An International City of News: Shanghai as a Site of Competing Spheres of Foreign Influence

This project will explore the history of how British, French, American, German, and Soviet news suppliers competed to supply international news to Shanghai in the 1930s and during World War II. While researchers have explored Western provision of news, they have yet to understand these processes from the Chinese perspective. This project will examine newspapers in Chinese from Shanghai to understand how Chinese editors and journalists selected news and how Shanghai functioned as an international city of news. It will also try to find records about how editors and journalists chose to select and present certain types of international news. By putting the city of Shanghai at the centre of the research, this project pushes back against Western-centric notions of news. It creates connections between the research of the two supervisors: Professor Tworek has written about international news, while Professor Tang has focused on Chinese media. Finally, the project provides important methodologies for how researchers might explore contemporary media by looking at particular cities as sites of competition for international news.

Faculty Supervisor:

Heidi Tworek

Student:

Partner:

East China Normal University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: