New Canada Research Chair monitors global communication

One of Simon Fraser University's newest Canada Research Chairs plans to develop a global media monitoring and analysis lab at SFU's school of communication. The lab would the first of its kind at a Canadian university. Yuezhi Zhao, an associate professor of communication, was appointed a Canada Research Chair in the political economy of global communication last September.

Zhao says one of the new lab's mandates will be to analyze similarities and differences in news coverage provided by such global satellite-TV networks as the CBC, CNN, BBC, Aljazeera and China Central Television. "We will explore various issues, including whether there is a convergence in style or ideology between television news from different regions," explains Chinese-born Zhao. She trained as a journalist in China and taught communication at the University of California, San Diego, from 1997 to 2000. Zhao is also a 1996 doctoral graduate of SFU's school of communication.

Zhao is writing a book, entitled Communication, Power, and Contestation in Globalizing China: When the Bottom Line is the Party Line. It is a sequel to her 1998 book, Media, Market, and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line. The second volume will examine communication and power in China over the past two decades and further analyze the complicated relationships between capitalism and democracy.

"The media system in China is even more commercialized than it is in Canada, yet it is still under tight party control. So it's not always the case that a free press follows commercialization." Zhao will look at whether China is following the market authoritarian communication policies of Singapore and Malaysia, which have become Asian leaders in multimedia technology while maintaining tight controls over it.

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Websites: SFU communications; www.sfu.ca/communication/people/faculty/zhao_y.html