The next China Media Centre seminar will take place on Wednesday, 2 February between 2-4pm in room E4.4 at the Harrow campus. Norwegian academic Elin Sather will be talking about her latest project, Critical journalism in China: Journalists, social activists and new spaces of representation. The seminar will comprise an introductory lecture, followed by an open discussion.
Critical journalists and social activists are contributing to public debate in China, through their investigations, commentaries and through voicing grievances and concerns that would otherwise be ignored. These provide people with new channels of representation. At the same time both critical journalists and activists remain subject to party-state surveillance, and both freedom and control appear to be increasing. The seminar will explore this puzzle: what does it mean that more issues are being discussed by increasing numbers of critical journalists and activists while party-state control remains strict?
Elin is a post-doctoral fellow working within the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. Further information on her project can be found at: www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/research/projects/critical-journalism-in-china/index.html