Media Oversight in Non-Democratic Regimes: The Perspectives of Officials and Journalists in China

PARGC Paper 3, Spring 2015

PARGC Press announces the publishing of PARGC Paper 3, “Media Oversight in Non-Democratic Regimes: The Perspectives of Officials and Journalists in China,” by PARGC Postdoctoral Fellow, Maria Repnikova. “Media Oversight in Non-Democratic Regimes” grew out of an October 2014 PARGC Postdoctoral Scholar Colloquium delivered by Repnikova during her residence at Annenberg. It builds on Repnikova’s dissertation about critical journalists and the state in China, and is grounded in more than 100 interviews and textual analysis of official discourse.

Repnikova is currently serving as PARGC’s second Postdoctoral Fellow. She joined PARGC from the University of Oxford, where she completed a DPhil in political science and was a Rhodes Scholar and a Wai Seng Senior Scholar. She is reworking her doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript, as well as examining China’s evolving approaches to crisis communication and comparing the media environment in China and Russia in more detail.

Making Real-Time Drama: The Political Economy of Cultural Production in Syria’s Uprising

PARGC Paper 2, Fall 2014

At PARGC Press we are delighted to present PARGC Paper 2, “Making Real-Time Drama: The Political Economy of Cultural Production in Syria’s Uprising.” Based on a PARGC Postdoctoral Colloquium presented by PARGC Fellow, Donatella Della Ratta, during her residence at the Annenberg School. It builds on Donatella’s dissertation about the pan-Arab and national political and economic forces shaping television production in Syria, and feeds on the unparalleled access that she acquired among Syrian drama makers through extensive field research in Damascus and elsewhere.

Della Ratta served as the first PARGC Postdoctoral Fellow from 2013-2014. She joined PARGC from the University of Chicago, where she held another postdoc at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. A few months earlier, she obtained her doctoral degree, after defending a dissertation on the politics of Syrian TV drama at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, New Islamic Public Sphere Program, University of Copenhagen. She currently is back at the University of Copenhagen as a post-doctoral fellow.

In the Shadow of Official Ambition: National Media Policy Confronts Global Media Capital

PARGC Paper 1, Spring 2014

Michael Curtin gave PARGC’s Inaugural Distinguished Lecture in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, on September 18, 2013— less than three months after PARGC’s founding on July 1, 2013. The Publication of the lecture as PARGC Paper 1 inaugurates a new venture, PARGC Press, dedicated to publishing PARGC papers and co-publishing books resulting from PARGC symposia.

PARGC Paper 1 draws on Curtin’s current book project, Media Capital, which compares cities that have become centers of the global film and television industries, such as Bombay, Lagos, and Miami. In the following pages, Curtin explores the implications of Chinese cultural policy within the broader context of media globalization, providing a framework for understanding the logics of media capital and the challenges confronting national governments, making comparisons to Arab, African, and Indian media, reflecting on the prospects for creativity and diversity in film and television.