Department of Informatics and Media

Master’s Programme in Social Sciences, Digital Media and Society specialization

Two-year Master’s Thesis

Exploring Media Panic Discourses: News Media Attitudes toward Digital Games in China

Student: Erchen Shi Supervisor: Peter Jakobsson

June 2021 i

Abstract

Previous research demonstrated the phenomenon of moral panics on “dangerous” games mostly from Western perspectives, regarding media violence and deviant behaviour. With the development of media technology, the term “media panic” has evolved from moral panic, representing the debates and fearful emotion from the public when a new media technology has been created. Digital games as a form of media technology have been developed to be widely played on various platforms in recent decades, which have not only brought concerns to the Western but also to Chinese society. The present study will introduce media panic on digital games in China by analyzing news reports from three Chinese mainstream news media: People’s Daily, Xinhua Daily Telegraph and Wen Wei Po (Shanghai). Content analysis will be adopted as the main method to process the news data (N = 445) which are collected from five periods between 2002 and 2020 (2002-2004, 2007-2009, 2012-2014, 2017-2019,

2020). Different phases and features of the panic will be analyzed through the classical moral panic theories of Cohen, Goode and Ben-Yehuda, and the media panic theory of Drotner.

Topics of game addiction, Internet cafes, policies on the game industry, cultural innovation, development of esports will be explored when investigating the changing media attitudes toward digital games in the Chinese context.

Keywords: digital games, game addiction, news media, moral panic, media panic, content analysis i

List of Figures

4.1 Figure 1 Sample data from three news media sources at different times (page 28) 6.1 Figure 2 The general trend of the code attitudes (page 52) 6.1 Figure 3 The percentage of different attitudes in People’s Daily (page 53) 6.1 Figure 4 The percentage of different attitudes in Xinhua Daily Telegraph (page 54) 6.1 Figure 5 The percentage of different attitudes in Wen Wei Po (page 55) 6.1 Figure 6 The percentage of code deviance, victims and cultural ideology (page 55) 6.1 Figure 7 The percentage of different categories within deviance (page 56) 6.1 Figure 8 The percentage of different categories within cultural ideology (page 58) 6.1 Figure 9 The percentage of different categories within interest group (page 58) iii

List of Tables

5.1 Table 1 News attitudes toward digital games 2002 - 2004 (page 34) 5.1 Table 2 Deviant behaviour reported by news media 2002 - 2004 (page 35) 5.1 Table 3 Interest groups participating in media panics 2002 - 2004 (page 36) 5.1 Table 4 News media’s cultural ideology of digital games 2002 - 2004 (page 36) 5.1 Table 5 Victims of digital games reported by the news media 2002 - 2004 (page 37) 5.2 Table 6 News attitudes toward digital games 2007 - 2009 (page 38) 5.2 Table 7 Deviant behaviour reported by news media 2007 - 2009 (page 38) 5.2 Table 8 Interest groups participating in media panics 2007 - 2009 (page 39) 5.2 Table 9 News media’s cultural ideology of digital games 2007 - 2009 (page 40) 5.2 Table 10 Victims of digital games reported by the news media 2007 - 2009 (page 40) 5.3 Table 11 News attitudes toward digital games 2012 - 2014 (page 41) 5.3 Table 12 Deviant behaviour reported by news media 2012 - 2014 (page 42) 5.3 Table 13 Interest groups participating in media panics 2012 - 2014 (page 43) 5.3 Table 14 News media’s cultural ideology of digital games 2012 - 2014 (page 43) 5.3 Table 15 Victims of digital games reported by the news media 2012 - 2014 (page 44) 5.4 Table 16 News attitudes toward digital games 2017 - 2019 (page 45) 5.4 Table 17 Deviant behaviour reported by news media 2017 - 2019 (page 46) 5.4 Table 18 Interest groups participating in media panics 2017 - 2019 (page 47) 5.4 Table 19 News media’s cultural ideology of digital games 2017 - 2019 (page 48) 5.4 Table 20 Victims of digital games reported by the news media 2017 - 2019 (page 48) 5.5 Table 21 News attitudes toward digital games 2020 (page 49) 5.5 Table 22 Deviant behaviour reported by news media 2020 (page 50) 5.5 Table 23 Interest groups participating in media panics 2020 (page 51) 5.5 Table 24 News media’s cultural ideology of digital games 2020 (page 51) 5.5 Table 25 Victims of digital games reported by the news media 2020 (page 52) Table of Contents

Abstract i List of Figures ii List of Tables iii Introduction 1 1.1 Background to Global Media Panics 1 1.2 Media Panics toward digital Games in Chinese Society 3 1.3 Aim and Research Questions 5 Literature Review 8 2.1 Media Violence and Aggression 8 2.2 Violent digital Games, School Shootings and Mass Media 9 2.3 Moral Panics, Media Panics and Mass Media 11 2.3.1 Moral Panics and the Media 11 2.3.2 Media Panics and the Media 12 2.4 “Dangerous” Digital Games in China 13 2.4.1 Fear of the Internet and Digital Games Addiction 13 2.4.2 Chinese Gaming Content in News Media 15 2.5 Research Gap and Contribution 16 Theoretical Framework 18 3.1 Elements of Moral Panics 18 3.2 Deviance and News Media 20 3.3 Models of Moral Panics 21 3.4 Cultural Significance in Media Panics 23 Methodology 26 4.1 Data Collection 26 4.2 Content Analysis and Implementations 28 4.3 Ethical Considerations 32 Data Analysis and Results 33 5.1 Starts of Controversy: 2002 - 2004 33 5.2 Media Panics Ongoing: 2007 - 2009 37 5.3 The Retreat: 2012 - 2014 41 5.4 Panics Coming Back: 2017-2019 44 5.5 2020: End of Panics? 48 Discussion 52 6.1 Findings and Contextualization 52 6.2 Limitations 61 Conclusion 62 Acknowledgement 63 References 64 Appendixes 72 Sample News Reportings Mentioned in the Thesis 72 Coding Sheet 77 1

1. Introduction

1.1 Background to Global Media Panics The discussion of moral panic, as well as the role of the media in moral panic, began with Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), which is a sociological masterpiece exploring the overreaction to Mods and Rockers during the 1960s in Britain. The concept of ‘moral panic’ is defined at the beginning of the research:

“A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible” (Cohen, 1972/2011: 1).

According to Cohen, the mass media devote a great deal of space to deviance, with the reporting of sensational crimes, scandals, bizarre happenings and strange goings-on (Cohen, 1972/2011: 10). Proponents of ‘moral panic’ as a theoretical concept have argued that the term is every bit as relevant to the contemporary media landscape as it was to the relatively unsophisticated reporting of the Mods and Rockers in the mid-1960s (Hunt, 1997: 644). Admittedly, moral panic has evolved and developed in recent decades, but its relationship with the mass media is in no danger of withering away. Today, with the penetration of digitalization in society, digital games as a relatively new component of cyberculture and media technology have not only become a well-researched topic in moral panics but also trigger a ‘media panic’ along with all the other emerging digital mediums and ICTs. Digital games have allegedly become one of the ‘threats’ to societal values and have been attracting emotional criticism for years, along with the development of information and media technology, playing its part in the new form of a public overreaction. The extent of “overreaction” in moral panics can be understood as mass media focuses on a non-existent problem, or paying much more attention to a specific condition (or time period) than others (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 158). 2

For many reasons, it is pervasive for the public to blame ‘dangerous’ games for causing violence or ill health, which sometimes could end up in a moral panic. For instance, the Columbine (Colorado) killings in 1999 were linked with the killers’ affection for violent digital games. Subsequent school shootings, both in the US (the Virginia Tech killings in 2007) and in Europe (Emsdetten, Germany, 2006; Jokela High School, Tuusula, Finland, 2007), were likewise linked to heavy use of violent games. More recently, in the event which many Norwegians refer to simply as “22 July,” Anders Behring Breivik killed 74 people and wounded 242 others, including 69 young people simply shot down on the island of Utøya. Breivik acknowledged playing games such as Modern Warfare 2 and World of Warcraft (WoW), in part as “training” (Ess, 2013: 215). News media that dutifully publicized negative aspects of violent digital games during the school shooting events had been considered playing its role in creating moral panics, because there was no causal link between violent games and school shootings and statistics showed that as violent digital games became more popular, “the violent crimes decreased dramatically” in some countries like Canada, Australia, EU and UK (Ferguson, 2008: 33). Also, although the notion of ‘game addiction’ lacks consensus, criticism and fears of ‘game addiction’ appear to be increasing in the context of digital games in recent years. Many governments already see the excessive, compulsive playing of online digital games, such as League of Legends (LoL) and WoW, as a serious adolescent public health issue and have established treatment facilities, notably in China and South Korea (Zastrow, 2017: 4268). Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially recognized gaming disorder in 2018 and defined gaming addiction as “a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour” so severe it “takes precedence over other life interests” (WHO. Int, n.d.). However, some people believe the worry about game addiction can be considered as “moral panic”, though the existence of game addiction might appear as a real thing in the public discourse, it is not “comparable to addiction to alcohol, methamphetamines, or gambling”, nor “the epidemic that some have made it out to be” (Markey & Ferguson, 2017: 196). And implementations in this way could lead to an increase in news content regarding potentially adverse effects of digital games, which may call for fear-supportive research, get reported by news media again and loop around to new treatment facilities, like a “moral panic wheel” (Ferguson, 2008: 31). These incidents potentially linked digital games to various dilemmas through mass media reporting, making digital games gain a more controversial reputation in the public sphere and raising moral panic towards the new media. Correspondingly, the representation of school shootings on television and in other news media have also contributed to the 3 construction of digital games as a ‘media panic’. The term ‘media panic’ may be different from the previous term ‘moral panic’; however, they are firmly related to each other, and media panic has its evolution in this hybridization. Similar to the description of ‘moral panic’, media panic happens whenever a new mass medium has entered society. The medium spurs public debates on social and cultural norms, debates that serve to reflect, negotiate and possibly revise these very norms (Drotner, 1999: 596). Looking back at the history of mass communication, print media expectedly offered the first examples of media panics. In the latter half of 18th century England, novel-reading as an early version of popular media culture brought moral media panic towards women readers (Vogorinčić, 2008: 103). As the centuries have progressed, new media have entered the social scene and triggered more highly emotional public debates, such as the anti-comics and anti-rock ‘n’ roll campaigns in the 1950s, anxiety over children watching television in the 1960s (1999: 609), fears about Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) spreading cults and the vulnerability in youths’ minds during the 1970s to the 1980s (Laycock, 2015: 56), then, most recently the fear of the Internet, computers, and digital games as mentioned above. As the new media have developed with increasing rapidity, more moral panics have transformed into media panics or have naturally been implicated with concern over the media. Since there has been a considerable expansion in the number and form of media along with more participants in the public debates, the role of news media should be paid more attention when studying the media panic phenomenon towards ‘dangerous’ digital games.

1.2 Media Panics toward Digital Games in Chinese Society As the background mentioned, media panics towards digital games have taken place globally, and yet the ingredients of these worries vary among different countries. The beginning of media panic on game addiction in China can be traced back to 16th June 2002, when a fire broke out in the Blue Speed illegal Internet cafe in Beijing and killed 25 youths who were engaged in an overnight Internet gaming session, in a event which is also described as “the Chinese Columbine” (Jenkins, 2006: 222). The fire was reportedly made by four minors who had been asked to leave the Internet cafe by the manager. This incident, though absolutely not the only cause of the moral panic, ended up with a “media frenzy” over the increasing problems of “black net bars” (黑网吧) (Szablewicz, 2010: 455). Many of these problems were frequently caused by the minors, because they could only get access to illegal Internet cafes. These places were usually equipped with “barred windows and locked doors” to keep young customers from the police (Szablewicz, 2010: 455). The government then seriously 4 reacted to this widely publicized tragedy with strict regulations on opening hours and age restrictions at the Internet cafe, such as the regulation of strengthening the management of Internet service place chains, and also issued several opinions of strengthening the ideological and moral construction of minors (State Council 国务院, 2004). Almost every year since 2005 the media has reported that ‘Internet-addicted teenagers’ played truant, indulged in Internet cafes, died suddenly, committed suicide, and even killed their relatives (Chen, 2015: 64). It is also ‘well-known’ that the Chinese mass media is often filled with tragedies caused by online game addiction, and many parents have no choice but to send their children to clinics or specialized training camps to cure their addiction to online games (Zhan, 2012: 188). Notoriously, in 2008, the central government channel CCTV-12 ran a series of glowing reports on a clinic in Shandong Province in eastern China that has used electric shocks on unanesthetized Internet addiction patients as part of what the clinic’s director, Yang Yongxin (杨永信), has called a “holy crusade” to cure the disorder (Stone, 2009: 1630). Mass media as influential top-down communication access before that time, indeed tend to honour him as a ‘hero’ to both the nation and those broken families ruined by digital games, instead of judging the phenomenon critically - whether the treatment principles behind are scientific or the ‘game addiction’ is just an excuse for the hopeless family education. However, after the astonishing event was shown on TV, it also brought numerous debates in the public sphere, which made the media panic towards digital games at the peak of controversy. Online games addiction among young people thus has become a social issue of concern in China that can not be ignored. The general public has called for measurements to save China’s 24 million “Internet-addicted teenagers” (China Youth Network Association 中 国青少年网络协会, 2010). Although WHO considered game addiction as a gaming disorder, it is worth mentioning that there is no firm definition of Internet addiction nor game addiction in global academic literature. The term ‘Internet addiction’ includes the aspects of Internet relationship addiction (commonly known as online dating), Internet sex addiction, and game addiction (Hui, 2002: 76). In fact, the problem of ‘game addiction’ is not a unique phenomenon that happens merely in Chinese society, but few other countries place the problem of the dubious addiction at a height that requires the joint intervention of the whole society (Chen, 2015: 65). As a consequence, Chinese mainstream media also play their roles in transmitting official and ‘correct’ news and opinions on the effect of digital games which are mainly in the context of education and health for the young generation. 5

With the development of the digital game industry in China and rethinking of the previous game addiction-related events, the proportion of neutral reports in People’s Daily (Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper) gradually became the highest, while negative reports dropped sharply since 2010 (Wei & Shule, 2018: 67). At the end of 2017, the world’s most popular competitive game LoL ushered in the seventh season of the global finals. Meanwhile, there was a peak number of Chinese audience watching the competition streaming which exceeded 100 million people. The Beijing National Stadium was utilized as the site for the final on the 4th of November, which brought together more than 40,000 players to watch the game. Media attitudes about this competition frequently requisitioned the most national symbols, which seems to potentially indicate the rising status of digital games in China (Wei & Shule, 2018: 58). Although the stereotype of digital games began to change, China has still carried out strict content control in digital games such as changing the blood colour from red to green in Tencent mobile version Unknown Player Battlegrounds (PUBG) in 2017; and most recently, barring minors from playing between 10 pm and 8 am and are allotted 90 minutes a day during the week in 2019 (The Guardian, n.d.). Currently, China has implemented numerous influential regulations on digital games regarding media ethics problems such as sex and violence, as well as the cause of game addiction. But the rising awareness of esports and increasing supportive policies on the game industry can also be found in the government actions. The fire incident, media panics, the game addiction, the rise of the game industry, are of interest to investigate as they may reveal points of tension in the way that China is dealing with the combined forces of modernization, westernization, and commercialization (Jenkins, 2006: 225). The complex tension, optimistically, can only be eased with a successful answer to how to cope with these internal and external forces. Media panics towards digital games in China seems like it suddenly occurred decades ago and is vanishing from the public’s sight after a blurry time point, it could be still ongoing in other forms.

