Economic News Comments on a Mobile News App: An Emerging Genre of Bashing
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Abstract
Mobile news applications not only provide real time delivery of aggregated and personalized news feeds, but they also afford user engagement through the comment function. In this context, reporting on economic policies is mediated by both journalistic voices and reader interpretations. This article explores how economic news is commented on by NetEase mobile news application users in China. Commenting on economic news on NetEase is characterized by bashing, where users engage through frequent, uncompromising, and excessive criticism as the default position of participation. This newly emerging digital genre brings political dissent to prominence in China’s online public sphere. The study finds that bashing is a form of verbal play, as users seek a trigger in any news content to vent their dissent toward the current political regime in China. In order to do so, news is re-framed (Entman, 1993) in comments so that a trigger can be brought into salience. The rhetorical effect is mischievous and sarcastic. Moreover, the technical functionalities of NetEase also invite bashing practices to a certain extent. Bashing is complementary to the hyper-normative public discourses (Yang et al., 2014) in mainstream media, and it interacts with the mediatisation process associated with the emergence of mobile phone applications.
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