, while acknowledging the vital role of the state, can reveal a more diverse set of actors and their dynamics. Theoretically, we borrow from critical studies that conceptualize and repackage Chinese-…
The dark side of entertainment? How viral entertaining media build an attention base for the far-right politics of The Epoch Times
To amplify their audience reach, far-right outlets need a calculated and coordinated array of acts to set the stage for audience attention and to build a communication network that spreads their messages. We examined the Facebook newsfeed history of The Epoch Times ( N = 117,274 posts from 2013 to 2020), which transitioned from a niche anti-China publication to an influential player in US far-right politics. We found that US partisan issues helpe…
What is Zimeiti ? The commercial logic of content provision on China’s social media platforms
“Zimeiti” (we media or self-media) is a buzzword in China that has never been clearly defined. It generally refers to non-institutional content providers on social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. I conducted a systematic analysis of metadiscourse about zimeiti, including industry reports and conference speeches by important figures in this community. I found that zimeiti is mainly seen as an emerging commercial sector monetizing user at…
Social media live streaming as affective news in the anti-Elab movement in Hong Kong
This article uses the theory of affective news to examine social media live streaming during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. We argue that this specific form of affective news was enabled by the affordances of the Facebook Live platform, collectively produced by journalists who were not bound by conventional detached practices and audiences who actively engaged in emotional reactions and discussions, and offering …
The social movement was live streamed
This study proposes a sociotechnical framework to study digital media and social movements and uses it to analyze the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Informed by actor-network theory, this framework examines media technology as infrastructure, practice, and text, and discusses its relation to other actors/actants in the network of social movements. Based on qualitative analysis of live streaming sessions and in-depth interviews with journalists and a…
Where are the missing girls? Gender inequality, job precarity, and journalism students’ career choices in China
This study aims to explain the puzzling discrepancy between the large number of female journalism students and the comparatively fewer female journalists in the workforce in China today. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 graduates in journalism from the same class, we investigate the female students’ professional socialization process and analyze the external and internal factors that led most of them to choose a journalism major but not to jo…
Praise from the International Community
Authoritarian governments cultivate an image of popular support to legitimize their rule. One such strategy is to create the impression that their rule and policies are widely supported by the international community. In this study, I systematically explore how the Chinese Party-state uses foreign experts in its propaganda to provide extra legitimacy to Chinese government policies. I collected data on non-Chinese-national intellectuals cited in 3…
The State-Preneurship Model of Digital Journalism Innovation
Digital innovation has been widely considered as a key solution to the current journalism crisis. While most innovation projects in democratic regimes receive funding from media organizations, venture capital firms, and foundations, many of China’s digital journalism projects are funded and led by the state—a model we define as “state-preneurship.” In this study, we compare this model with other digital innovation models on three dimensions: the …
Turning a communist party leader into an internet meme
A cultural phenomenon called ‘mo ha’ (toad worship) has been increasingly popular on the Chinese Internet since 2014, with ‘the toad’ referring to former Party and country leader Jiang Zemin. His memes have gone viral. To examine the toad worship fever, I propose a two-dimensional framework: on the one hand, it differentiates the political and apolitical aspects of the content, and on the other hand, it draws from James Carey’s two views of commu…
Authoritarian Participatory Persuasion 2.0
In the reform era, management of information by the Chinese Communist Party has been continuously moving away from explicit, crude tactics of the past toward more subtle and orderly mechanisms of the present. This study examines one facet of this transformation in the online sphere: digital persuasion. Drawing on three emerging trends in online persuasion, including official digital revamping of state media, expansion of government Weibo, and off…
Demystifying “Little Pink”
In 2016, Little Pink has emerged as the label for a new wave of female-led cyber-nationalism in China. While increasingly popularized in media and online discourses, little is known about the evolution of this label and its significance for our understanding of China’s digital activism. This article takes the first step at unraveling the Little Pink mystery by examining its origins and contestation in China’s online community during the cross-str…
Demystifying “Little Pink”
In 2016, Little Pink has emerged as the label for a new wave of female-led cyber-nationalism in China. While increasingly popularized in media and online discourses, little is known about the evolution of this label and its significance for our understanding of China’s digital activism. This article takes the first step at unraveling the Little Pink mystery by examining its origins and contestation in China’s online community during the cross-str…
Authoritarian Participatory Persuasion 2.0
