Staging Environmental Risk: A Methodological Cosmopolitanism Approach To Chinese Media Events

The aim of this study is to enrich Beck's (2016) concept of methodological cosmopolitanism and digital metamorphosis from the perspective of communication researchers using a 'media event', namely the live broadcasting of history through communication technology (Dayan and Katz 1992) as the research unit. Based on our observation of media events of environmental crises in China, we argue that digital metamorphoses are happening, albeit in a complicated form. These disruptive events that netizens evoke, participate in and resolve make a stronger and longer lasting impact on the social consensus about environmental protections than do pre-set pseudo-events. The effects of the digital empowerment of people are, however, case specific and the nation-state still dominates many media events pertaining to environmental crises.