1.3 Aim and Research Questions The thesis aims to explore the features of media panic toward digital games in China, through elaborating and analyzing news media content from 2002 to 2020, to investigate how these ‘folk devils’ look like and change over the past period. For the purposes of this research, ‘digital games’ comprises PC, consoles, television, arcade, mobile, web browser, virtual reality and streaming games since the term ‘digital games’ can be better distinguished from 6 the specific gaming genre. The Digital Games Research Association (DIGRA), one of the most well-known game research academic organizations, has also adopted “digital games” to describe various games in general (DiGRA, n.d.). Since the digital game as a relatively new medium that can constitute the discourse of media panic, it will be analyzed through basic sequences and characteristics in the moral panic and media panic frameworks, including Cohen’s (1972/2001) moral panic theory on deviance and mass media, which provides an analytical concept for capturing negative content regarding digital games especially on deviant behaviour. The framework also includes Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s (1995) moral panic elements (concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, volatility) and models (grassroots, elite-engineered, interest-group), which might help the study draw patterns of Chinese media panic since Chinese media panic might have its own features out of these theories. On the one hand, the five elements can provide classical definitions and criteria, such as what can be called a concern, how the agreement on panics can be made, how the panic can disappear. On the other hand, the theories of different models may be able to explain why a panic happened at a particular time on a particular event, and what kind of worldview or morality may hide behind the concern. This study will adopt the model of interest-group, as it is “the most widely used perspective on moral panics” (Goode &Ben-Yehuda, 1995: 165), and it will be a fairly objective perspective when the research does not know who is dictating the content, direction, or timing of the media panic. In addition, the study will also adopt Drotner’s (1999) theory on culture and media panics, in which she stressed analyzing media panic beyond focusing on the exact media. This allows the study to dig deep into the relationships between individuals (e.g. youth) and the development of socio-culture. The study will follow the fundamental steps and examine how these characteristics have been reflected since the panic “broke out”, and how do Chinese news media play both “instigator” and “purveyor”. Research materials will be gathered through collecting and organizing sources from three Chinese news media databases: People’s Daily, Xinhua Daily Telegraph and Wen Wei Po from five time periods: 2002-2004, 2007-2009, 2012-2014, 2017-2019 and the recent year 2020. The research will apply content analysis to code and analyze relevant reports, with the process of keyword search from the news media database and manual selection of the most relevant news reports as the final sample, to explore Chinese media panic patterns and characteristics at different times. In sum, the research questions are set to: 7

Research Question 1: Granted there are media panics in China, what are the features of Chinese media panic in different periods by analyzing Chinese news media content from 2002 to 2020? - 1a: How does the news media report digital games at different times in the aspect of deviance suggested by Cohen, and in the aspect of victims and cultural consequences suggested by Drotner? - 1b: Does Chinese media panic follow the five characteristics (concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, volatility) suggested by Goode and Ben-Yehuda during the whole time?

Research Question 2: What kind of interest groups are raising media panic concerns behind the changing cultural status of games in China? 8

2. Literature Review

The chapter outlines previous research on the topic of ‘dangerous’ digital games, in which the category varies from media violence and media panics to the specific Chinese gaming situation. Although many studies have been done on the negative attribute of games by Western scholars, many of them held perspectives in the field of behavioural science and psychology instead of media and communication. Literature in media panics on games is thus limited in quantity and variety, few studies focus on the role of mass media or cases in the global south. In short, existing research on digital games-related panics will be presented in different dimensions from both the global and Chinese aspects in this chapter.

2.1 Media Violence and Aggression Negative effects of long-time exposure to violent media had already raised concerns since 1946 when violent television programming emerged (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). With sufficient empirical research (Potter, 1999), U.S. Surgeon General in 1972 commented that televised violence indeed has an adverse effect on society members (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). One of the most often tested effects among the current research is described as learning to behave aggressively, which is also indicated the imitation of violence, the other negative effects are desensitization and fear (Potter, 1999). To draw attention to media violence, the term “violence” on screen was early defined by Schlesingers and Leeds University researchers, it had been categorised and was illustrated that the understanding of the term ‘media violence’ depends on the different moral codes which are brought by different audiences (Schlesingers, 1992; Morrison, 1999). However, after comparing with the overview of both scholarly and public definitions, there is a profound discrepancy between how social scientists interpret violence and how the public understands it (Potter, 1999). A broader definition thus is needed to gain a fuller comprehension of relative frequencies between media violence and aggression (Potter, 1999). Martin Baker and Julian Petley managed to introduce the media violence from the aspects of symbolic politics, children and media, digital games, regardless of the complexity in this research, while the research still needs more to be studied to have advanced knowledge of how media can impact particular groups under specific circumstances (Barker & Petley, 2002). 9

The analysis of media violence effects have been analyzed within both short term effects and long term effects by a number of scholars in the previous study (Potter, 1999; Sherry, 2001; Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Anderson, Donnerstein, Huesmann, Johnson, Linz, Malamuth & Wartella, 2003), and some analysis are focused on the dimension of the influences of digital games (Ferguson, San Miguel, Garza & Jerabeck, 2012; Bushman & Huesmann, 2014; Ferguson & Colwell, 2017). Media violence studies have been examined through quantitative methods such as meta-analysis (Sherry, 2001; Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Bushman & Huesmann, 2014), and qualitative methods such as interviews and ethnography (Hill, 20001; Turnbull, 2001; Bareither, 2020), as well as mix methods (Potter, 1999; Ferguson, San Miguel, Garza & Jerabeck, 2012). Different methods hold different perspectives on viewing phenomena. For instance, qualitative researchers are likely to focus on the cultural aspects of individuals in groups and the way they interpret messages (Potter, 1999). More recently, according to Bareither (2020), individuals’ particular ways of participating in playful virtual violence can enact a large range of emotional experiences, though the study of emotional experiences can never be completely representative with a limited ethnography method (Bareither, 2020). On the quantitative side, Sherry (2001) proved that media violence in violent video games has a smaller effect than in television programs (Sherry, 2001). Besides, Bushman and Huesmann (2014) suggested that there is a link between media violence and aggression, but exposure to media violence is a significant risk factor, but not the only risk factor for aggressive behaviour (Bushman & Huesmann, 2014). However, different views are held by different disciplines, it has been shown that media scholars innately hold more positive attitudes toward media itself and media effects overall, and viewing media influences more optimistically than other disciplines such as criminologists and psychologists (Ferguson & Colwell, 2017). To conclude, even though there has been decades in media violence research, debates on whether media violence is directly linked to aggression still have not achieved scholarly consensus.

2.2 Violent Digital Games, School Shootings and Mass Media As soon as the digital game named Doom was released in 1993, it became a target for critics. As one of the most popular first-person shooter (FPS) games, Doom gathered fears that such ‘dangerous’ games would teach children to kill. In the years after its release, Doom helped digital games grow into a multibillion-dollar industry, surpassing Hollywood box-office revenues and rousing public anxieties (Sternheimer, 2007). Then came the school shootings in Paducah, Kentucky (1997); Springfield, Oregon (1998) and Littleton, Colorado (1999). In 10 the above cases, media accounts stressed that these shooters loved playing Doom, which seems to have ‘verified’ the publics’ negative predictions about digital games. Early research of the relationship between school shootings and violent digital games explored the construction of moral panic in terms of school shootings, which consists of different interests from the media, the public and politicians. To illustrate, media are keen on portraying crimes in misleading discourses to threaten the public’s interest; as a result, the public looks to the politicians’ assistance; politicians then will take the chance to pass legislation and make announcements to have a “tough stance”; they also will use school shootings to derogate from other issues which are happening (Burns & Crawford, 1999). With updating research on the effects of playing violent digital games, Anderson (2004) found that previous research on violent digital games is fairly smaller than the research on violent television programmes and films, not only because digital games are a comparatively ‘recent’ field to be explored but also the government fundings for such research is little (Anderson, 2004). However, there is sufficient research on some of the unsettled questions. For example, meta-analytical reviews (systematic and quantitative analysis of multiple existing research on a specific topic) on the effects of violent digital games have been considerably found in the literature (Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Ferguson, 2007). Similar to the meta-analytical reviews on television, Anderson and Bushman (2001) again emphasized that violent digital games increase aggressive behaviour in children and young adults in their meta-analytic review of the digital-game research literature (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Contrastly, Ferguson designed another analysis to point out that the state of the extant literature has not been examined for publication bias yet, and concluded publication bias does exist for both experimental studies and non-experimental studies of aggressive behaviour (Ferguson, 2007; Ferguson, 2008). Besides, there are suggestions that researchers should pay more attention to the media studies since news reports of the shootings mainly focus on digital games and ignore the aspect of the audiences’ interpretation from media culture. For example, media scholars could have brought more to the public debates, to seek a better understanding of the role of digital games in daily lives more generally (Sternheimer, 2007). Fortunately, the pace of violent digital games research is increasing in numbers and qualities in recent years with the development of digital technology as well as media studies. Simon Lindgren (2011) looked beyond the panic about youth violence and new media, digged into the differences between participatory media discourses and traditional media discourses on panics, and gave the violence-related media panic phenomenon another thinking (Lindgren, 2011). He observed 11 user comments from Youtube school shooting videos where the audience played important roles in creating panic-related content, classified these content into different discursive themes (e.g. American high school culture, emotional reactions, societies and politics), and suggested that today’s media is no longer monolithic nor hegemonic - participatory media discourses could also continuously reflect the social reality of moral panics (Lindgren, 2011).

2.3 Moral Panics, Media Panics and Mass Media 2.3.1 Moral Panics and the Media As has been briefly mentioned in the thesis introduction, the thesis will refer to the previous study of moral panics as well as media panics. In the 1970s, the concept of ‘moral panics’ was first defined by Cohen Stanley in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Cohen, 1972/2011). After analyzing the case study of the Mods and Rockers phenomenon, he proposed a model of phases in typical moral panic: warning, threat, impact, inventory, rescue, remedy, recovery (Cohen, 1972/2011). Another definition and criteria of moral panics were given in the 1990s by Goode and Ben-Yehuda, they clarified three theories of moral panic (grassroots, interest-group, elite-engineered) and characterized moral panics into five elements: “concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994). Comparing these models, there are significant similarities and substantial differences of emphasis (Critcher, 2008). Two perspectives both agreed that moral panics can be an extreme result of social construction processes. They both considered moral panics as “recurrent features of modern society” and suggested the perceived sociological function of moral panics as reaffirming the core values of society (Critcher, 2008). However, they have different evaluations in the role of the media. Cohen considered that the media are strategic in the formation of moral panics, and stressed that much of his moral panic study is devoted to understanding the role of the mass media in creating moral panics and folk devils (Cohen, 1972/2011). Even the media are sometimes the prime movers and sometimes they are not, their support is essential. In Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s model, the role of media is much more passive. The arguments are conducted in and through the media but they serve mainly as a conduit for the views of others (Critcher, 2008). Regarding the role of mass media, McRobbie and Thornton (1995) revisited the moral panic concept and argued that the model of the moral panic is urgently in need of updating and revising precisely because actors involved might be aware of the mechanism and some commercial interests are aware that moral panics are good for marketing and promotion (McRobbie & Thornton, 1995). They suggested that old models of moral panics emphasized 12 the connection between the ‘media’ and ‘social control’, whereas nowadays, most political strategies are naturally media strategies (McRobbie & Thornton, 1995). Therefore, more attention should be paid to the new situation or form of mass media, and to the growing participants that may be involved in public debates. Although these classical theories have played powerful roles in sociology and communication research, there is also space for improvements. More recently, Falkof (2020) called for further developments such as broadening the analysis of moral panic that considers the global south (Falkof, 2020). Even though several scholars have discussed the ‘overuse’ of the term moral panic in media and political discourse in the UK, USA and Australia (McRobbie and Thornton, 1995; Altheide, 2009). And there is evidence that the idea of moral panic has no presence in the mass media in South Africa (Falkof, 2020). Besides, she also suggested considering the intersection of moral panics and digital media study, as well as centralising fear and anxiety in moral panic research (Falkof, 2020).