In the reform era, management of information by the Chinese Communist Party has been continuously moving away from explicit, crude tactics of the past toward more subtle and orderly mechanisms of the present. This study examines one facet of this transformation in the online sphere: digital persuasion. Drawing on three emerging trends in online persuasion, including official digital revamping of state media, expansion of government Weibo, and off…
The State-Preneurship Model of Digital Journalism Innovation
Digital innovation has been widely considered as a key solution to the current journalism crisis. While most innovation projects in democratic regimes receive funding from media organizations, venture capital firms, and foundations, many of China’s digital journalism projects are funded and led by the state—a model we define as “state-preneurship.” In this study, we compare this model with other digital innovation models on three dimensions: the …
Praise from the International Community
Authoritarian governments cultivate an image of popular support to legitimize their rule. One such strategy is to create the impression that their rule and policies are widely supported by the international community. In this study, I systematically explore how the Chinese Party-state uses foreign experts in its propaganda to provide extra legitimacy to Chinese government policies. I collected data on non-Chinese-national intellectuals cited in 3…
Where are the missing girls? Gender inequality, job precarity, and journalism students’ career choices in China
This study aims to explain the puzzling discrepancy between the large number of female journalism students and the comparatively fewer female journalists in the workforce in China today. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 graduates in journalism from the same class, we investigate the female students’ professional socialization process and analyze the external and internal factors that led most of them to choose a journalism major but not to jo…
The dark side of entertainment? How viral entertaining media build an attention base for the far-right politics of The Epoch Times
To amplify their audience reach, far-right outlets need a calculated and coordinated array of acts to set the stage for audience attention and to build a communication network that spreads their messages. We examined the Facebook newsfeed history of The Epoch Times ( N = 117,274 posts from 2013 to 2020), which transitioned from a niche anti-China publication to an influential player in US far-right politics. We found that US partisan issues helpe…
Hyperlocal citizen journalism in Hong Kong
Despite severe political pressures on journalism and civil society after the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, over 20 community newspapers have continued their operation. Through content analysis of 60 issues of the papers and in-depth interviews with over 20 individuals involved in their establishment and operation, this study aims to unravel their intriguing resilience. Findings reveal that these papers adopted two non-…
The social movement was live streamed
This study proposes a sociotechnical framework to study digital media and social movements and uses it to analyze the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Informed by actor-network theory, this framework examines media technology as infrastructure, practice, and text, and discusses its relation to other actors/actants in the network of social movements. Based on qualitative analysis of live streaming sessions and in-depth interviews with journalists and a…
Radical boycotts and moderate buycotts
Transnational Citizen Journalism for Resistance and Solidarity
This study focuses on a new trend in journalism, which we conceptualize as transnational citizen journalism. We argue that the diasporic and transnational production and consumption of alternative and counter-hegemonic information by nonprofessional individuals have sparked fresh imaginations and opened up new spaces for journalism, particularly in authoritarian contexts. We specifically examine several prominent transnational citizen journalism …
Demystifying “Little Pink”
In 2016, Little Pink has emerged as the label for a new wave of female-led cyber-nationalism in China. While increasingly popularized in media and online discourses, little is known about the evolution of this label and its significance for our understanding of China’s digital activism. This article takes the first step at unraveling the Little Pink mystery by examining its origins and contestation in China’s online community during the cross-str…
Authoritarian Participatory Persuasion 2.0
In the reform era, management of information by the Chinese Communist Party has been continuously moving away from explicit, crude tactics of the past toward more subtle and orderly mechanisms of the present. This study examines one facet of this transformation in the online sphere: digital persuasion. Drawing on three emerging trends in online persuasion, including official digital revamping of state media, expansion of government Weibo, and off…
Turning a communist party leader into an internet meme
A cultural phenomenon called ‘mo ha’ (toad worship) has been increasingly popular on the Chinese Internet since 2014, with ‘the toad’ referring to former Party and country leader Jiang Zemin. His memes have gone viral. To examine the toad worship fever, I propose a two-dimensional framework: on the one hand, it differentiates the political and apolitical aspects of the content, and on the other hand, it draws from James Carey’s two views of commu…
Praise from the International Community
Authoritarian governments cultivate an image of popular support to legitimize their rule. One such strategy is to create the impression that their rule and policies are widely supported by the international community. In this study, I systematically explore how the Chinese Party-state uses foreign experts in its propaganda to provide extra legitimacy to Chinese government policies. I collected data on non-Chinese-national intellectuals cited in 3…
The State-Preneurship Model of Digital Journalism Innovation
