Chinese non-governmental organizations, media, and culture: communication perspectives, practices, and provocations

The prolific rise of Chinese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for advancing social and political change has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Nonetheless, limited communication studies research has been conducted to further contemporary understanding of these emerging collectives, particularly beyond the popular hype of digital and social media-led “revolutions” in civic engagement or dystopian accounts of Chinese society. This paper reviews the key contours of communication scholarship on Chinese NGOs and highlights the major contributions of the articles in this special issue. We also propose three dialectical tensions to stimulate future research in mediated Chinese NGO organizing, and to help advance the communicative purposes, practices and prospects of Chinese NGOs.