{"podcast":{"title":"Barbarians at the Gate","slug":"barbarians-at-the-gate-434733","podcast_index_feed_id":434733,"rss_url":"https://feeds.blubrry.com/feeds/barbarians.xml","website_url":"http://granitestudio.org","image_url":"https://assets.blubrry.com/coverart/orig/359922-172016.jpg","author":"Barbarians at the Gate","episode_count":110,"summary":"A semi-serious deep dive into Chinese history and culture broadcast from Beijing and hosted by Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser.","last_synced_at":"2026-06-19T00:19:24.204604+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/barbarians-at-the-gate-434733"},"episode":{"title":"Barbarians Remix: Seeking News, Making China","slug":"barbarians-remix-seeking-news-making-china","published_at":"2025-09-16T15:33:51+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/barbarians-at-the-gate-434733/barbarians-remix-seeking-news-making-china","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/barbarians-at-the-gate-434733","url":"https://blubrry.com/barbarians/148534856/barbarians-remix-seeking-news-making-china/","audio_url":"https://media.blubrry.com/barbarians/content.blubrry.com/barbarians/BATG-2025-09-16-101.mp3","summary":"In this encore episode of Barbarians at the Gate, first broadcast in March 2024, John Alekna talks about his fascinating new book Seeking News, Making China: Information Technology and the Emergence of Mass Society. In 20th-century China, the gradual importation and development of information technology had an enormous impact on the way news was disseminated and accessed by the general public. When radio first appeared in the early 1920s, fewer than 8 in 1,000 people had access to newspapers, whereas by the Mao period hundreds of millions of citizens were receiving daily news and information via radio, TV, and shortwave technology. This book provides an enlightening “meta-historical” account of the evolving communications technologies that fueled the May Fourth Movement, KMT and CCP propaganda campaigns during WWII, and the mass information campaigns of the Mao era, such as the Cultural Revolution. The book describes how the various interlocking information technologies, infrastructure, and communication channels—what Alekna calls the “newsscape”—affected popular opinion, politics, and state power. John Alekna is an Assistant Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at Peking University.","meta_description":"In this encore episode of Barbarians at the Gate, first broadcast in March 2024, John Alekna talks about his fascinating new book Seeking News, Making Chi…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2253,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/barbarians-at-the-gate-434733/episodes/barbarians-remix-seeking-news-making-china/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/barbarians-at-the-gate-434733/barbarians-remix-seeking-news-making-china.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}