ArticleAuthors: Li Xiao; Judy Polumbaum (2006)
Analyzing news stories, commentaries, and readers’ discussions of a sensational serial murder case on China’s two most popular commercial online portals, this study examines how the Internet’s medium-specific characteristics of unlimited space and interactivity facilitate both reinforcement and challenges to dominant ideologies of crime coverage.
The study finds that news accounts on the two portals, Sina.com and Sohu.com, to a large degree favored the interests of the powerful over the powerless, excusing the inefficiency of the police and portraying causes of crime as individual; while readers contributing to online forums on the case voiced concern about social issues underlying c... 
