Radio and consumer affairs: A comparative study of China and the United Kingdom.

Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts the coverage of consumer affairs on radio in the two very different nations of China and the UK. In China, the daily programme Tian Tian 315 regularly achieves some of the highest audiences of the state broadcaster China National Radio. In 2015 it received one of the highest national awards for journalism because of its impact on the developing consumer movement in China, the largest market economy in the world, as well as on individual consumers - its listeners. In the UK one of the main fixed points in the Radio 4 schedule of the public broadcaster the BBC is the programme You and Yours, which champions consumer rights five days a week. Moneybox takes a more specialised approach to issues over personal finance and is broadcast weekly on Radio 4. All of these programmes are broadcast during daytime, in prominent timeslots. The paper uses representative extracts from the two countries to illustrate a quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis of their public broadcasters' output and approach to consumer affairs, as well as some examples of radio having produced tangible results in improving the regulatory or commercial environment for listeners needing support as individual consumers. It also asks to what extent consumer affairs are represented in more general programming, including in news coverage on CNR and the BBC, and what is the appeal of this genre of speech radio when individual items may only be of direct relevance to a minority of those listening. Dr Ying Yu is a Research Fellow and Director of the Consumer Rights in China Programme at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on consumer protection from the international comparative law and private international law perspectives. Her research interests include media representations of consumer protection policy and the law of e-commerce, financial services, tourism, dispute resolution and cross-border transactions between China and the rest of the world. Professor Guy Starkey is Associate Dean, Global Engagement at Bournemouth University. He was Chair of the Radio Research Section of ECREA (2008-14). His academic publications include the books Local Radio, Going Global (2015), Radio in Context, second edition (2014), Radio Journalism (with Professor Andrew Crisell, 2009) and Balance and Bias in Journalism: Representation, Regulation and Democracy (2007). In 2014 he published Radio: The Resilient Medium at the University of Sunderland.