{"title":"China’s Experiments with Social Media: Singing Along with Xi Jinping About the Belt and Road Initiative","authors":"A. Kuteleva","doi":"10.1177/00094455231155806","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"As the Chinese state ramps up its efforts in international narrative competitions, Chinese media master new genres and test different visual languages on global social media platforms. The diverse content they produce provides a new source of information about China’s self-representations intended for foreigners and thus provides a condensed answer to one of the key questions of China’s foreign policy: Who is China? It also responds to the question that many observers outside of China pose: What does China’s rise mean for the rest of the world? To explain how Chinese state media use new mediums to (re)imagine China and narrate its relations with the world, this study focuses on the entertainment visual content they posted on YouTube between 2013 and 2019 to introduce and endorse Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Using a critical discursive methodology, it decodes text-visual frames created by Chinese media to bring to the fore components of BRI’s discursive politics that are imperceptible in formal diplomatic communications.","PeriodicalId":44314,"journal":{"name":"中国报道","volume":"59 1","pages":"80 - 94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"中国报道","FirstCategoryId":"1092","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00094455231155806","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"AREA STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
China’s Experiments with Social Media: Singing Along with Xi Jinping About the Belt and Road Initiative
As the Chinese state ramps up its efforts in international narrative competitions, Chinese media master new genres and test different visual languages on global social media platforms. The diverse content they produce provides a new source of information about China’s self-representations intended for foreigners and thus provides a condensed answer to one of the key questions of China’s foreign policy: Who is China? It also responds to the question that many observers outside of China pose: What does China’s rise mean for the rest of the world? To explain how Chinese state media use new mediums to (re)imagine China and narrate its relations with the world, this study focuses on the entertainment visual content they posted on YouTube between 2013 and 2019 to introduce and endorse Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Using a critical discursive methodology, it decodes text-visual frames created by Chinese media to bring to the fore components of BRI’s discursive politics that are imperceptible in formal diplomatic communications.
期刊介绍:
China Report promotes the free expression and discussion of different ideas, approaches and viewpoints which assist a better understanding of China and its East Asian neighbours. A quarterly journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies, it attempts to provide a fresh approach which goes beyond the strictly utilitarian area studies without becoming antiquarian. Launched in 1964, China Report has, over the years, widened its interests and aims and transformed itself into a scholarly journal that seeks a better understanding of China and its East Asian neighbours - particularly their cultures, their development and their relations with China. It is an indispensable source of information on China, its society and culture.