CCTV's Global Outreach: Examining the Audiences of China's ‘New Voice’ on Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 151 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Gorfinkel ◽  
Sandy Joffe ◽  
Cobus Van Staden ◽  
Yu-Shan Wu
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Brand Awareness ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Global Media ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
China Central Television

This scoping article introduces key issues surrounding the globalisation of China Central Television (CCTV), focusing on its African operations, content and reception, specifically in Kenya and South Africa. At a time when the Chinese government is seeking to enhance positive perceptions of China and China–Africa relations, and its associated media outlets are seeking to compete with other major global players like CNN and the BBC, this article takes steps towards understanding the extent to which CCTV may be succeeding in these missions. Some of the challenges identified for CCTV-Africa in our small-scale pilot study include attempting to simultaneously target ‘African’, ‘Western’ and Chinese audience groups, which may detract from its ability to appeal to specific international audiences; competition from other international and local broadcasters who already have a strong spectator base; and a lack of accessibility, awareness and sustained interest in the channel. It calls for more in-depth research into global audiences' reception of CCTV-Africa, and CCTV more generally, in order to track CCTV's brand awareness and assess whether China's global media soft power activities actually have any leverage in enhancing cross-cultural relations and international audiences' perceptions of China in Africa and the world.

Psychology Within and Without the State

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The World ◽  
Psychological Similarity

Psychological research in small-scale societies is crucial for what it stands to tell us about human psychological diversity. However, people in these communities, typically Indigenous communities in the global South, have been underrepresented and sometimes misrepresented in psychological research. Here I discuss the promises and pitfalls of psychological research in these communities, reviewing why they have been of interest to social scientists and how cross-cultural comparisons have been used to test psychological hypotheses. I consider factors that may be undertheorized in our research, such as political and economic marginalization, and how these might influence our data and conclusions. I argue that more just and accurate representation of people from small-scale communities around the world will provide us with a fuller picture of human psychological similarity and diversity, and it will help us to better understand how this diversity is shaped by historical and social processes. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 73 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals Entertainment media, cultural power, and post-globalization: The case of China’s international media expansion and the discourse of soft power

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 278-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Flew
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Transmission Model ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
International Expansion ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
International Media ◽  
Nation States

The concept of soft power has been highly influential in recent years, both as a concept to inform understanding of the cultural dimensions of international relations and as providing a practical guide to state investment in the international expansion of both news and entertainment media. One of the places where it has been most influential has been China, where is has been used to support the international expansion of China Central Television and the growth of Chinese entertainment media conglomerates. It is argued in this article, however, that the concept rests upon a weak understanding of the cultural dimensions of power and upon the transmission model of communication. As a result, there has tended to be a distributional bias in investing in cultural diplomacy and relatively little attention has been given to how audiences actually engage with international media content. Applied to the Chinese case, it is argued that support for entertainment media is more likely to support the aspirations of the Chinese government than news media, although news is likely to be prioritized for political reasons. At a more conceptual level, discussion of national soft power strategies and their relation to global media points to the need for new approaches in global media and communication studies, that could be termed post-globalization, that can address strengths and weaknesses in both critical political economy and media globalization approaches, and recognize the continuing centrality of nation states to the structuring of global media flows across territorial boundaries.

scholarly journals Sino-US film coproduction: A global media primer

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiying Peng
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Consumer Demand ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Chinese Market ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
The World ◽  
Chinese Consumer ◽  
International Success

This China–US case study describes the negotiation between Chinese consumer demand and the growing Chinese market for cinema, the Chinese film industry’s aspiration for international success and domestic development, the Chinese government’s soft power ambitions and the largest and most successful film industry in the world – Hollywood. This article gives a brief look at the Sino-US film coproduction history, examines the root reason for the phenomena of ‘fake’ coproduction and analyses the challenges that hurdle the deep cooperation (‘real’ coproduction) process.

Reporting for China: Cosmopolitan Attitudes and the “Chinese Perspective” among Chinese Correspondents Abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pál Nyíri
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Institutional Pressures ◽  
Media Freedom ◽  
Chinese Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Potential Damage ◽  
New Generation ◽  
China Central Television

AbstractWestern scholars’ and policy analysts’ attention to the expansion of China’s media abroad has focused on the state’s strategy of soft power behind the global spread of institutions such as Xinhua and China Central Television, on the propagandistic image of China that these institutions seek to project in their foreign-language programming, and on the potential damage to media freedom in Africa and elsewhere. No attention has been paid to the reverse: how the emergence of a global network of Chinese correspondents impacts dominant Chinese views of the world and China’s place in it. The ethnographic research project on which this article is based reverses this lens, seeking to understand how Chinese journalists who report for PRC media from abroad see their work, what stories about the world they want to tell Chinese audiences about the world and how their choices are shaped by state policies, institutional pressures and individual preferences. Its preliminary conclusion is that while the lifestyles of the new generation of correspondents are increasingly cosmopolitan, this does not necessarily translate into more innovative or reflexive reporting.

