Affective place branding: Mediatization of the Wutong-scape in Shanghai

This article explores the meta-semiotic complexity of place branding through the theoretical lenses of affect and mediatization. Drawing on ethnographic data collected through ‘city-walking’ experiences, photographs of semiotic landscapes, and public discourses on social media, this article investigates how the affective potentials of nostalgic Shanghai are regulated, experienced, modulated and creatively transformed through the dynamic interplay between mediatization, mediation and remediation. The findings suggest two major implications. Firstly, an open-textured but still recognizable realm of affective arrangement emerges within the constant calibration of the three-way interplay in affective place branding. Secondly, consumers enter into such a realm embedded with their reciprocal capacities of affecting and being affected. Their affective resonance with the situated environment ultimately brands the place.