The missing context that plagues tech reporting about China
An Xiao Mina writes in the Columbia Journalism Review:
One problem I see is that many journalists reporting on Chinese technology have limited experience reporting within and about China. They might not fully understand the economic and media aims of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese language, or the underlying logic of global capitalism. China has a population of 1.3 billion people—more than the European Union and North America combined—but little of the tech coverage in the West recognizes the country’s complexity. Technology writers will argue at length the fine points distinguishing San Francisco and Silicon Valley tech culture but say nothing about the Pearl River Delta, a metropolitan complex whose population surpasses that of California and whose exports shape the global economy of electronic goods.
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China, Russia, and the US are now engaged in what journalist Sarah Jeong has called information-nationalism, in which countries hide their own human rights abuses while exposing those of others. This makes reporting challenging, because often what states say about other states is, in fact, accurate, but with the purposeful omission of a fuller context. Journalists must provide this context. But what constitutes context? I think of context in three layers: proximate, policy, and systemic.
Read the full article: To report on tech, journalists must also learn to report on China.
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