Useful knowledge and appropriate communication: The field of journalistic production in late nineteenth century China

Natascha Gentz*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract / Description of output

Studies on the public sphere and political culture in general in late Qing China have only recently started to focus on newspapers and other print media. This was in part due to the influence of Habermas's study of the pivotal role of print media in the development of the public sphere in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Europe;1 it also resulted from the discovery that these materials-even if descried by historians as a "weak source"-do at the very least contain a lot of unintended information on the political culture and social communication of the communities in which they are circulating. Until recently, however, studies with this new focus have mainly concentrated on the development of the Chinese press after the beginning of the twentieth century. This emphasis follows the PRC periodization, which has a truly "native" press starting only with the reform papers in the mid-1890s. It finds further justification in the claim that the professionalization of journalism made headway only during the last years of the Qing, and developed only during the 1910s and 1920s. The elements described by occupation sociologists as marking a "profession" such as a specialized and institutionalized education, the formation of professional associations, and a defined ethical code had indeed not now developed during the first decades of Chinese-language newspapers.2.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationJoining the Global Public
Subtitle of host publicationWord, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870-1910
EditorsRudolf G. Wagner
PublisherState University of New York Press
Pages47-104
Number of pages58
ISBN (Print)9780791471173
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2007

Publication series

NameSUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture

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