2.3.2 Media Panics and the Media Although some scholars slightly distinguish the concept ‘media panic’ with ‘moral panic’ (Drotner, 1999; Biltereyst, 2004; Vogorinčić, 2008), media panic is usually defined as a subcategory of moral panic in connection with the new media and slightly older media such as television, the Internet and digital games (Karlsen, 2014). Media panic has a much longer history since the mass media culture existed. Vogorinčić analyzed the novel-reading panics in the 18th century England, with the moral panic’s “five essential elements” designed by Goode and Ben-Yehuda (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994); and concluded these anti-novel reactions as not only moral panic but also media panic (Vogorinčić, 2008). She distinguished the role of media in the two ‘panic’: media panic refers to the case when the medium itself is causing concern with its usage and effects, while the media is inevitably also one of the crucial actors if not preconditions of every moral panic (Vogorinčić, 2008). Most famously, Kirsten Drotner analyzed the 18th-century popular-fiction panics, films, television and computer discourses from the dimensions of history, youth and culture. She suggested that every time a new mass medium has entered society, it brings public debates on ‘norms’, which will usually be reflected, negotiated and possibly revised through these debates. Debates of the new medium sometimes can lead to impassioned overreactions, this phenomenon which may be viewed as a “media panic” (Drotner, 1999). She mentioned Cohen’s moral panic concept, however, she suggested that Cohen largely limits his sources to press clippings, and it is difficult to measure to what extent other factors play a part in the 13 panics: it seems as if the press itself impacts the public opinion (Drotner, 1999). According to Drotner’s research, “media panics may say less about the media than about basic social and cultural dilemmas inherent in modernity”, unlike the moral panics research pattern: the media play a role of stirring up a wider debate over a specific social or moral issue (Drotner, 1999). In the latter research, media researcher Daniel Biltereyst (2004) studied reality television about the intense moral outcry and public criticism with qualitative research on how young people talk about and perceive various types of factual and reality television, including controversial material. He developed Drotner’s opinion on media panic and illustrated that ‘media panic’ mainly refers to the historical introduction of a new mass medium and the resulting strong public reactions, sometimes leading to a spiral of fear and sometimes regulation or censorship (Biltereyst, 2004). Within the context of digital games and media panics, Karlsen (2014) analyzed the history of game controversies, the general notion of games in society, and suggested the public has now become more familiar with the workings of moral and media panics (Karlsen, 2014). Notwithstanding, the phenomenon is still worth researching because the “public” here still refers to western society. As the moral panic section has mentioned above, not all the audience in developing countries are familiar with the concept of moral panic nor media panic, media panics going on in other regions of this world should not be ignored.

2.4 “Dangerous” Digital Games in China 2.4.1 Fear of the Internet and Digital Games Addiction Media panics towards digital games in the Chinese context mostly have been studied from the contemporary time period and basically relied on qualitative methods, in which scholars majorly considered the fire at Blue Speed Internet cafe in Beijing, 2002, as the base point of contemporary media panics in China (Jenkins, 2002; Golub & Lingley, 2008; Szablewicz, 2010). Jenkin (2002) firstly introduced the fire incident background during his stay in China and then explained the Chinese public’s fears towards youth culture and the Internet. In his article, youth Internet access has been a core focus of China’s emerging digital policy for some time (Jenkin, 2002). On the one hand, the government noticed the high-tech sector as central to China’s long-term economic growth, especially after joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. On the other hand, there has been a proliferation of anti-computer rhetoric, for parents worried about their kids addicted to staying out all night at the cyber cafes and falling behind in their studies. Since China is a country that places a high value on family and community, the Internet is perceived as socially isolating in its way. As a 14 consequence, the influence of Western “media trash” is feared not only by state authorities but also by members of the public (Jenkin, 2002). Concerning digital addiction, Golub and Lingley (2008) studied Chinese media panics by examing media reports and interviewing, to explore discourses about Internet addiction and digital game-related suicide in the Chinese context. According to their empirical study, Internet games are compared as the poison of opium in the Qing Dynasty by the Chinese public, named as the 21st century’s “electronic opium” and “spiritual opium” (Golub & Lingley, 2008). Like the Qing empire experienced morally ambivalent accommodation with globalization and modernity, so do people in contemporary China experience consumerist daily life and the increasing of ‘new’ information technologies as full of both risk and promise, thereby the digital addiction phenomenon should be treated as not only in the medical context but also in the sociocultural context with its co-produced (Golub & Lingley, 2008). Correspondingly, Szablewicz (2010) examined the panic over online games and Internet addiction through Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s moral panic theory and analyzed the aspects of government censorship, news and television programs, as well as the parents’ reactions in China. With further research on Chinese culture and history, she found that “the fears about youth and technology in China differ markedly from the common Western fears”, not only because China possesses its own moral culture but also online games are commonly compared to harmful “drugs” such as “opium for the spirit” - “a substance that to this day remains a source of national humiliation and a reminder of the legacy of colonialism” (Szablewicz, 2010). Interestingly, in Szablewicz’s later article From Addicts to Athletes: participation in the discursive construction of digital games in urban China (2011), the phenomenon of media panic towards digital games in China seemed to fade away softly along with the rising discourse of E-sports. Although “E-sports” is not a new term and it has garnered increasing attention from western games scholars (Rambusch, Jakobsson & Pargman, 2007; Hutchins, 2008; Jonasson & Thiborg, 2010), the distinct interpretation between E-sport and online gaming in the Chinese context (the term ‘E-sport’ has rather positive implication) brought the term a new implication. Based upon Szablewicz’s ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Shanghai and Beijing, she noticed that Chinese government and media tended to portray “E-sport” (电子竞技) differently from “digital games” (电子游戏) to guarantee the accuracy of words, “E-sport” was healthy while “digital games” were more likely unhealthy (Szablewicz, 2011). Consequently, Szablewicz found that youth who played esports spoke 15 what appears to be the language of ‘patriotic leisure’, considered their skill-building and self-control as official marks of the neoliberal ethos (Szablewicz, 2011).

2.4.2 Chinese Gaming Content in News Media This section moves from the fear of dangerous digital games in China to the analysis of news media content on Chinese gaming. As the previous research depicted above, E-sports plays a significant role in changing the Chinese public’s attitudes in the digital games-related media panic. In recent years, there have been more specific studies on the constantly changing media discourses from both the West and China about Chinese gaming (Wirman, 2016; Wei & Shule, 2018). Hanna Wirman (2016) focused on Western news coverage about Chinese gaming, conducted Foucauldian discourse analysis to examine the major Western media frameworks and contextualized them within the theoretical viewpoint of orientalism (Wirman, 2016). The empirical material consists of 853 newspaper and online news articles which included content of digital gaming or game development in China in the years from 1999 to 2018, including newspapers such as The Diplomat, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, Daily Mail, USA Today, and The Washington Post (Wirman, 2016). The research displayed Chinese gamer community and player representations in Western news coverage varied from addicted players and their treatment centres to highly professional player teams (Wirman, 2016). She roughly divided three phases regarding Chinese gaming news: the first phase is 1999 to 2005 when China’s emerging games market was most prominently featured; the second phase is 2006 to 2011 that the media covers many stories on extreme and abnormal play behaviour in China; the third phase is more recent, with a discourse of various business opportunities and stabilizing markets has been reported by Western mass media (Wirman, 2016). In the Chinese media context, Wei and Shule (2018) collected 1718 news articles about digital games in total from People’s Daily between 1981 to 2017, combined with the theoretical perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), from the aspects of the text, discourse and social culture. The study tried to explain how Chinese mainstream news media such as People’s Daily reports and constructs the image of digital games and traced numbers, keywords and attitudes of all reports. It analyzed six frameworks in the discourse of such journalism (e.g. “endangering the youth”, “industrial economy”, “new way of entertainment”, “information technology”, “public security management” and “E-Sports”) and discussed the interaction between the reports and the social-cultural practices in different historical phases, 16 as well as explored the ideology transform beyond the change of the game-related media discourse (Wei & Shule, 2018). The research explored the Chinese news coverage around Chinese gaming and presented four phases of such journalism. To illustrate, the first phase is from 1981 to 1988: digital games were mostly regarded as a new cultural leisure activity; the second phase is from 1989 to 2001: the first negative report of digital gaming occurred, news media awareness of digital games could be used for gambling and endanger individuals and society; the third phase is from 2002 to 2008: though regulations were implemented on net bars, digital games triggered moral panics and were accused of “addicting” by the mass media; the most recent phase started from 2009 to 2017: although reports on “online gaming” occupied the majority, content on “E-sports” and “mobile games” increased significantly in this period. Neutrality became the mainstream attitude towards digital games, while negative reports seldom occurred (Wei & Shule, 2018).

2.5 Research Gap and Contribution To conclude, there seem to be some limits in the previous research in both media panic-related studies and journalism analysis in the Chinese gaming context. On the one hand, as the literature demonstrated (Karlsen, 2014; Falkof, 2020), neither the sign of ‘moral panic’ nor ‘media panic’ has been investigated among global south countries. China, often mentioned as a powerful society aligned with the global south countries (Dirlik, 2007), its concern on digital games has barely been investigated as “moral panic” or “media panic” by previous studies particularly from the perspective of Chinese journalism, which indicates the phenomenon of moral panics in the global south may still be a new area that can be explored. Although previous studies have shown the discourse of moral panics or media panics in Western media, this study suggested that Chinese media might not have a pre-existing phenomenon in overusing the concept of ‘panic’ and little research has been found on the news topic of digital games. Additionally, in the Chinese gaming context, though Internet addiction (including game addiction) in China has been labelled a ‘moral panic’ by various scholars, few have studied the characteristics from a moral panic nor media panic theory framework. Alternatively, the research gap can also be found in previous research that studies on moral panics towards digital games in the Western context are more concentrated on the ‘school shooting’ or ‘media violence’ (Burns & Crawford, 1999; Anderson, 2004; Sternheimer, 2007; Lindgren, 2011), whereas the digital game-related panic in Chinese research revolves around the topic of ‘Internet addiction’ and ‘game addiction’ are less 17 studied (Golub & Lingley, 2008; Szablewicz, 2010). Besides, even though some scholars have studied the changing Chinese gaming situation through ethnography, interviews and the analysis of news media discourse (Szablewicz, 2010; Wirman, 2016; Wei & Shule, 2018), little empirical research has been done to the comprehensive content analysis of Chinese newspapers. Out of the Western context of moral panics, contributions thus will be made by grant there are media panics toward digital games in China, and examining the moral panic features from Chinese news media content over the recent two decades. The study will adopt the method of content analysis to explore features of media panics in journalism discourses at different times through the prism of panic theories, endowing the concept of “media panic” with new national contexts and new socio-cultural interpretations. 18

3. Theoretical Framework

Since the definition of moral panic has been introduced in the previous chapters, this chapter will mainly introduce Cohen’s (2001) work on deviance in moral panics; Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s (1994) criteria and theory of moral panics; as well as Drotner’s (1999) culture-centric thinking in media panics. The thesis will shed light on the discourse of ‘panic’ towards digital games, and theories thus can be adopted to provide an advanced understanding of how different moral panic phases are identified and developed in the news media when the public consider these games as a ‘threat’ or ‘concern’, as well as why the panic evolves in this way by analyzing the role of the news media.

3.1 Elements of Moral Panics Goode and Ben-Yehuda developed Cohen’s explanation on deviants and characterized the concept of moral panic in five elements: “concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 156-158), and these elements also reflect different stages in a moral panic. First, moral panic starts with the concern (i): there will be a significant concern (e.g. media reporting, social movement activity) for a specific group which will affect the rest of the public. For instance, the concern in the case of Chinese media panics on digital games might be the news media reports on the fire that broke out in the Internet-cafe, in the year 2002. Second, group members who participate in dangerous behaviour will cause increasing hostility (ii) to the social values, for their behaviour is considered detrimental to the norms and interests of the public. The concept of hostility here is quite similar to the concept of deviance, which implies this ‘dangerous behaviour’ is labelled and created by the society’s information that is delivered by the mass media. In the thesis, ‘game-addicted youth’ and ‘game addiction’ related news reportings will be considered as the representation of hostility. Then comes the consensus (iii), a specific agreement in the society that indicates the danger is severe, existing, because of the behaviour of these dangerous group members. Such emotion will be spread widely, though people who perceive this way need not make up the majority. And the news media plays its role in spreading this consensus. For example, about the issue of whether ‘game addiction’ is actually an addiction, or whether the media violence in digital games really matters, though different regions hold different views, there are 19 official agreements. In the Chinese media panic case, before 2009, many parents sent their children to Linyi mental hospital to cure their ‘Internet addiction’ and ‘game addiction’, for they believed in this hospital and the psychiatrist Yongxin Yang. Their belief on playing digital games for a long time is dangerous and is a kind of addiction, and can be understood as a ‘consensus’ on digital games. This consensus was most famously spread by the mainstream Chinese media CCTV-12 (law and society channel) document War of Internet: who turns genius into a monster (《战魔网：谁把天才变成了魔兽》) in 2008 July, in which the document introduced Yongxin Yang and his experience in a tone of praise, also depicted the game WoW as an extremely violent game and deliberately highlighted the connection between Internet addiction and WoW(CCTV-12, n.d.). In September, CCTV-10 (science and education channel) released a video Expert in Treating Internet Addiction, Yongxin Yang (《网 瘾治疗专家 杨永信》) about Yongxin Yang, mainly introducing his “efforts” and “hard works” in researching and helping Internet-addicted and game-addicted youth recover (Tv.cctv, n.d.). Disproportionality (iv) thus can be seen in the moral panic when the concern is fairly larger than the danger itself (e.g. the fear of digital games on news media outweighs the content of digital games). Finally, there will be volatility (v). Moral panic usually disappears in a sudden, but it can reappear now and then and might be hidden for a long time, and suddenly subside in the end. Some moral panics may be regularized or institutionalized, while others may thoroughly disappear. After the moral panic, society’s culture and social structure will remain the same as before. According to Tencent News, the “Digital-Detoxification Center” (“网戒中心”) published a set of statistics on the official homepage of its tenth anniversary. After 2009, the number of admissions at the centre dramatically decreased, while not until 2012, the number rose steadily till 2015 (News.qq, n.d.). Meanwhile, numerous news has begun criticizing Yongxin Yang after 2009 and also reached another peak in 2016 when an article (now is unfound) was posted on social media Yongxin Yang, A Devil Unconvicted (《杨永信，一个恶魔还逍遥法外》), triggered a new round of public debates focusing on family relationships. So far, it is hard to define whether the panic on digital games has thoroughly disappeared since it can reappear sometimes in today’s Chinese society. In general, the news media plays its role among these characteristics of moral panics, Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s criteria of moral panics provide stages as well as elements to be adopted as the references of the discussion section’s framework. Notwithstanding, if media panic will follow these phases depending on the Chinese situation, the results will be 20 analyzed through the integrated codes and categories, in order to find out the outlines of Chinese media panic phases from the chosen periods of Chinese news media content.

