%0 Journal Article
%T The politics of naming and ranking new media events in China
%A Shiwen Wu
%A Stephanie Na Liu
%J Communication and the Public
%@ 2057-0481
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/2057047318756409
%X Rankings of new media events function as an important way to define and interpret these events in public space. By analyzing 40 rankings of 413 new media events between 2007 and 2016, we first provide an empirical analysis of the widely discussed decline and substantial shifts of new media events around 2014, namely, the decrease of contentious events and the increase of consensus events. Second, we find that some of the actors construct the rankings based on their long-standing values and philosophies, such as commercial media¡¯s emphasis on progressivism and liberalism, and government propaganda departments¡¯ focus on social management and institutional order. The divergent constructions over the naming and ranking of new media events demonstrate that new media events have become sites of contestation over the dominance of the Internet space and the collective memory of the Internet history in China
%K New media events
%K politics of naming
%K ranking
%K sites of contestation
%K symbolic struggle
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2057047318756409