Professor Wanning Sun is Professor of Media and Communication in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS. |
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Executive Summary
On September 8 2016 the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney released an independent report on Chinese-language media in Australia.
The report is authored by Wanning Sun, a Professor of Media and Communication at UTS with a decade of experience conducting academic research into the sector.
Professor Sun details a rapidly changing media landscape that outsiders on the one hand find inscrutable but also regularly place at the heart of the Chinese government’s attempts to exert soft power.
The report from Australia’s foremost expert confirms a shift from a mostly critical coverage of China to a mostly supportive stance. But it also concludes that there is little clear evidence that “localised” propaganda has a direct impact on Chinese-speaking audiences, let alone the broader Australian community.
The report singles out the rise of Chinese-language online media for attention, warning that it can support the spread of nationalist pro-China sentiment, potentially creating greater division in Australian society. But it also presents an opportunity for the Australian government to exert its own brand of soft power, as well as provides a platform for Australian businesses to reach a rapidly growing Chinese middle class.
Read Professor Sun's own summary of the report here.
Author
Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Communication, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney. Professor Sun specialises in Chinese media and communication, rural to urban migration and cultural politics of inequality in contemporary China, and diasporic Chinese media.