Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study a new pathway out of poverty for rural areas through cultivating non-farm employment: the new media utilization. Design/methodology/approach: The authors utilize two waves of nationwide micro survey data in China, China General Social Survey 2005 and 2013, to investigate the impacts of new media coverage on non-farm employment and earnings in rural China with the ordered probit model and instrument variables. Findings: The authors find that promotion of new media coverage can significantly enhance rural non-farm employment in China by 10-20 percent and ultimately increase earnings for rural residents. The findings provide new evidence for the new media as a potential newly emerging pathway out of poverty for rural areas. The conclusions are robust regarding a variety of controls and model specifications, evaluations with alternative measures, examinations within different subsamples, and estimations with constructed pseudo panels. Social implications: Encouragement of new media coverage in rural China not only can improve the rural non-farm employment and living standards but also can contribute toward narrowing the differences between urban and rural areas, thereby balancing regional development. Originality/value: It contributes to the existing literature through primarily empirically investigating the economic functions of new media in rural China.

This study evaluates the impacts of Internet use on political trust in China. Negative effects are consistently found across variant measures of political trust. IV and PSM estimations confirm that the negative impact is causal. Further, placebo tests show that the traditional media as the primary information source hasn’t generated such effects and trust in friends hasn’t been impacted by Internet use. This effect is most likely attributable to the fact that internet use in China exacerbates public perception toward government and government officials, increases public demand for political participation, and raises the expectation of government performance.

This article uses the 2010, 2013 and 2015 waves of Chinese General Social Survey to investigate the effects of Internet usage on gender role attitudes. OLS and IV estimates show that Internet usage can effectively mitigate discriminatory attitudes against females; the effects are stronger among females and rural residents. The Internet can cultivate ideology and affect gender norms through its educational and informative functions.