3.2 Deviance and News Media Deviance here means someone’s behaviour is deviant. About the concept of deviance, there is a canonical explanation by Becker: “Deviance is created by society. Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and by applying those rules to particular persons and labelling them as outsiders. The deviant is one to whom the label has successfully been applied; deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label” (Becker, 1963: 6). Cohen later combined the research of deviance with moral panics, he suggested that the key dimension for understanding the public’s reaction and agents of social control to deviance, “is the nature of the information that is received about the behaviour in question” (Cohen, 2001: 9). However, he indicated that the body of information (in which deviance is built) is always received as second-handed in industrial societies. It represents that such information has already been processed and extracted by the mass media. Therefore, Cohen considered that the mass media “devotes a great deal of space to deviance: sensational crimes, scandals, bizarre happenings and strange goings-on” and such news is indeed the main source of information about a society’s moral boundaries and normative outlines (Cohen, 2001: 10). According to Cohen, mass media thus plays its crucial role in deviation amplification and creating moral panics (folk devils). As the thesis mentioned in the previous chapters, media panics in Chinese society are mainly about game addiction. Following Becker’s opinion, ‘digital game addiction’ is indeed a sign of deviance, and the term ‘game-addicted youth’ is indeed a label created for deviants. It thus can be seen that the panic on game addiction is something that should be studied from the external side. With a further understanding of Cohen’s perspective, in today’s (post) industrial society, the digital game-related panic should be studied from the mass media - the news media in order to figure out ‘the nature of the information’ - how deviance is built and how the moral panic is created. This thesis will be devoted to exploring the Chinese media panic discourse related to digital games, and the deviance in news media put forward by Cohen will be an important code to conduct content analysis. Because deviance in this study’s context is about deviant behaviour, the categories thus can be divided into “criminal activities”, “addiction”, “not participating in family interactions”, “defying parents”, which are common deviance labels from the news. The code, along with other codes in this study, is created deductively before the analysis and relies on moral panic and media panic theories. 21

But the categories within each code are created inductively depending on the content of research material.

3.3 Models of Moral Panics Cohen implied that moral panics originated in the media, he suggested that there are factors like stereotypes in communication, journalists’ intuitive prediction of what constitutes a ‘good story’, absence of alternative news, which lead the media to make a certain event into the news (Cohen, 2001: 42). To fill the gaps in Cohen’s interpretation of the term, particularly, to explain ‘where moral panics originated and why they occurred when they did’ (Hunt, 1997: 634), Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) came up with two dimensions: “morality vs interests” dimension and “elitism vs grassroots” dimension, to classify theories in moral panics. Their model of moral panic was designed. Although several hypothetical models were resulting from the combination of Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s two dimensions, they only presented three of the models in details: the grassroots theory, the elite-engineered theory and the interest-group theory, which are considered as academically meaningful (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 161-166). This section will introduce these three models to illustrate why there are specific concerns from specific groups on specific behaviours, and why the research will adopt interest-group theory as a perspective to further analyze what kind of actors are spreading the media panic narratives in China.

Grassroots Model On the one hand, the grassroots theory believes that moral panics are generated from the general public (no specific group is needed to generate the public concern that breaks out at a specific time about a specific problem), and meanwhile, concerns about the threat or danger are widespread. On the other hand, though ‘politicians and the media cannot fabricate concern where none existed initially’ (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 161), there is no evidence that public emotions are sufficient enough to create a panic by themselves. Moral panic emotions necessitate means (e.g. mass media, political speeches, movement groups) to amplify the potential fear or concern into common consciousness since the concern might need to be catalyzed, directed or triggered. However, according to Arnold Hunt (1997), several scholars are sceptical about the theory, for they considered it is transferred and constructed higher up in the chain of communication (Hunt, 1997: 636).

Elite-engineered Model 22

The elite-engineered theory argues that ‘a small and powerful group or set of groups deliberately and consciously undertakes a campaign to generate and sustain fear, concern, and panic’ to the public over a problem which they know would not be damaging to the whole society (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 164). To identify the role of mass media under the ‘top-down’ situation, in Policing the Crisis (1978), Stuart Hall and his co-authors partly agreed with Cohen’s perspectives on moral panics, also believed ‘the mass media are not the only, but they are among the most powerful forces in the shaping of public consciousness’ (Hall et al. 1978: 220). They argued that moral panics about law and order usually generated from statements by members of the police and the judiciary, which were amplified by the media afterwards - the media does not ‘create’ the news so much as reproduce and maintain the dominant interpretations of it, consciously or not, the media thus can be considered as an instrument of state control (Hunt, 1997: 634).

Interest-group Model According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994), interest-group theory is the most widely used model on moral panics. From the interest group’s viewpoint, various pieces of the society (e.g. police departments, the media, religious groups, educational institutions, social organizations) may play a part in putting forward an issue that does not belong to the elite’s interests. As interest-groups play an independent role in ‘generating and sustaining moral panics’, Goode and Ben-Yehuda suggested that interest-groups themselves are ‘active movers and shakers of the moral panics, while elites do not dictate or direct the content of panics in this model. (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 165). Hunt also allocated Cohen’s several opinions under the interest-group category, such as the idea that every moral panic has its scapegoat, as well as the core argument that moral panics are generated by the media, or by particular ‘interest groups’ using the media to publicize their concerns (Hunt, 1997: 631).

However, it is difficult to directly apply the elite-engineered model through the analysis of newspaper content, for the research will not analyze specific policies or regulations and this information could not be covered thoroughly by the news. In the same way, the news media can not represent the opinions of “grassroots”, for the sample data consists of journalistic reportings rather than public debates or comments. The collected data also does not present the incidence of digital game-related cases in the country as a whole during these periods because it is possible that cases of digital game-related debates might not have been reported in the news media. Therefore, the interest-group theory will be adopted as 23 the main perspective to analyze the media panic, as the news content contains various opinions from the whole society. To apply the theory, ‘interest-group’ will be adopted as a code in the further content analysis, which consists of categories of “school”, “scholar”, “government”, etc. Collected news media items will be compared to the actors of each of the above-mentioned categories to see how frequently they appeared and to be able to discuss how these groups play their roles in the media panic.

3.4 Cultural Significance in Media Panics While comparing the theories of moral panics, few studies contribute to building a relatively firm model in order to theorize media panics, Drotner’s interpretation thus will be adopted since it has the most profound impact in media panics research. Although it has been suggested that some scholars accept the term ‘media panics’ as a subcategory or a continuation of ‘moral panics’, the study would like to differentiate these two concepts as two theoretical frameworks. According to Drotner’s definition of moral panics, the media is “both instigator and purveyor of the panic discussion” (Drotner, 1999: 596). The discussion is usually emotional and morally polarised (e.g. the medium has either “positive” or “negative” effects), but the negative pole can be more obvious. Besides, the panic discussion is an “adult discussion” on young people, and the participants (e.g. teachers and scholars) “often have professional stakes in the subject under discussion” (Drotner, 1999: 596). As the classic panic narratives, the discussion on media panics has its own phases which are in a brief sequence: a beginning (i) that usually “catapulted by a single case”; a peak (ii) involving “public or professional intervention” and an end or fading-out phase (iii) showing “a seeming resolution to the perceived problems in question” (Drotner, 1999: 596). The thesis decided to combine Goode and Ben-Yehuda moral panic elements and Drotner’s basic concept of media panic phases to figure out the different media panic characteristics and different panic stages. Crucially, the central questions of media panics are about cultural significance: “cultural quality, personal development and social change under the rubric of character formation” (Drotner, 1999: 618). To understand the public’s discourse on media panics, she made three assumptions from public debates which may try to explain how central issues can be found in these socio-cultural dimensions (Drotner, 1999: 610-612). The first assumption is related to culture (i). Unlike books and serious newspapers, Drotner considered ‘media’ (the distinction between paper-based medium and media might be out of date, ‘media’ here can be understood as ‘non-serious’ digital media) as part of popular culture, which is perceived in opposition to high culture or art. As a result, there may be an opposition between people 24 based on their different reception preferences and the cultural hierarchy based on the differences of production imperceptibly leading to “a social and psychological distinction in usage” (Drotner, 1999: 611). For instance, digital games tend to be perceived as western popular culture in Chinese society, so that they are sometimes described as modern “opium” by the public (western countries brought opium to the Qing empire). The second general assumption deals with social psychology (ii): most producers of media panics over-simplify concepts that might be implied in cultural interpretation. Within this assumption, media experience is directly linked to social action, for example, if youth see violence on the screen, they will become young criminals. Also, if youth spend time playing digital games, they will become game addicts. The last assumption deals with the relation between culture and social psychology (iii). Drotner argued that children and young people are always defined as “objects”, and often “vulnerable victims”, in the media panics (Drotner, 1999: 611). According to this assumption, cultural development and human development are different sides of the same coin, and children’s cultural edification constitutes their “social elevation”. Thus, their culture must be guarded and protected, for it is essential to their mental health. From a historical perspective, this synthesis development is shaped by the fundamental importance played by general character formation in the development of modernity (Drotner, 1999: 612). The dimension of cultural significance in media panic can also be found in the Chinese context, Wei and Shule (2018) explored the change of “ideology” beyond the change of the game reports discourse. According to their research, digital games were not regarded as a means of culture or entertainment exclusively for young people in China in the 1980s. Instead, digital games were embedded in the propositions such as “creating the culture of the public”. Like “Workers’ Cultural Palace” and “Workers’ Club” of that era, digital games possessed the composition of public culture: public equipment, places, behaviour, and their functions were directed towards production and labour. However, in the 1990s, when the collectivist utopian “Workers’ Cultural Palace” began to be divided and rented out to privately contracted cinemas and dance halls, video arcades had also become self-employed entertainment businesses in the Chinese market economy. The opinion that young people are poisoned by games has become popular, metaphors such as “electronic heroin” occurred at this time. This phenomenon also pointed to the production and labour: young people are the future labourers of the country, yet digital games may affect their studies, harm physical and mental health, and corrupt morals; which implied labour reproduction and social order are threatened by digital games (Wei & Shule, 2018: 76). 25

After entering the new millennium, online games started taking the place of video arcades and home game consoles had become the most common form of digital games in Chinese society. The triplet’s concept “Internet cafes - online games - Internet addiction” is inseparable from “electronic heroin” in the construction of media reports. The drug’s (metaphor) pleasure, addicting and poisoning characteristics are transplanted onto digital games (ontology) by metaphorical rhetoric. At the same time, digital games also linked multiple images such as the humiliation of the Opium War, the popularity of online games imported from abroad, and some harmful content of foreign culture on the Internet; giving itself another symbolic meaning of “imperialist powers” and “cultural invasion” (Wei & Shule, 2018: 76). Therefore, to combine Drotner’s culture-centric media panic theory with Wei and Shule’s study on Chinese digital games, the study will consider “culture” as a significant angle to explore the features of Chinese media panic over the last twenty years. Correspondingly, “cultural ideology” will be another code to analyze and dig into in the further analysis, “foreign countries” and “China” will be adopted as different categories to explore the relationship between media panics and cultural ideology, and to find out how does Chinese society deal with the threat of digital games at different periods. 26

4. Methodology

The chosen method for this thesis is content analysis, as it conforms to the principles of objectivity - pursuing on the basis of explicit rules; systematic - inclusion or exclusion of content is done according to consistently applied rules; generalizability - the results obtained by the researcher can be applied to other similar situations (Prasad, 2008: 3), in order to scientifically study the content of the communication. In the thesis’s context, news media as a component of mass communication, presents a variety of facts of public attitudes, panics, policies, propagandas when reporting digital games-related news. Therefore, to interpret media panics from the Chinese news media content on digital games, this chapter will first present the selection of empirical materials and then introduce the implementation of the content analysis method, as well as its strengths and shortcomings in this research.

