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CATEGORIES:Lecture
DESCRIPTION:East Asia Program Lecture Series presents Translucent Atmospher
 ics: Media as Utility in China\n\nSpeaker: Angela Xiao Wu\, Associate Profe
 ssor in the Department of Media\, Culture\, and Communication\, New York Un
 iversity\n\nAbstract\nUtilities provide essential services like water\, ele
 ctricity\, railroads\, which societies strive to make affordable and widely
  accessible. As legacy media lose advertising revenue and “news deserts” pr
 oliferate\, proposals to treat journalism as a public utility have reemerge
 d. While liberal capitalist societies approach this idea through fragmented
  evidence and speculative hypotheticals\, China has long treated news as a 
 state-supplied\, nonproprietary good\, akin to earthquake alerts. Since 197
 8\, the state’s stubborn commitment to this utility model has interacted wi
 th China's social\, economic\, and technological transformations\, producin
 g surprising configurations of public finance\, intellectual property\, dis
 tribution politics\, journalistic forms\, and popular culture.\nIn this tal
 k\, I introduce my book-length research tracing the evolution of China’s ad
 ministration of the socialist press into its regulation of private digital 
 platforms. Reframing media history as utility history\, I disaggregate the 
 Chinese state into its lesser-studied roles—as lawmaker\, owner\, investor\
 , licensor\, thinly stretched administrator\, and purported guarantor of co
 llective welfare—beyond propaganda and censorship. This perspective sheds n
 ew light on post-reform Chinese governance and offers the utility system as
  a broader framework for thinking about our digital present: What happens t
 o public culture when it is governed through unified computing regimes?\n\n
 Bio\nAngela Xiao Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media\, 
 Culture\, and Communication at New York University. Her research sits at th
 e intersection of media and communication studies and science and technolog
 y studies (STS)\, with broader interests in the politics and infrastructure
 s of knowledge production. Her work spans critical data studies\, platform 
 studies\, the political economy of media\, political cultures\, and post/so
 cialism studies. Her book project has received support from the American Co
 uncil of Learned Societies (ACLS)\, the Henry Luce Foundation\, the Chiang 
 Ching-kuo Foundation\, the American Association of University Women (AAUW)\
 , and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
 \, among others.\n\nAbout East Asia Program\n\nAs Cornell’s hub for researc
 h\, teaching\, and engagement with East Asia\, the East Asia Program (EAP) 
 serves as a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemp
 orary East Asia. The program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty a
 nd numerous affiliated faculty\, graduate\, and undergraduate students from
  eight of Cornell’s 12 schools and colleges.
DTEND:20260227T223000Z
DTSTAMP:20260511T081042Z
DTSTART:20260227T213000Z
GEO:42.447296;-76.482254
LOCATION:Uris Hall\, G-08
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Translucent Atmospherics: Media as Utility in China
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_51992596867486
URL:https://events.cornell.edu/event/translucent-atmospherics-media-as-util
 ity-in-china
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