About Journal of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (Social Sciences Edition)

Journal of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (Social Sciences Edition)

The Journal of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (Social Sciences Edition) (Chinese title: 北京邮电大学学报（社会科学版）) is a Chinese-language social sciences journal sponsored by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) in Beijing and published bimonthly. It covers the social sciences of information and communications, including internet governance, communication economics and management, media studies and information law. Published by China's leading university of posts, telecommunications and information technology — the institution whose scholars wrote some of the earliest Chinese doctoral research on internet content regulation — the journal occupies a unique niche: it is the social science journal of the information society, written from inside the university that trains China's communications engineers.

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications is China's principal university for telecommunications and information technology, based in Beijing. Founded as the country's first institution of higher education for posts and telecommunications, it educates the engineers and researchers of China's telecom operators, equipment industry and internet sector, and its research spans communications engineering, computer science, networks and information security. The university also publishes internationally: The Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications, its English-language engineering journal (ISSN 1005-8885), carried research on networks, web systems and communications, with copyright held by BUPT — an example of the university's journal activity on the engineering side. The social sciences edition of the university journal is the counterpart on the human side: BUPT maintains social science disciplines — management, economics, law, public administration, humanities and media studies — organised around the university's informational mission, and this journal is their collective periodical.

The social sciences of information and communications

The journal's scope is defined by a single organising idea: the social sciences of information and communications. Where other universities' social science editions range across the whole humanities, BUPT's edition concentrates on what its university knows best — the societal dimensions of information and communication technology. Its named fields are internet governance, communication economics and management, media studies and information law. Each corresponds to a BUPT research community. Communication economics and management reflects the university's economics and management schools, historically oriented to the telecom industry: the economics of networks, telecom regulation and markets, postal and express industries, and the management of information enterprises. Media studies reflects its work on digital media and network communication. Information law reflects its legal scholarship on the rules of cyberspace. Internet governance — the journal's signature field, examined next — binds them: it is at once an economic, managerial, media and legal subject, and BUPT is one of the few Chinese universities where all four perspectives sit on one campus with an engineering faculty behind them.

Internet governance: the signature field

Internet governance research in China has a documented BUPT lineage. Among the foundational Chinese studies of internet content regulation is a 2007 BUPT doctoral dissertation, Liu Bing's 'Research on the theoretical framework of China's internet content regulation', on which later national analyses of China's internet content policies — cataloguing hundreds of policy texts across issuing authorities and legislative levels — draw as a source. That lineage is characteristic: BUPT scholars studied the governance of networks early because the networks were their university's own subject. The journal publishes this field in its contemporary breadth: the structure and evolution of China's internet regulatory system, cyber security governance, platform governance, data governance and personal information protection, online content regulation, and the international politics of internet governance, in which China proposes its own approaches to the global community. Research on the journal's themes traces China's movement from one-way network management toward multi-actor governance and integrated online–offline regulation — debates conducted in Chinese journals including the posts-and-telecommunications universities' social science journals, where studies of internet governance models in China and abroad have appeared. For researchers of Chinese internet policy, the BUPT journal is a home title of the field.

Communication economics and management

Communication economics and management is the journal's second pillar. The economics of information and communications — network effects, platform markets, telecom competition and regulation, the digital economy's measurement — is studied at BUPT within sight of the industry itself: China's telecom operators, its internet platforms and its regulators are staffed substantially by the university's graduates, and Beijing concentrates their headquarters. Management research in the journal addresses the information industries: telecom and internet enterprise management, innovation management in high-technology firms, e-commerce and the management of digital services, and the postal and logistics sectors descended from the university's original posts mission. This industry-facing economics and management coverage distinguishes the journal from general management journals: its object is consistently the information economy, and its readership includes the sector's researchers and advanced practitioners as well as academics.

Media studies and information law

Media studies and information law form the journal's cultural and legal strands. Media studies at BUPT addresses network communication, new media, digital culture and the transformation of journalism and publishing by platforms — subjects on which a telecommunications university brings technical literacy to cultural analysis. Information law covers the legal architecture of the information society: telecommunications law, internet law, data and personal information law, intellectual property in digital environments, and the regulation of online speech and commerce. China's legislative programme in this field — cybersecurity, data security and personal information protection laws enacted in recent years — has made information law one of the most active areas of Chinese legal scholarship, and the journal publishes it from one of its natural homes. Together the two strands ensure the journal addresses the information society whole: its industries (economics and management), its governance (internet governance), its culture (media studies) and its rules (information law).

Readership and authors

The journal's authors are BUPT's social science faculty and researchers nationally in internet governance, communication economics, media studies and information law; its readers are that same national community, together with policy researchers in the information and communications sector. Social sciences editions of specialist universities' journals serve a double audience — the university's own scholars and the national community of their themes — and this journal's themes are nationally strategic: internet governance and the digital economy are central questions of Chinese public policy, studied in ministries, academies and universities across the country, whose scholars both write for and read the BUPT title. The journal circulates through China's academic journal channels and databases, where its articles are indexed and cited in the information-law, communication and management literatures.

Publication pattern

The journal is published bimonthly — six issues a year — in Chinese, in Beijing, sponsored by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Its Chinese title follows the standard form — the university journal's name with the social sciences edition specified — and it is catalogued under that title in Chinese libraries and databases. Bimonthly publication gives its fast-moving fields — internet governance and information law above all, where statutes and policies change yearly — a responsive scholarly rhythm, and its issues document the development of Chinese thinking on the information society in near-real time.

The journal among posts-and-telecommunications titles

China's posts and telecommunications universities — in Beijing, Nanjing, Chongqing and Xi'an — publish a small family of related journals, and their social science editions collectively form the periodical literature of the information industries' social study: studies of internet governance models, for example, have appeared in the Journal of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (Social Science edition) as part of the same scholarly conversation the BUPT journal hosts. Within that family the Beijing title is senior by its university's standing: BUPT is the sector's leading institution, located in the capital among the regulators and headquarters its journal studies. WorldNM's grouping of the title captures that position: it is the social science journal of China's first and foremost university of posts and telecommunications.

Significance

The Journal of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (Social Sciences Edition) is the social science journal of the information society in China: a bimonthly, Chinese-language journal publishing internet governance, communication economics and management, media studies and information law from the university that educates China's communications profession. No other Chinese comprehensive social science journal is so completely organised around information and communications. WorldNM lists it as an essential source for research on China's internet governance, digital economy and information law.