The “Conditional Unbias” of Data Journalism in China’s News Industry

Within a highly restrictive media environment, data journalism provides a "fuzzy region" in which non-official Chinese media organizations can engage in news production through the selection, analysis and visualization of open data and statistics. With the decline of critical investigative journalism in China over the past decade, this emerging journalistic genre has been the subject of great hope in regard to its potential to offer impartial news, function as a watchdog, and facilitate democracy. Through the conceptual lens of structural media bias, this study investigates whether China's data journalism could support democratic functions and better perform the journalistic value of objectivity. We analyze data journalistic works (N = 531) from four influential media outlets between 2019 and 2021. Our findings demonstrate that data journalism has brought a form of "conditional unbias" to China's news industry, easing entry for non-official media actors, diversifying news topics, broadening and normalizing news sources, and bypassing the "loyal facilitator" role. On the other hand, Chinese data journalists' avoidance of political issues, lack of critical stance and detachment from the watchdog function of journalism illustrate that China's censored and tendentious media tradition has maintained a durable influence on today's "let data speak" epoch.