4.1 Data Collection A purposive selection of Chinese news media consists of People’s Daily, Xinhua Daily Telegraph and Wen Wei Po (Shanghai), the former two belong to central-level news media, and the latter belongs to local-level news media. People’s Daily is the largest newspaper group in China and meanwhile is an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party targeting the general public (En.people, n.d.). According to Wei and Shule (2018), People’s Daily as an official newspaper of the CCP and also a national mainstream media is regarded as a weather vane of Chinese politics. It has a huge influence on the formulation and implementation of public opinion, media agenda and even policies and regulations (Wei & Shule, 2018: 61). Therefore, it provides official opinions and mainstream views on digital games in Chinese society, which is suitable for analyzing the features and attitudes of Chinese mainstream news media gaming reports for decades. Xinhua Daily Telegraph is a daily newspaper published by Xinhua News Agency (Xinhua is the biggest and most influential media organization in China, as well as the largest news agency), which selects and compiles top-notch new media manuscripts from all lines and news departments of Xinhua News Agency (Xinhuanet, n.d.). The reason to choose Xinhua Daily Telegraph as one of the sources is that it is well-known for its broadcast and television industry, in which the newspaper can provide comprehensive content on digital games with its advantages in Chinese mainstream mass media and communication. Wen Wei Po (Shanghai) is an integrated local newspaper published by Shanghai United Media Group (SUMG), with the aim audience of intellectuals, focusing on reporting culture and 27 humanities-related content (The Paper, n.d.). Thus, Wen Wei Po is chosen for its culture-centric reporting on digital games-related questions and issues. Due to historical reasons, there are two different versions of Wen Wei Po in Shanghai and Hong Kong, but they share the same header. To avoid the misunderstanding of twofold interpretations, clarification is made here that the Wen Wei Po selected in the thesis is the Shanghai version. The study considers the fire that broke out at an illegal Internet cafe in 2002 as a significant incident that impacts Chinese society’s concerns on Internet cafes and youth’s behaviour in the aspects of Internet and digital games. To cover the beginning of the media panic, the process of Chinese media panic’s “turning point” around 2009, and the recent media panic situation; newspapers are surveyed from the following years since 2002 with three-year intervals, which are 2002-2004, 2007-2009, 2012-2014, 2017-2019 and 2020. The single year 2020 is chosen because it is the most recent year to have full-year’s data access to the news media content, which will help the study to grasp the current media panic circumstances. Full text searching the keyword “games”(游戏) in the database of three news media, except the data for Xinhua Daily Telegraph between 2017-2019 is missing (no access to the year 2017 and 2018 from the database website), 7040 reportings are listed in total. With a further selection, 445 news items are manually collected with the criteria that content directly correlates with the “digital games” context of this study. To elaborate, subjects on digital game software and hardware, gaming places, game-related behaviour, gamers, impacts of digital games, gaming culture, game industry, in-game currencies, relevant policies are considered as related content; subjects on games as physical sports, children activities, political warfare, and pure text occur in random contexts are excluded. The 445 collected items will be adopted as the target sample data since the research tends to focus on the direct correlation between news content and digital games. 28

(Figure 1 Sample data from three news media sources at different times)

4.2 Content Analysis and Implementations According to Prasad (2008), content presents what is contained and content analysis is the analysis of what is contained in a message. Various definitions of content analysis are made by previous scholars (Berelson, 1952; Holsti, 1968; Weber, 1985; Krippendorff, 1989). For instance, Berelson (1952) considered content analysis as a research method for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication; and Krippendorff (1989) defined content analysis as a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context. Prasad (2008) examined previous definitions and proposed that content analysis is all about making valid, replicable and objective inferences about the message based on explicit rules. Therefore, the method basically possesses the characteristics of objectivity, category, generalizability, and consequence to cope with quantitative and qualitative data. Prasad (2008) adopted Berelson’s (1952) comprehensive table of the different applications of content analysis, which indicated how the method is used in describing the characteristic of content, making inferences about the causes of content and making inferences about the effect of content (Prasad, 2008: 4). In the aspect of content description, the table showed the content analysis method is able to solve research questions on describing trends in communication content, analyzing style, relating known characteristics of the audience to messages produced for them. The empirical data of the study consists of the 29 communication content - Chinese news media reportings from three sources. Intending to explore Chinese media panic trends and stages in this thesis, the content analysis method thus helps analyze news media attitudes and provides a comprehensive image of how the news message is produced on specific issues for the public. In the aspect of content inferences, Berelson’s table showed the method can also be adopted to answer research questions on making inferences about the causes of content, analyzing psychological traits of individuals and inferring dimensions of culture and cultural change. This means the method is suitable for the study as the research questions pursue to find out central issues on Chinese digital games regarding Drotner’s assumptions on individuals, society and culture. Lastly, in the aspect of making inferences about the content impact, the method enables researchers to analyze the flow of information and assess responses to communication; which implies the method fits the study with a flow of news data over a decade and will be able to conduct analysis and assessment on the findings. Besides, Elo and Kyngas (2008) addressed that the content analysis method can be classified into the inductive approach and deductive approach. Application of the former one is recommended when there is no previous research discussing the phenomenon or when knowledge is fragmented, and the process consists of open coding, creating categories and abstraction; whereas the deductive approach of content analysis is helpful when the research aim is to test an earlier theory in a different situation or to compare categories at different time periods (Elo & Kyngas, 2008: 113). For this research, the deductive approach will be applied since the moral panic theory and media panic theory have guided the direction of the coding process (codes thus will be created before the analysis), and there are five different time periods to be analyzed in general. Nevertheless, there are some critics about the content analysis method (Hoskins & Mariano, 2004; Polit & Beck 2004), such as the method does not directly show causal connections between variables under study, and the results depend on researchers’ style, skills, insights and analytical abilities. To handle such limitations, the study will stick to the research questions when deciding what kind of variations are necessary and appropriate for the analysis. In order to start the content analysis process, the study would like to follow Elo and Kyngas (2008) deductive approach framework, which begin with selecting units of analysis, develop a structured analysis matrix, and then deal with data coding according to categories to get the final results (Elo & Kyngas, 2008: 110). According to Prasad (2008), the unit of content analysis can be measured in terms of space, such as the number of column inches; or time, such as minutes devoted to a news item on the television (Prasad, 2008: 14). This study 30 will choose the 445 news media items from three sources the People’s Daily, the Xinhua Daily Telegraph and the Wen Wei Po as analysis units, as they can be measured from both “space” (number of reportings) and “time” (each time period), and meanwhile, they also present the facts in a relatively objective way. Moving to the coding process, the deductive approach will be applied and the coding process will draw on theoretical frameworks of panic studies as well as the Chinese context instead of inductive open-coding from the whole data, in order to guarantee the process will be both conceptually and empirically grounded. Therefore, the study will develop a categorization matrix, which consists of five general codes: attitudes, deviance, interest groups, cultural ideology, victims. The first code attitudes is the most general one, referring to the news reports attitudes toward digital games, gaming places, gaming behaviour and gamers. The code is divided into categories in “positive”, “neutral” and “negative”. The following codes are based on the theoretical frameworks, for instance, the second code deviance references Cohen’s moral panic theory and the news media database, which implies deviant behaviour labelled by the news media in terms of digital games, including categories in “game addiction”, “family interaction”, “committing crimes” and “suicide”. The category of “family interaction” refers to digital games as media affecting normal family communications, which contain subcategories such as not participating in family interactions, defying parents, and others. The category “crimes” refers to both online and offline criminal activities caused by the motivation of playing games, which includes subcategories of gambling, blackmail, stealing, violence, drugs, and others that are not mentioned in detail. To be specific, there may be cases that involve both categories of “game addiction” and “crimes”, the study will focus on the main theme of the news, which means if the crime is the most stressed point, the study will code the unit as “crimes” instead of others. In the same way, the third code interest groups relies on Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s moral panic models and refer to the perspective that the media panic phenomenon may be produced and impacted by various groups from the society. The code is divided into “parents”, “scholars”, “schools”, “companies” and “government”, which covers the basic components of the society from bottom to the top. Since the category “government” may appear rather broad to grasp, it is divided into subcategories of politicians and agencies. There is also a subcategory named ‘general government’, which means the government is not specifically distinguished, including the local government and the national government. The last two codes are derived from Drotner’s media panic theory regarding youth, socio-culture and previous studies on news discourses of Chinese digital games. The fourth 31 code cultural ideology refers to the way Chinese media depicted the symbolic cultural-significance of digital games, which includes categories of digital games as “e-heroine”, “cultural invasion”, “innovation of traditional Chinese culture”, “Chinese culture goes abroad” and “e-sports; to identify how cultural ideology is changing and playing a significant role in the media panic over the last two decades. The category “e-heroine” refers to the news content that describe digital games as e-heroine, spiritual opium and any other forms of digital “drugs”. The category “cultural invasion” refers to the worries that imply Chinese digital games can be invaded by foreign culture, and also the invasion of foreign games. The category “innovation of traditional Chinese culture” refers to the news that focuses on traditional Chinese culture-based digital games, such as the combination of traditional Chinese culture with roles setting, music and storyline in games. The category “Chinese culture goes abroad” refers to the news content about Chinese games becoming international and are popular in the global game market. The category “e-sports” refers to the cultural ideology that no longer considers digital games as “e-heroine”, instead, digital games are considered as a sport which turns “addicted” gamers into athletes, benefit Chinese cultural industry, enable China to strengthen its international digital-culture influences. The fifth code victims refer to the individuals that are reported as physically and mentally suffering from digital games. Besides, the code includes not only real victims who are indeed suffering from digital games but also comprises victims as a kind of perspective. For example, a piece of news considers all youths as victims of digital games and urges society to help them, even if this is not really individually investigated, the case will be taken into account as well. There are categories of “minors”, “young adults”, “adults”, “middle-age adults” and “elderly people” to explore the weight of concerns on human development, to find out who is considered as the main victim, and how different age groups are portrayed as victims of digital games by the news content at different times. The category “minors” are coded into subcategories of “children” and “adolescents”. Besides, as the coding rules mentioned earlier, there might be victims from different age groups in the same news report, the study will only consider the individual who is directly harmed by digital games in the news context. However, there are some limitations in this coding process: first, the news items are collected manually, which means the study might have a slight deviation in the number of samples; second, the coding process is subjective and the operation also depends on the author, which indicates the definition of different codes and categories are exclusively based 32 on this study; third, more categories (subcategories) can be developed, but the study decided to choose the main occurred content (within each code) from the news to include.

4.3 Ethical Considerations The research adheres to Uppsala University’s ethical guidelines. All the empirical data in this research are collected from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CKNI) official overseas website. CNKI is a comprehensive China integrated knowledge resources system with an open-source, which covers resources of journals, doctoral dissertations, master theses, proceedings, newspapers, yearbooks, statistical yearbooks, ebooks and so on. The content of People’s Daily, Xinhua Daily Telegraph and Wen Wei Po are collected from CNKI’s newspaper database, which is the first full-text database of newspapers in China that is continuously updated with academic and informative newspaper literature (Oversea.cnki, n.d.). All collected data will be exclusively used in the thesis for only academic purposes. 33

5. Data Analysis and Results

5.1 Starts of Controversy: 2002 - 2004 This section will focus on the news media data from the year 2002 to 2004. As previous chapters have introduced, the fire that broke out at an illegal Internet cafe in 2002 is considered as the “beginning” of Chinese media panics on the usage of the Internet, as well as digital games. After the incident, the state council of China issued a regulation to ban establishing Internet cafes without authorization, and engaging in Internet services business activities without authorization (State Council 国务院, 2003). For several years, the public’s comments on Internet cafes and digital games were mostly negative. In instances of the selected news media content from 2002 to 2004, 19 news items have been collected from People’s Daily, 57 news items have been collected from Xinhua Daily Telegraph, and 24 news items have been collected from Wen Wei Po. There are 100 news items in total, 54% of reports are considered to belong to the “negative” category after applying the code attitudes, which occupies more than half of the period’s data. In 33% of the cases, the news attitudes are considered as “neutral”. The category “positive” occurs a few times and occupies a small proportion. With a closer look at these three news media sources, the “negative” attitude largely relies on the results of People’s Daily and Xinhua Daily Telegraph. However, the attitude of Wen Wei Po is relatively positive, since only 2 out of the 24 digital games-related news appear “negative”. In general, the results in Table 1 suggest that in the time period of 2002 to 2004, the main attitudes of Chinese news media towards digital games tend to be negative at the beginning of the media panic. The “negative” news content are more likely to contain topics on game addiction, (illegal) Internet-cafe, youth crimes and the protection of minors, while the “positive” content are about the rising cultural industry, positive treatments of game addiction, and the elders benefiting from digital games. The “neutral” category includes topics on regulations of Internet-cafe, public concerns, policy seminars on digital games, and digital properties. 34

Applying the categories under the code deviance, 8 out of the 19 People’s Daily cases are related to deviance, in which subcategory “game addiction” and “crimes” occupies half of the deviance-related reports respectively; 21 out of the 57 cases of Xinhua Daily Telegraph is related to deviance, which occupies the largest proportion; 2 out of the 24 cases of Wen Wei Po are related to deviance, which has only one category in “game addiction”. The results reflect that there were a number of reports focusing on the deviant behaviour triggered by digital games, in which the category of “game addiction” (14%) and “crimes” (15%) constitute a significant proportion not only in deviance-related news but also in the whole selected data from 2002 to 2004. The collected data from Xinhua Daily Telegraph contains wider categories of deviance, which can be observed from Table 2. In these cases, the category “family interaction” occurred twice, “skipping school” occurred once, “crimes” occurred with five different subcategories, in which violence occupies the majority. In these four cases, the news reported the violent behaviour aroused by games, including the behaviour of imitating violent games, fighting, and murdering parents. The subcategory “blackmail” occurred in one case, which is about an adolescent who “kidnapped” himself and tried to demand money from his parents (Zhiming, 2003). The category “suicide” occurred twice in the reports, in which an adolescent tried to commit gas suicide because he couldn’t complete the game (Shubin, 2004), as well as two rural adolescents, committed suicide after punished by their parents for playing games at illegal Internet-cafe (Jinwu, Wei & Huanqing, 2004). 35

To sum up, the categories of “game addiction” and “crimes” constitute the major part of digital game-related news reporting on code deviance from 2002 to 2004. Among these cases, topics on family relationships and illegal Internet cafes are the most worrying issues. There are numerous pieces of news about parents preventing their game-addicted children from using the Internet, criminal activities taking place around Internet-cafe or happening at home. For instance, a mother desperately prevented her son from going to the Internet cafe, trying to educate him on the negative side of digital games. She even invited a mental health specialist to communicate with her kid, and yet the son was numb with all these efforts (Jian, 2002). From Table 3, it can be observed that within the code interest groups, the number between the first four categories is subtle: the category “parents” occurred 14 times, “scholars” occurred 11 times, “schools” occurred 8 times and “companies” occurred 13 times, while the last category “government” occurred 36 times. However, to divide “government” into subcategories, the occurrence of the general public appeared 15 times and public institutions occurred 12 times. The result indicates that in the first period 2002 to 2004, the main interest group at the beginning of Chinese media panics was hard to capture, it is better to say that parents, schools, game companies, and government all have a stake in bringing “dangerous” digital games to the fore. 36

The code cultural ideology appears 10 times out of 100 reports at this time, which is in a rather low frequency and smaller amount compared with the earlier codes. From Table 4 below, the category “e-heroine” occurred twice, in which the news focused on the negative effects of illegal Internet cafes. The category “cultural invasion” occurred one time, the news claimed that Chinese online games need to start a cultural war against foreign games. Because in the last century, children read novels, comics and watched television to learn about The Money King and other “heroes” from the traditional Chinese culture and history; while nowadays, digital games become“extra-curricular textbooks” for children to learn knowledge about culture, but these foreign games can not provide such cultural function (Liping & Qing, 2004). The other categories of Chinese gaming culture occupy a slightly larger section in the coded data, the category of considering digital games as the “development of Chinese cultural industry” occurred 4 times, as it is the most mentioned topic regarding digital games. The category “e-sports” occurred once, it is about “e-sports” had been officially approved as a legal sport and the development of Chinese “e-sports” just had begun (Changyun, 2004). 37

As seen from Table 5, the code victims is portrayed in 37% of the digital games-related news content, which contains only two categories of “minors” and “young adults”. The category “minors” makes up 97.3% of the whole victims, in which subcategory “adolescent” occurred 20 times and minor victims which are not distinguished in ages occurred 12 times. Categories of older age groups are not mentioned in the scope of victims. This result also proves what Drotner assumed in her study that children and young people are continuously defined as vulnerable victims in the panics (Drotner, 1999: 611), yet the continuity still needs more inspection in the forthcoming analysis.

