Yiyan Zhang, and co-authors Xinzhou Xie and Xiaolin Bo, win Best Paper Award of The Eighth Global Communication Forum, an annual ICA Postconference, for their work on how Chinese county governments utilize online platforms.
With the rapid development of the Internet, online media platforms have been widely utilized by governments at all level worldwide as a communication channel. The recent scholarship pays much attention to the utilization of online media at national, state/provincial, or municipal levels. However, there are limited studies looked at the local use of online platforms. Based on a national survey on 1,870 county-level administrative units in China, this study reveals the existence of the regional imbalance in the local utilization of online media in this most populated country. The results also suggest that monetary, personnel, and organizational investment will alter the distinctions among counties in various ways. In the light of the nature of online media platforms and the theories of e-governance, the present study also concludes that the utilization brings both opportunities and challenges to the development of participatory democracy in China.
Xie, X., Zhang, Y., & Bo, X. (2018, May). The imbalance of online media platforms utilization at county level in China: Opportunities and challenges. Paper presented at the 68th annual post-conference of the International Communication Association, Prague, Czech Republic.