The SAGE Handbook of Chinese Digital Media and Communication

This volume stands as a landmark achievement — a comprehensive, systematic, and up-to-date mapping of China’s digital transformation. It brings together leading scholars to dissect the shifting terrains of civil society and politics, technology regulation and governance, digital platforms and labor, user cultures and everyday life. With analytical rigor and a keen sense of critical reflection, the book illuminates not only the architectures of power and participation but also the struggles and negotiations that define China’s digital present. For scholars and advanced students in the humanities, social sciences, and technology policy, this handbook is indispensable. It offers both breadth and depth, equipping readers to understand, critique, and re-imagine the future of Chinese digital media and communication.


  -- Professor Jack Linchuan Qiu
As one of the first and most comprehensive works in the field, this book breaks new ground in the analysis of digital China. By systematically integrating diverse dimensions—including established and emerging scholars, industry and culture, historical and contemporary perspectives, policy and user studies, as well as new media platforms and digital labor—it offers a uniquely holistic understanding of Chinese digital media. The volume presents innovative and distinctive interpretations of the emergence and development of Chinese digital communication. Its rich empirical insights shed light on the complex interplay among media scholars, students, policymakers, and IT professionals. The contributors position their analysis not solely within a national framework, but within a global context, enhancing the volume’s relevance and significance. This book is an essential resource for scholars and students engaged in the study of Chinese digital media and communication.


  -- Professor Dal Yong Jin

"This phenomenal handbook offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date analyses of key issues in the study of Chinese internet and digital media in one volume. Featuring leading scholars from around the world, it provides an indispensable roadmap for future research in this rich and dynamic field. Highly recommended!"

  -- Professor Guobin Yang
Grasping the variety and complexity of media in and from China, and China′s related policy environment, is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the field of media studies today. This remarkable collection brings together a truly impressive range of authors and topics in what will instantly become an essential primer for understanding contemporary China′s multiple media worlds. 

  -- Professor Nick Couldry
Since China’s official connection to the global internet in 1994, the internet and digital media have profoundly transformed the politics, economy, and culture of Chinese society. This handbook serves as an indispensable resource for scholars and students interested in understanding how the internet and digital technologies have reshaped China and influenced the world over the past three decades. 
  -- Professor Hu Yong
This handbook is a remarkable, interdisciplinary achievement that marks three decades of Chinese Internet studies and digital communication. Covering a wide range of topics, perspectives, theoretical and methodological approaches, this handbook is an indispensable resource to anyone wishing to have a good grasp of the complex digital transformations brought to Chinese society, politics, culture, and economy.

-- Professor Min Jiang