5.2 Media Panics Ongoing: 2007 - 2009 From 2007 to 2009, there were 128 pieces of news directly related to digital games. At this time, the General Administration of Press and Publication of China issued the Online Game Anti-addiction System Developing Standard in 2007 (It. People, n.d.). The system targeted all online games operating in China and aimed to restrict minors’ gaming time to prevent them from being addicted to online games. Meanwhile, anti-game addiction “professionals” and treatments also became hot news topics - on the one hand, they are welcomed by the parents of ‘game addicted’ youth; on the other hand, they are controversial among gamers as well as the society. This section will explore the chaotic facts to get a closer look at the media panic. Applying the code attitudes to the selected items, the category “positive” occupies 11.7% of the cases, which can be seen as maintaining the same proportion as the last time. The category “neutral” occupies 71% of the cases, which makes up the largest section of the code. The category “negative” occupies 16.4% of the cases, which notably decreases from 54% (N = 100) in the last time period to 16.4% between 2007 to 2009. The increasing neutral 38 attitude implies that the panic has reached a “turning point”, where negative content slightly outweigh positive content. However, it can still be found out in Table 6 that there is a contrast as the proportion of positive content in Wen Wei Po is much higher than the others.

The proportion of the code deviance is 21.1% out of the selected news items, which also decreases from 32% (N = 100) in the last period. The categories of “game addiction” and “crimes” represent the common deviant behaviour related to digital games (see Table 7), in which the proportion of “game addiction” (14.1%) is significantly larger than “crimes” (6.3%). To probe further, the category “violence” may include the aggressive behaviour caused by violent games (Gang, 2009), and murdering parents (Pengxiang, 2009). The category “game addiction” may include subjects of addicted youth (Lan & Bai, 2007; Shu & Yugao, 2009); various anti-game addiction measurements such as in-game precaution systems, assembling Internet cafe volunteers and forbidding fresh-year college students to buy laptops (Jianbin, 2007; Jijun, 2007; Xintong & Sheng, 2007); and debates of game addiction (Lei, 2008). 39

Within the code interest groups, the occurrence of category “scholars” has increased from 11 times (N = 100) to 35 times, which makes up the second-largest category of the whole interest groups. Obviously, scholars - especially educational and mental health experts play a significant role at this time period. One of the most influential scholars among these cases is Hongkai Tao, a Chinese-American “professor” (credibility of which is controversial) at Central China Normal University. He has been positively reported for ‘rescuing’ Chinese youth from game addiction and holding public seminars all over China for parents and kids; and he is also well-known for claiming digital games as ‘mental drugs’(Pengxiang, 2007; Ke & Pengxiang, 2009). The category “companies” occurred 31 times, in which the majority of cases are linked with the game companies’ anti-addiction systems. For example, it has been reported that 11 online games (e.g. The Legend of Mir, World of Warcraft) had activated the anti-addiction system (Wei, 2007). The category “government” appeared 57 times in total, the subcategory “public institutions” occurred 45 times and made up the majority of the category. The General Administration of Press and Publication was usually mentioned when regulating inappropriate content of online games (Xi, 2007; Jing, 2009), and local law enforcement agencies such as local police departments were mentioned in the cases related to the management of Internet cafes, as well as some health care agencies were mentioned when providing data of Chinese game addicting situation such as the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Tingyu, 2009). State agencies such as the Ministry of Culture was often mentioned when issuing online games guidelines (Ministry of Culture 文化部, 2009). 40

The code of cultural ideology appeared in 14% of the news content and increased 4% compared to the last period. As seen from Table 9, the category “development of Chinese cultural industry” constitutes 11.7% of the total cases and is the most major category. The category of digital games as “cultural invasion” and “e-sports” did not appear in the selected news media at this time. The category “Chinese culture goes abroad” increased in two cases. Wen Wei Po reported in 2007 July that the large-scale comprehensive game Voyage Century Online was exported to more than 10 countries and regions in Asia, Europe, and North America, and Perfect World (adventure and fantasy MMORPG) was also bought by the Japanese market for US$2 million (Lei, 2007).

The code victims appeared in 21.9% of the cases between 2007 to 2009, which has decreased from 37% (N = 100) in the last period. The category “minors” constitute 18% of the total cases and occupy the largest proportion of victims. The result suggests that news reports on victims of digital games have reduced and it can be found that young people remain as the most concerned community (see Table 10). 41

5.3 The Retreat: 2012 - 2014 From 2012 to 2014, 62 cases were selected which are directly related to digital games. With the development of the game industry, news reports began shifting their attention from game addiction and Internet cafes. For instance, the famous “expert” of anti-game addiction, Hongkai Tao, was dramatically reported for endorsing online games in 2012 (Ting, 2012). In 2013, the Ministry of Culture announced to remove the ban on the individual Internet cafes’ strict approvement (The Central People’s Government 中央政府, 2013), and the government encouraged the diversified development of the Internet cafe industry in the following year (Chinanews, 2020). The sign of retreat can be sensed at this time, however, the analysis of selected cases may reveal more practical messages. Within the code attitude, the category “positive” occurred in 21% of the news cases, “neutral” occurred in 54.8% of the news, and “negative” occurred in 24.2% of the cases (see Table 11). The proportion of both positive and negative reports related to digital games has slightly risen and moved towards balance, while the proportion of neutral news has decreased a little compared with the last period.

The code deviance made up 11.3% of the selected news content (see Table 12), which kept continuously declining since 2002. The category “game addiction” occurred only in one case, which is about the upcoming touchscreen era - the worries of children addicted to iPad have become a new form of concern (Yuehui & Yongxin, 2013). The same worry can also be found in the category “not attending” family interaction in one case. It has been reported that some children, instead of playing outside on weekends and holidays, only play mobile games on tablets, and seldom communicate with family members, “usually silent and expressionless, but when they play mobile games, they do laugh and yell” (Tingyu et al., 2013). Besides, the proportion of “crimes” increased a little to 4.8% compared with the last period. The category “gambling” occurred twice, in which it mentioned topics on online card games (Lie, 2012), 42 and gamblings on video arcade (Zhonghao, 2014). Other crimes that were not mentioned in detail generally talk about minors going to illegal Internet cafes.

Within the code interest groups, categories of “scholars”, “companies” and “public institutions” occupy the largest amount of the code, while categories of “parents”, “schools”, “politicians” and “general government” barely occurred (see Table 13). However, the news context of game companies is no longer largely linked with “dangerous” games at this time. Game companies were more likely involved with the development of the game industry and the economic growth. Scholars at this time tended to provide rational debates on digital games, such as the pros and cons of children playing tablets (Min & Miao, 2012), and whether digital games can be considered as a new form of literature (Xin & Pei, 2012). Public institutions at this time were basically dealing with the mobile Internet policies and also regulations on Internet cafes. 43

The code culture ideology occurred in 22.6% of the cases between 2012 to 2014, which means news media had gradually linked digital games to the expression of cultural ideology. Particularly, the proportion of category “development of Chinese cultural industry” increased to 14.5% and reports related to “Chinese culture goes abroad” increased to 6.5% (see Table 14). Experts have pointed out that the significant change of “importing foreign games” in the past to the Chinese games “going overseas” in recent two years is accompanying the rise of China’s domestic online games (Liping & Shaohua, 2012). Besides, e-sports have been mentioned in two cases, in which news reports have discussed the relationship between e-sports and playing digital games.

The code victims appeared in 9.7% of the selected reports, which has decreased dramatically compared with earlier periods. The category “minors” takes up the whole code. Other than merely portraying digital games that may cause game addiction, news media also reported digital games might be the causes of visual impairment for youth (“Primary and secondary school students have worrisome eyesight”, 2014). 44

5.4 Panics Coming Back: 2017-2019 To be fair, the media panics are not really “coming back” between 2017 to 2019, for it is a period of time that news media heavily reported the development of the Chinese gaming industry and tons of activities regarding digital games were held in China. For example, the prestigious and watched tournaments - LoL World Championship grand final season 2017 was held in Shanghai. In the same year, the 15th ChinaJoy was held in Shanghai in 2017. The full name of ChinaJoy is China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference, which is jointly directed by the National Press and Publication Administration and the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government and described as “the most influential event in the global digital entertainment industry” (Chinajoy, n.d.). The exhibition was held since 2003 and included content of various digital games, music, animation, e-sports, Internet literature, smart entertainment hardware, movie-game interaction, etc., but it had not gained much attention from the news reports until recent years. Besides, The International (TI9), an annual Dota 2 world championship esports tournament was held at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai 2019. Consequently, Shanghai has been frequently mentioned as the future ‘capital of global esports’ (全球电竞之都) by the news media. However, the “glory” of Shanghai and Chinese mobile games does not represent the end of media panics, worries and concerns on game addiction may bounce back due to such development. Whatsmore, gaming disorder was presented as “a new condition in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) endorsed by the 72nd World Health Assembly in 2019” (WHO, n.d.), which made digital games controversial again. To explore more detail, the following analysis of 98 selected cases will try to capture the “coming-back” Chinese media panic at this period. Within the code attitudes, the proportion of positive news reports is 32.7%, which is approximately twice larger than the number of negative news reports (16.3%). However, as 45 seen from Table 16, there is more negative news in People’s Daily than positive ones, while Wen Wei Po contains much more positive news related to digital games. The category “neutral” occupies 51% of the cases, which has declined slightly from the last period.

The code deviance occurred in 24.5% of the selected news, in which the category “game addiction” occupied the largest proportion (17.3%). The percentage of game addiction has considerably increased between 2017 to 2019 compared with the last period, in which there were 13 cases reported by People’s Daily and 4 cases reported by Wen Wei Po. Besides, 6 cases of “crimes” were also reported other than game addiction. These game deviance-related reports mainly focused on the topics of the global game addiction’s treatments such as the cases in the UK and Korea (Shangwen, 2018; Wei, 2018), the conflicts between parents and children such as parents need to ‘scientifically’ prevent children from game addiction (Shuo, 2018; Yasong, 2018), and young players who secretly ‘steal’ money from others (e.g. parents) and extravagantly spend the money in digital games to upgrade equipment (Conglu, 2018; Zhiming, 2019). 46

Within the code interest group, almost all categories have increased in occurrence compared with the last period. The category “scholars” occurred 31 times, “companies” occurred 54 times and “public institutions” occurred 41 times (see Table 18). These three categories tended to simultaneously appear in the new content when introducing Chinese game companies attending various entertainment exhibitions such as Gamescom and ChinaJoy (Qiang & Xuejun, 2018; Zhenxi, 2019), and management opinions of the digital games market such as improving the quality of online games in the aspect of culture and establishing strict censorship systems in the aspects of unhealthy content and game addiction (Wei & Hao, 2018). Meanwhile, the reports contained “parents” and “schools” tended to find the answer for how to build a healthy gaming environment for children since the online game market was expanding and the proportion of the mobile game market was expected to increase more. Worries and opinions from parents, teachers and some scholars were more frequently reported regarding young students spending a long time playing mobile games after school (Yekai & Nan, 2018; Yasong, 2018). 47

The code cultural ideology has been reflected in 51% of the news reports from 2017 to 2019. On the one hand, the category “e-heroine” occurred in one case of People’s Daily, which interviewed doctors of game addiction in Beijing. According to the news, the prevalence of game addiction is approximately 0.7% to 27.5%. Experts thus suggested that the state should issue a series of regulations to strictly restrict the products of game companies, such as age restriction, time restriction and content censorship, to avoid turning video games into “e-heroine” (Junping, 2018). On the other hand, digital games were more likely to be linked with the context of Chinese culture (31.6%) and E-sports (19.4%), in which the proportion of these categories has considerably increased (see Table 19). Especially in Wen Wei Po news content, 11 items were related to “development of Chinese cultural industry” and 17 items focused on digital games as “E-sports”. These news reports heavily mentioned the 17th ChinaJoy (Zhenxi, 2019), Shanghai as the future global E-sport capital and Shanghai’s blooming E-sport market (Zhenxi, 2019), and Shanghai game companies’ successful mobile-game products in both domestic and global markets (Zhenxi, 2018; Xiaoli, 2019). Besides, the conception of digital games as an “innovation of traditional Chinese culture” has also been reported in some cases. For instance, it has been reported that nowadays there are many popular domestic games on the market with Chinese themes such as traditional literature “Three Kingdoms” and “Journey to the West”, and also artworks from Song Dynasty (Chaohao, 2018). 48

The proportion of the code victims has increased dramatically to 25.5% of the cases at this time. Not surprisingly, the category of “minors” remains the only valued category within the code. The news media People’s Daily possessed 19 cases that considered minors as the victims of digital games, which occupy almost half of its game-related news.

