A-V1: (De)Revolutionizing Information: Information Control and Media Politics in Communist China (1945-1976)

Virtual Organizer(s)

• 

  Mian Chen

  Northwestern University, United States
• HY

  Hongyi Yu

  Columbia University, United States

Virtual Chair(s)

• FW

  Fei-hsien Wang

  Indiana University, United States

Virtual Paper Presenter(s)

• HY

  Hongyi Yu

  Columbia University, United States
• SC

  Sei Jeong Chin

  Ewha Womans University, Republic of Korea
• JL

  Jie Li

  Harvard University, United States

Virtual Discussant(s)

• FW

  Fei-hsien Wang

  Indiana University, United States

Session Abstract: This panel seeks to explore how the Chinese Communist Revolution was fueled as well as restrained by information culture and media technologies. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) developed new mechanisms to channel the flows of information for ideological transformation and state-building. We reveal how the Party tried to monopolize the meanings of concepts including objectivity, rumor, and dissent, mobilize ideological apparatuses of propaganda and censorship, and redefine “correct information” to fight the war of legitimacy. However, dissidents and ordinary people who gradually mastered the secret of media politics often challenged the Party’s rule over information, eventually slowing the momentum of revolution.

Chen delves into the Party’s theorization of objectivity, revealing the epistemological legitimation for propaganda and censorship. Adopting the social history approach, Yu examines how the Party strengthened its power and informational authority by identifying and dispelling disinformation in the early People’s Republic of China (PRC). Chin analyzes the role of media as a public tribunal during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, suggesting that the process of the campaign was still contested. Focusing on the Lin Biao Incident, Li further reveals how ordinary people immersed themselves in a media ecology of self-taught interpretative techniques and noises, joining then later burying the Cultural Revolution. These four papers altogether shed new light on the dialects between information and the Communist revolution, showing how information culture and media might (de)fuel the Chinese Communist Revolution and (de)legitimate the Party’s rule.

Presentations:

• Identifying and Dispelling "Disinformation:" The Politics of Rumormongering in Early Maoist China (1949–1954)
  

  Virtual Paper Presenter: Hongyi Yu – Columbia University
• The Anti-rightist Campaign as Media Event: Media, Censorship, and the Making of Dissent in 1950s China
  

  Virtual Paper Presenter: Sei Jeong Chin – Ewha Womans University
• Listening to Enemy Radio in the Socialist Media Ecology
  

  Virtual Paper Presenter: Jie Li – Harvard University