Claiming Legitimacy: Journalists’ Discursive Strategies for Rationalizing “Brand Propaganda” Within Chinese Local Press

Abstract

In the past decade, the initiative of “brand propaganda,” a form of positive reporting on local governments in exchange of financial support, emerged within a few of China’s city-level and province-level press groups. Employing the theoretical perspective of journalistic legitimacy, this study investigates how involved local journalists rationalize this initiative and the implications it bears for the future of China’s local journalism. In-depth interviews with 17 journalists from the local press group X Daily suggest that brand propaganda is legitimized through a “story of survival” entailing discourses of balance, returning, and adaptation. The effects of brand propaganda on local press and the future of Chinese journalism are complicated by the interactions between individual journalists, local press markets, and the overall media-political environment.

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