5.5 2020: End of Panics? This section selected 57 news from the nearest year, in order to observe the current media panic situation. Attitudes of news media in 2020 can be seen in Table 21. In this year, positive news directly related to digital games makes up 61.4% of the cases, which is the first time in this study that the category “positive” occurred in more than half of the news items. Neutral reports occupy 28.1% and negative reports occupy 10.5%, which both have reduced from last period. Worth mentioning, there was no negative report from Wen Wei Po in 2020, while 49 negative reports from Xinhua Daily Telegraph were overwhelming since it had only one positive case.

The code deviance occurred in 10.5% of the cases in 2020, which has considerably declined from the last period. There was only one deviance-related report in People’ Daily, which mentioned game addiction among the minors regarding online schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic (Fang, 2020). Three cases on game addiction and two cases on gambling were mentioned in Xinhua Daily Telegraph (see Table 22). The proportion of subcategory “gambling” has increased to 3.5%, in which one case was about a young adult gambling in the card game that developed by criminal rings (Liang et al., 2020), the other case was about gambling in the Apps of online gaming service (Jianfeng, 2020). The cases on game addiction from Xinhua Daily Telegraph mentioned the worries of youths getting addicted to digital games in rural China (Xiaoyuan, 2020), ‘game addicted’ youth secretly spending money on mobile games (Linguo & Zhihong, 2020), and also stressed game addiction under the pandemic since the youth spending most of their time at home learning and playing online (Mengda & Pan, 2020). 50

Within the code interest group, the category “government”, “companies” and “scholars” owned the top three frequent occurrences (see Table 23), and these categories nearly simultaneously occurred in the same cases when reporting innovations of the game industry (Jing, 2020; Xuanyue & Xuemeng, 2020). Apparently, the result implies that the characteristics of interest groups in recent years are inseparable from the supportive relationship between government and game companies. The situation of interest groups was much similar to the last period, other categories like “parents”, “schools” and “politicians” seldom occurred among the cases.

In 2020, 70.2 % of the selected cases possessed the expression of cultural ideology, which represented a considerable rise compared with 51% (N = 51) from the last period. In particular, the category of “E-sports” occurred in 31.6% of the selected news items (see Table 51

24), and the context of esport revolved around Shanghai, business opportunities and the game industry such as news on Shanghai would be holding LoL World Championship season 2020 and the establishment of China Game Industry Research Institute in Shanghai (Zhenxi, 2020). All categories related to the communication of Chinese culture can be found increased - the conception of considering digital games as the “development of Chinese cultural industry” occurred in 22.8% of the cases, “Chinese culture goes abroad” occurred in 10.5% of the reports, and “the innovation of traditional Chinese culture” appeared in 5.3% news items. The category “E-heroine” and “cultural invasion” did not appear this year.

The code victims occurred in 15.8% of the cases, of which 14% cases are about minors as victims of digital games. The percentage has reduced significantly from last period, however, it is not the lowest figure among the past two decades. 52

6. Discussion

6.1 Findings and Contextualization Although some typical features of the “old” panics theories can be seen throughout the analysis, it is worth discussing whether the traditional characteristics of moral panic could be fully applied during the whole period. For example, as Mcrobbie and Thornton (1995: 560) argue, increasing game-related reports in the most recent decade may be a consequence of the great expansion of news media, a recurring topic for journalistic reporting, or could even represent a new wave of media panic. Therefore, this section will first illustrate the findings on the patterns and features of Chinese media panics over the past two decades, and then discuss whether the classical patterns of “panic” is applicable to the whole time span. Figure 2 shows the general characteristics of Chinese news media attitudes toward game-related reportings during the last two decades emerge from the sample data: the proportion of positive attitudes is increasing steadily and makes up a large section, and negative reports have been irregularly decreasing and come to a lower percentage. Especially after the period 2012 to 2014, the contrast between “positive” and “negative” is rapidly turning more distinct.

(Figure 2 The general trend of the code attitudes)

However, a closer exploration of the internal aspect of the selected news media reveals that attitudes vary greatly from Xinhua Daily Telegraph, People’s Daily to Wen Wei Po. As mentioned in chapter 4, views on People’s Daily may officially represent the CCP’s stance. The main role of People’s Daily is to publicize the policies and guidelines of the party and the country, and also advanced ideas and models (Yelin, 2015), which indicates that the 53 news content tend to be more serious, rigorous and ideology guiding, and the number of its game-related reports is lower than others. This might be one of the possible reasons to explain why neutral content in People’s Daily always constitutes its largest proportion during the selected periods (see Figure 3). And its content mainly introduced the policies on the game industry such as game content and Internet cafes, the overview of Chinese gaming, and the general “problems” caused by digital games.

(Figure 3 The percentage of different attitudes in People’s Daily)

Xinhua Daily Telegraph is one of the newspapers edited and published by Xinhua News Agency; its content regarding digital games mainly cover the daily life of individuals, for example, the specific issues between game-addicted youth and their parents, viewpoints from doctors and academic scholars, as well as a certain amount of international news. Since it is not an official newspaper like People’s Daily, it contains a wider range of topics and information from the general public. Particularly, it pays relatively much attention to the daily news from rural China, which implies that more problems are covered. For instance, a study on Internet addiction and depression among migrant children and left-behind children in China showed that an estimated 220 million people in China are labour migrants who have moved from rural to urban areas for better work opportunities (Guo et al., 2012). With the rapid increase in the number of migrant workers, the issues of migrant children and left-behind children have provoked more concerns in the aspects of psychology and behaviour, such as game addiction. The intended target audience of Xinhua Daily Telegraph includes staff and leaders (from local to central) of the government, staff of state-owned enterprises and institutions, white-collar workers, teachers and students at universities, 54 researchers, military officers and soldiers (“Papers of Xinhua News Agency”, n.d.), who are more like the “operators” of the state policies. This may explain why it has expressed rather negative opinions and why there was a more fierce beginning in the media panics (see Figure 4) because the negative news exposed comprehensive problems caused by digital games that should be paid attention to and need to be handled.

(Figure 4 The percentage of different attitudes in Xinhua Daily Telegraph)

The most special results within attitudes are collected from Wen Wei Po, as its proportion of negative reports is always lower in rank (see Figure 5). Wen Wei Po is a local newspaper mainly issued in Shanghai and its neighbour cities, its content on digital games highly related to policies and situations in the local game industry. Since there have been various game exhibitions and esports events held in Shanghai in the past decades, the news content mostly mentioned the aspect of digital games as one of the city’s pillar industries and the city’s function as “capital of global esports”, which digital games can hardly be blamed for in this context. Besides, the findings showed that academic scholars such as college professors also play their parts in contributing to the content, which enable reports on digital games to hold a relatively balanced and neutral view during the panics. 55

(Figure 5 The percentage of different attitudes in Wen Wei Po)

As for the general trend of other codes, the proportion of code deviance and victims in the sample data appeared in an identical current, they both started from a high percentage and decreased to the bottom around 2012 to 2014, and yet increased in the next time period (see Figure 6).

(Figure 6 The percentage of code deviance, victims and cultural ideology)

The results of deviance showed detailed deviant behaviour at different times (see Figure 7), the behaviour of skipping schools, suicide and deviance in family interaction occupied a rather small proportion in the whole time and almost faded away after the period between 2017 to 2019. Topics of crimes and game addiction have been mentioned as the main deviance throughout the past two decades, which have been irregularly decreasing but still exist in the news till 2020. 56

(Figure 7 The percentage of different categories within deviance)

Besides, the results also showed a preponderance of victims depicted by the news media belonging to the youth, especially the minors. In spite of the fact that the percentage of victims has been changing over time, the data suggested that young people indeed are considered as the majority of ‘vulnerable victims’ in the digital games-related media panic. These reports usually tended to stress the symptoms and consequences of game-addicted youth, combining with the worries from their parents, few considered the problem as a reflection of the contemporary education system or a social problem regarding modernization and urbanization. Such game-related news from mainstream news media potentially built “moral boundaries” and “normative outlines”, which indirectly affected the public’s attitudes toward the young players. Comparing the overall trend with Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s theory of panic’s five elements, the study suggested that the selected time periods might be a later phase of a pre-existing media panic and the results do not strictly follow these characteristics. According to the previous research, the fire that broke out in 2002 can be regarded as an element of concern and the incident used to be considered as the beginning of media panics in China. However, the study suggested that it can not fully represent the earliest concern of the panic, since the collected data did not show the entire curve of the media panic’s first wave - negative content and worries had already reached a peak during 2002 to 2004. But there is no doubt that this period can be seen as the beginning of the upcoming media panics. Meanwhile, the element of hostility can be easily found during this time: the government was mentioned largely in the news related to the strict management and 57 regulations on illegal Internet cafes, and the public related digital games with positive cultural productions to a small degree. News media were inclined to compare digital games with “opium” or “heroin”, which these words may remind the public’s memory of the Opium War in modern Chinese history. News media sometimes directly wrote or indirectly quoted the analogy, transferring the worries of “opium addicts” to the concerns of “game addicts”. As the public believed that the Qing empire was invaded by the Britain forces and the “opium”, digital games could be a form of cultural invasion and poison the Chinese youth. The data clearly proved that digital games were considered harmful to the norms and interests of the public - not only from the aspect of game-addiction or crimes that showed a detriment in the micro-level, the public consciousness at that time tended to believe games as spiritual poison and cultural invasion which also brought hostility from a macro-level. Under this circumstance, the media panic impacted social control and got the impact from it. Besides, the characteristic of disproportionality can also be found, as Goode and Ben-Yehuda suggested, if a threat that is feared is nonexistent by all available evidence, the study may say that the criterion of disproportionality has been met (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 158). The definition of game addiction or Internet addiction literally had no official conclusion at that time. The problems of Internet addiction and game addiction did not gain a national intervention until 2006 when the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Minors had been issued, in which minors should be prevented from internet addicting, along with the behaviour of smoking, drinking, gambling, etc (Central Government, 2006). As a consequence, the characteristics of consensus can be found between 2007 to 2009, in which a “specific agreement” in the society that demonstrated the danger of digital games is “real, serious” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 157). In December 2009, there were 384 million Internet users in China, especially Internet users aged from 10 to 19 accounting for the largest group of all users (Lin et al., 2020). During the time between 2007 to 2009, the consensus was more centralized on the perspectives of “pseudo-scholars”. Apart from the case of psychiatrist Yongxin Yang mentioned in the previous chapters, the findings at this time also provided another version of consensus on digital games: the “professor” of anti-game addiction who had been an influencer convincing the public on the negative side of digital games and curing game-addicted children. After the time period of 2012 to 2014, the feature of volatility took place in the “end” of media panic phases, in which the fear of digital games subsided suddenly. The possible reason can be found in October 2011 when the Sixth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central 58

Committee was held and passed the decision on several major issues concerning the reformation of the cultural system. The decision had made special arrangements to strengthen the construction and management of cyberculture such as promoting the cyber communication of outstanding traditional Chinese culture and contemporary fine-quality cultural products, producing fine works suitable for the Internet and mobile phones (Lin et al., 2020). From the figures below (see Figure 8 and Figure 9), the media panic’s significant turning point can be found at this time: news reports of esports and digital games as the innovation of Chinese culture industry began to increase and the negative content declined greatly. At the same time, the data showed a large number of game companies were involved in the game-related news while the government had been steadily playing its part.

(Figure 8 The percentage of different categories within cultural ideology)

(Figure 9 The percentage of different categories within interest group) 59

Even if the sudden decline of deviance and victims could explain the disappearance of media panics, the panic seemed to reoccur between 2017 to 2019 from the negative content regarding deviance and victims. During this time, mobile games became the largest market in the Chinese game industry. In 2018, the total number of mobile game users in China reached 605 million, and the annual output value of mobile games reached 133.96 billion yuan, accounting for 62.5% of the scale of China’s game industry (Lin et al., 2020). According to the Annual Report on the Internet Use Of Chinese Minors, in 2017, the game Honor of Kings published by Tencent has been hotly debated by the public due to the addiction of youth users, and mainstream news media such as People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency have frequently called for effective measures from the perspectives of game supervision, history and family education (Lin et al., 2020). Besides, another consensus showed up rather scientifically and professionally, which was the official statement on game addiction made by WHO. The sentiment on digital games was widespread through the news media and continuously strengthened by the participants of scholars and government agencies. On the other hand, the considerably increasing positive reports and content on esports and the development of the Chinese gaming industry (mostly from Wen Wei Po) during this time make the conclusion “the return of panic” appear relatively tentative. Interestingly, the number of news reports on deviance and victims occupied a small proportion between 2012 to 2014 when the attitudes of state news media appeared rather negative and increased dramatically in the period from 2017 to 2019 when the positive attitudes of news media continued growing. A study on the Chinese media expression and public opinion of youth online games in 2019 gathered data from Weibo and news reports, showing that the topics of game-addiction caused controversy again; however, the debates were more inclined to criticize the treatment and institutions of game addiction (Binyan & Xiangshuai, 2020). In this way, it is reasonable to consider the “panic” here has become a common topic for the news media, instead of an unbalanced or aggressive emotion from the public consciousness. From a global perspective, the striking changes in attitudes towards media technology between 2017 to 2019 can also be found in the Western public discourses. According to Weiss-Blatt (2021), there has been a “Techlash” era since 2017 caused by issues of various tech scandals, fake news, data collection and protection, extremist content and hate speech, and privacy violations (Weiss-Blatt, 2021). A “Techlash” usually represents a strong and widespread negative emotion towards the large technology companies, because of the worries of their power, users’ privacy, political reasons, etc. She wrote that the debates of the 60 technology industry dramatically increased in 2017 and journalists began to be tougher (Weiss-Blatt, 2021). Although the term “Techlash” may be hard to find in a Chinese context from previous research, the concept might fit in the media panic that recurred in China during this period. For example, in 2017, an online game named Blue Whale Challenge entered China in May and brought fears to the parents. It is a “game” that requires the player to finish a series of tasks and the final challenge is requiring the player to commit suicide. In June 2017, the Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China was passed, which is the first basic law that comprehensively restricts network security management (Lin et al., 2020). At the beginning of the following year, the Elsagate videos and other cult videos were found on Tencent QQ. Tencent QQ officially launched the exclusive report function, so that users can give feedback and report when they find sensitive content about minors on the platform. In October 2018, minors under 14 years old were banned from registering Weibo accounts (Lin et al., 2020). Combining these incidents and updating cyber protections with the figures above (Figure 3, Figure7), this new wave of game-related “media panics” in China could be intimately associated with the subjects of screen addiction, minors protection, and the response from large technology companies (Tencent) to the general public. Some basic characteristics of “Techlash” were indeed found at this time, and yet further examination of the relationships between the technology companies and the Chinese society is needed. By March 2020, the number of Chinese Internet users has reached 904 million, of which the number of young netizens (under the age of 19) is nearly 210 million, accounting for 23.2% of the total population. In both urban and rural areas, more than 85% of households have become the main places for minors to access the Internet (Lin et al., 2020), which means the public worries of illegal Internet cafes already belong to the past. In addition, impacted by the outbreak of Covid-19, Annual Reports on the Development of China Gaming Industry showed that game companies in 2020 have made several positive contributions, such as donating money during the pandemic, developing online games regarding epidemic prevention themes, and maintaining the business almost without laying off staff or cutting salaries, which led to a positive social influence (Lijun & Weijun, 2020). Generally, no obvious characteristics of moral panics can be found from the news content in this year; the content largely sheds light on esports and the global events of digital games, while negative news reports can barely be found. Therefore, judging from the data result and the changing status of digital games, there seems to be no such strong features of “media panic” on games as two decades ago in 2020, since the image of digital games no longer links to criminal stories happening in illegal Internet cafes nor the “humiliating past” when China mainly acted 61 as the agent of foreign games. It can be claimed that the features of the fading-out phase occurred in 2020; and the second wave of “media panics” may be approaching its end.