Digital innovation has been widely considered as a key solution to the current journalism crisis. While most innovation projects in democratic regimes receive funding from media organizations, venture capital firms, and foundations, many of China’s digital journalism projects are funded and led by the state—a model we define as “state-preneurship.” In this study, we compare this model with other digital innovation models on three dimensions: the …
What is Zimeiti ? The commercial logic of content provision on China’s social media platforms
“Zimeiti” (we media or self-media) is a buzzword in China that has never been clearly defined. It generally refers to non-institutional content providers on social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. I conducted a systematic analysis of metadiscourse about zimeiti, including industry reports and conference speeches by important figures in this community. I found that zimeiti is mainly seen as an emerging commercial sector monetizing user at…
Social media live streaming as affective news in the anti-Elab movement in Hong Kong
This article uses the theory of affective news to examine social media live streaming during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. We argue that this specific form of affective news was enabled by the affordances of the Facebook Live platform, collectively produced by journalists who were not bound by conventional detached practices and audiences who actively engaged in emotional reactions and discussions, and offering …
The social movement was live streamed
This study proposes a sociotechnical framework to study digital media and social movements and uses it to analyze the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Informed by actor-network theory, this framework examines media technology as infrastructure, practice, and text, and discusses its relation to other actors/actants in the network of social movements. Based on qualitative analysis of live streaming sessions and in-depth interviews with journalists and a…
Where are the missing girls? Gender inequality, job precarity, and journalism students’ career choices in China
This study aims to explain the puzzling discrepancy between the large number of female journalism students and the comparatively fewer female journalists in the workforce in China today. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 graduates in journalism from the same class, we investigate the female students’ professional socialization process and analyze the external and internal factors that led most of them to choose a journalism major but not to jo…
Authoritarian Environmentalism as Reflected in the Journalistic Sourcing of Climate Change Reporting in China
This study investigates how Chinese news media cover climate change through the lens of authoritarian environmentalism, China’s alternative model of environmental governance. Combining computational methods and manual coding, we analyzed the sourcing patterns of climate change articles across three news media types (party media, financial media, and metropolitan media) from 2013 to 2021. Results showed three features: First, state officials were …
How dark corners collude
The rise of the ‘alt-right’ (alternative right) and their communications on the Internet are not unique to the West. This study follows a mixed-methods approach combining topic modeling, social network analysis, and discourse analysis to analyze the discursive and network structure of an online Chinese alt-right community on Weibo. We summarize the topics Chinese alt-right influencers discuss and examine how these topics are interrelated. We find…
Extending the research on digital China
The goal of this article is to reflect on and challenge some key presumptions in the existing research on digital China, and to critically extend this line of inquiry by engaging with the transnational perspective. We argue that the transnational lens, while acknowledging the vital role of the state, can reveal a more diverse set of actors and their dynamics. Theoretically, we borrow from critical studies that conceptualize and repackage Chinese-…
The dark side of entertainment? How viral entertaining media build an attention base for the far-right politics of The Epoch Times
To amplify their audience reach, far-right outlets need a calculated and coordinated array of acts to set the stage for audience attention and to build a communication network that spreads their messages. We examined the Facebook newsfeed history of The Epoch Times ( N = 117,274 posts from 2013 to 2020), which transitioned from a niche anti-China publication to an influential player in US far-right politics. We found that US partisan issues helpe…
Hyperlocal citizen journalism in Hong Kong
Despite severe political pressures on journalism and civil society after the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, over 20 community newspapers have continued their operation. Through content analysis of 60 issues of the papers and in-depth interviews with over 20 individuals involved in their establishment and operation, this study aims to unravel their intriguing resilience. Findings reveal that these papers adopted two non-…
Transnational Citizen Journalism for Resistance and Solidarity
This study focuses on a new trend in journalism, which we conceptualize as transnational citizen journalism. We argue that the diasporic and transnational production and consumption of alternative and counter-hegemonic information by nonprofessional individuals have sparked fresh imaginations and opened up new spaces for journalism, particularly in authoritarian contexts. We specifically examine several prominent transnational citizen journalism …
Quality Journalism in China Is Not Dead; It’s Just More Dispersed Than Ever
‘I Am Patriotic, but…’
Radical boycotts and moderate buycotts
Political science (17 works) · Politics (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · China (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Social Media and Politics (11 works) · Media studies (10 works) · Media Studies and Communication (9 works) · Public relations (7 works) · Business (6 works)