6.2 Limitations and Outlooks However, the study has shown its limitations when it tried to explore if the media panic on digital games has already disappeared in China or the attention is just given away to other more important issues such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from the disappearance of media panics, although the fire that broke out in 2002 literally can be considered as an immediate issue of Chinese media panic, the real beginning of the panic may exist before the incident and it was missing from the news data. These are the restrictions that may affect the measuring of “the beginning” and “the end”, but these limits do not impact the data result and analysis in this study. Moreover, the research lacks data from public opinions towards digital games that might reveal more characteristics of media panics in another way, instead, the study mainly has found data regarding the attitudes from specific groups such as teachers and parents towards the usage of the Internet. And news items in this study were more focused on the interviews of parents, schools, police, scholars and government, content from the perspectives of gamers or the minors are seldom mentioned. Therefore, more research can be supplemented to examine the phases of Chinese media panics on digital games, such as studies on participatory media, which may provide different details or characteristics of the media panic from the general public. Also, more social and cultural background (e.g. the effect of urbanization and modernization, the quality of family education, the reflection of the changing ideology in games, etc.) to the media panic can be further explored in the future study. 62

7. Conclusion

The thesis, on the whole, presented an overview of different Chinese media panic periods on digital games from 2002 to 2020. The research used the method of content analysis to analyze game-related news content from three Chinese mainstream news media: People's Daily, Xinhua Daily Telegraph and Wen Wei Po. Over two decades, digital games had been gradually linked with the image of “esports” instead of “spiritual opium”, and the government had changed the attitudes from strictly banning Internet cafes to supporting the Chinese game industry such as esports and planning to Shanghai as the “capital of global esports”. Within the discourse of panics, basic patterns of traditional moral panics and media panics can be found in the news reports, such as the beginning, the peak, and the fading-out phase suggested by Drotner; the deviance element suggested by Cohen, as well as the five characteristics of moral panics proposed by Goode and Ben-Yehuda. More importantly, the study showed that these elements and features do not exclusively appear once at one time, as the peak occurred in both time periods (2007 to 2009, 2017 to 2019) and the fading-out phase may also occur twice (2012 to 2014, 2020). The study indicated that there can be several waves of media panics in digital games over the past two decades, with the evolving of media technology, the changing ideology and interest groups. In the Chinese context, the period between 2002 and 2014 could fully qualify the classical patterns of media panics, showed the worries of the Internet and the Internet cafes, game addiction of online games, and also revealed the problems in the relationship between children and their parents in rural China. The periods after 2017 showed certain tendencies toward a media panic, but without being a full media panic; concerns on mobile usage and the large technology companies (the “techlash”) became more obvious in this new wave of “panic”. Social and cultural dilemmas brought by modernity were reflected in these media panic waves, such as the social dilemmas between absent family education and left-behind (also immigrant) youth during the urbanization, cultural dilemmas between patriotic athletes and game addicts when interpreting digital games, and socio-cultural dilemmas when Chinese game industry facing the tide of globalization. The ever-changing “dangerous” digital games, the ever-changing opinions, the expanding news media, government interventions, worship of scholars, and quick-developing technology, all served their parts in both signs of media panics and signs of “post-media panics” in China. 63

Acknowledgement

Thanks to my supervisor Peter Jakobsson for his guidance and supervision.

Thanks to my examiner Amanda Lagerkvist for her patience and valuable feedback.

Thanks to all the sparks that had lightened and accompanied me in the Scandinavian winter. 64

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Appendixes

A. Sample News Reportings Mentioned in the Thesis

Chaohao, G. (2018, August 5). The game industry is becoming the wings of traditional

culture flying overseas. Wen Wei Po, (001).

Conglu, G. (2018, September 28). It is urgent to prevent young people from being addicted to

the Internet. People’s Daily, (005).

Fang, L. (2012, June 3). Profit of 756 million, a gaming website is like a casino. Xinhua

Daily Telegraph, (003).

Fang, S. (2020, June 22). Together to protect the clear and bright space for children to enjoy

the Internet. People’s Daily, (005).

Gang, L. (2009, March 22). Violent digital games induce aggression among teenagers.

Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (003).

Jian, Y. (2002, June 19). “I dragged my son out of the Internet cafe thousands of times”.

Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (002).

Jianbin, Y. (2007, July 31). Whether “anti-addiction” can help youth quit Internet addiction.

People’s Daily, (005).

Jianfeng, W. (2020, July 30). How to protect the “online game playing service” industry from

the harm of gambling and porn? Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (005).

Jijun, Y. (2007, June 11). Unique “granny volunteers” at Internet cafes. People’s Daily, (009).

Jing, Q. (2009, September 1). Press and Publication Administration rectifying the vulgar

content of online games. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (002).

Jing, X. (2020, December, 15). Top events “bringing in”, and popular games “bringing out”.

Wen Wei Po, (001). 73

Jinwu, H. & Wei, Z. & Huanqing, W. (2004, April 29). Xiushui: Internet cafes “expanding to

the rural areas” will destroy two teenagers in one month. Xinhua Daily Telegraph,

(006).

Junping, W. (2018, August 10). Multi-treatments of Internet addiction. People’s Daily, (019).

Ke, S.& Pengxiang, L. (2009, August 24). Professor commented that online games are not

“positive”, annoying WoW fans. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (007).

Lan, D. & Bai, W. (2007, July 18). “Specialized students of the college entrance

examination”, are all the faults of Internet addiction?. People’s Daily, (011).

Lei, W. (2007, July 10). Original national online games going overseas. Wen Wei Po, (005).

Lei, W. (2008, November 11). Wait a minute for labeling players “game addicted”. Wen Wei

Po, (009).

Liang, Z., Jianfeng, W., Jing, S. (2020, October 13). Online chess and card “game in game”:

cheat you more than 200,000 a year. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (005).

Linguo, H. & Zhihong, Y. (2020, June 24). Online game companies bypass the real-name

system and “hook up” minors for consumption. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (004).

Liping, S. & Shaohua, G. (2012, July 30). Online games: old foreign games become the new

engine of the Chinese game industry. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (006).

Mengda, W. & Pan, F. (2020, May 20). “Playing games without having meals”. Xinhua Daily

Telegraph, (014).

Ministry of Culture: Restrict online games in “PK system” and “marriage system”. (2009,

November 21). Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (002).

Min, C. & Dingmiao, Y. (2012, May 31). Building blocks or iPad? Advantages and

disadvantages of electronic children’s toys coexist. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (007).

Pengxiang, L. (2007, January 19). One professor saves more than 600 internet addiction

teenagers in two years. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (002). 74

Pengxiang, L. (2009, February 8). Addicted youth murdered his father, the absence of family

education caused tragedy. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (002).

Primary and secondary school students have worrisome eyesight. (2014, October 12). Wen

Wei Po, (005).

Qiang, L. & Xuejun, F. (2018, August 31). More than 40 Chinese companies appeared at

Gamescom. People’s Daily, (022).

Shangwen, C. (2-18, September 5). South Korea manages online games in this way. People’s

Daily, (015).

Shu, L. & Yugao, C. (2009, June 1).Get rid of “Internet addiction” and save “childhood”.

Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (004).

Shubin, L. (2004, February 26). A teenager in Harbin committed suicide by turning on the

gas when he failed to complete a game. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (002).

Shuo, Z. (2018, May 3). How to prevent children from being addicted to the Internet?

People’s Daily, (018).

Ting, N. (2012, June 4). Why does the “anti-online game fighter” endorse online games?

Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (005).

Tingyu, Z. (2009, October 12). Who will regulate electric shock to treat Internet addiction?

Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (003).

Tingyu, Z., Bingkun, W., Jing, D. (2013, May 2). “Homebody”· Bored ·Lazy - In the mobile

era, a “non-mobile” lifestyle has been refined. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (005).

Wei, Q. (2018, July 5). The first case of “online-game addicted patient” admitted in the UK.

People’s Daily, (022).

Wei, Z. (2007, July 17). 11 online games have launched the “anti-addiction system”. Wen Wei

Po, (010). 75

Wei, Z. & Hao, H. (2018, February 7). Increase the supply of positive energy to promote the

transformation and upgrading of the online game industry. People’s Daily, (009).

Xi, Y. (2007, June 1). Five approaches to purify the network cultural environment. People’s

Daily, (012).

Xiaoli, W. (2019, March 28). Building the e-sports capital: Shanghai's online game revenue

accounts for 33% of the country. Wen Wei Po, (001).

Xiaoyuan, M. (2020, August 4). Addicting to digital games in summer, rural children “hurt

their eyes”. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (005).

Xin, F. & Pei, L. (2012, May 18). The game is tagged as literature, is it a blessing or a curse.

Wen Wei Po, (009).

Xintong, H. & Sheng, X. (2007, October 9). Freshmen are not allowed to buy computers, can

this prevent their Internet addiction?. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (006).

Xuanye, G. & Xuemeng, C. (2020, January 2). Game industry, creative development.

People’s Daily, (012).

Yasong, D. (2018, September 4). Addiction needs guidance, what do parents have to do?

People’s Daily, (022).

Yekai, G. & Nan, W. (2018, February 2). Online games are so popular, how to relieve the

worries of “addiction”? People’s Daily, (006).

Yuehui, W. & Yongxin, Z. (2013, May 17). In the era of touch screens, don't be “controlled

by the screen”. People’s Daily, (020).

Zhenxi, Z. (2018, July 12). Mobile games are becoming the main force of Shanghai's online

games “going overseas”. Wen Wei Po, (001).

Zhenxi, Z. (2019, June 28). To build a global esports capital, what opportunities can Shanghai

provide for Chinese esports? Wen Wei Po, (005). 76

Zhenxi, Z. (2019, August 3). ChinaJoy’s opening ceremony is “hot”, with over 100,000

visitors on the first day. Wen Wei Po, (002).

Zhenxi, Z. (2020, August 2). China Game Industry Research Institute established in

Shanghai, Global Mobile E-sports Culture Research Institute settled in Shanghai. Wen

Wei Po, (003).

Zhiming, H. (2003, December 14). A teenager “kidnapped” his parents for playing games.

Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (006).

Zhiming, Q. (2019, June 5). Online game consumption, “anti-addiction” is the key. People’s

Daily, (019).

Zhonghao, D. (2014, October 28). Prohibited gambling machines “flood” urban and rural

areas, a couple loses one million in three days. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, (007). 77

B. Coding Sheet

Deviance Interest groups Cultural ideology Victims What kind Deviance on game addiction Interest groups Digital games as Victims of children (6-12 of features of parents e-heroine years old) in relation to Deviance on family Interest groups Digital games as Victims of adolescents digital interactions (not participating of scholars cultural invasion (12-18 years old) games does family interactions, defying news media parents, others) focus on during the Deviance on skipping school Interest groups Digital games as Victims of young adults media of schools innovation of (18-25 years old) panic? traditional Chinese culture Deviance on committing Interest groups Digital games as a Victims of adults (25-45 crimes (gambling, stealing, of government way of Chinese years old) violence, murders, drugs, (politicians, culture go abroad others) public institutions) Deviance on suicides Digital games as Victims of middle-age e-sports adults (45-65 years old) Victims of elderly people (65+ years old) positive neutral negative What kind Digital games as an content of Digital games have bad of content innovative/healthy way for policies/regulations/management of effect on individuals' does each individuals to game companies/games/game career/property/relationsh category of entertain/relax/study/socialize industry ips/health attitudes Digital games benefit content of the current gaming Digital games cause game include? economic growth (e.g. situation (e.g. the discussion of family addiction, aggressive contribute to relationships, education, gaming as behaviour, bad behaviour employment/business/Chines career) at school/workplace e cultural industry) Digital games benefit content of the economic changes in Digital games used by communication of Chinese game industry criminals culture Digital games have unhealthy content (e.g. violence)