Rethinking China’s Soft Power

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Houlden ◽  
Heather Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Confucius Institutes ◽  
Chinese Popular Culture

AbstractWhat has been dubbed “China’s rise” has been met with trepidation or outright fear. The increasing economic and political power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is often read as a harbinger of the West’s imminent decline, and as a threat to a Western dominated global order. To match its growing ‘hard’ power, leaders in China have outlined intentions to cultivate the country’s soft power, or its appeal and influence globally. These efforts too have been read in largely negative terms in a body of literature that has sprung up around Chinese soft power. Yet, these works tend to assume negative implications without being grounded in empirical research. The contributors to this issue were tasked with reconsidering China’s soft power in the light of research which attends to the ideas and practices of its mediums – mediums such as the expansion of China’s global media network, the opening of Confucius Institutes around the world, and the increasing presence of Chinese popular culture in global forums. This introduction, in particular, considers some of the lessons that considerations of Chinese soft power can learn from the field of global studies.

China’s Public Diplomacy Goes Political

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Ingrid d’Hooghe
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
The World ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
The Belt And Road

Summary China’s growing confidence on the world stage under the leadership of President Xi Jinping is reflected in the country’s more active, vocal and, lately, even ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. It is also clearly visible in China’s public diplomacy approach, where priorities have shifted from advertising Chinese culture as the country’s major source of soft power to promoting China’s models of domestic and global governance. The Chinese government proudly presents policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative and, more recently China’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, as improvements in global governance or sometimes even as Chinese ‘gifts’ to the world. This article argues that under President Xi, the content and form of China’s public diplomacy have changed. China’s public diplomacy has hardened, it is more strongly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and the content of China’s public diplomacy messages have become more political.

scholarly journals Confucius Institutes as Instruments of Soft Power: Comparison with International Rivals

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. Ngamsang ◽  
Author(s):  
Sirirat Ngamsang
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Late Development ◽  
Power Comparison ◽  
British Council ◽  
The World ◽  
Confucius Institutes

The Chinese Confucius Institutes, which have become common around the world and particularly in Asia, have followed the examples of the British Council, Alliance Française and the Goethe Institute. Yet by following the earlier examples, Confucius Institutes have the benefit of late development and can learn from the experiences of earlier approaches. This paper studies and analyses the overseas educations institutions of China, Britain, France and Germany to identify similarities and dissimilarities and then draws conclusions from this. It is shown that Confucius Institutes are a representative of the overseas soft power approach of the Chinese government and have multiple intentions and purposes.

scholarly journals Modernization of Confucianism: An Ethnographic Observation of Cultural Promoting Community

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xing Yu Zhu ◽  
Abdul Razaque Chhachhar
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
New Era ◽  
Chinese Traditional Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethnographic Observation ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract China is becoming one of the super powers in the world and the Chinese government is trying to promote Confucianism, the core philosophy of East Asia to the rest of the world in order to strengthen its soft power. As modernization is becoming the global process since the Cold War, the modernization of Confucianism is as well under process to fit in the new era. This article is based on a case of Confucianism promoting project to study the process and effect of cultural modernization and test how modernization helps the promotion of traditional Chinese culture. Such as, 1. The modernization will trigger voluntary and involuntary changes of the culture. 2. Cultural modernization will create a common language with other culture background people that are helpful in order to better understand Chinese traditional culture. 3. Different cultural background people are more sensitive to their own cultural elements even modernization combines various factors of traditional and modern culture or foreigner and local culture.

Chinese Diaspora and Social Media: Negotiating Transnational Space

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanning Sun
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Diaspora ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Chinese Migrants ◽  
The World

The period since about the late 1980s has witnessed the phenomenal ascent of the People’s Republic of China as a political, economic, and military power on the global stage. China’s rise has engendered an earnest, if perhaps not well-executed, agenda to promote a more attractive image of the country. In this period China has also experienced a rapid escalation in outbound migration to various parts of the world, with a small number of countries in the global West emerging as the preferred destinations for Chinese migrants, and, in some cases, China becoming their biggest source of new migrants. In the United States, China replaced Mexico as the top sending country in 2018. In Canada, mainland China has taken over from Hong Kong and Taiwan as the largest source of Chinese immigration, while in Australia, China now has the second-largest migrant population behind the United Kingdom, and has only recently slipped into second position behind India as the nation’s leading source of new immigrants. These developments have made China’s diaspora the biggest in the world. In the eyes and minds of the Chinese government, Chinese migrants are important potential assets in its efforts to push its global soft power agenda. The period of accelerated outbound migration from China coincided with the emergence of first the internet, and then digital media—in particular, the most popular Chinese social media platform, WeChat (Weixin in Chinese). Against the backdrop of these developments at the macro level, the topic of social media and the Chinese diaspora becomes a question of considerable significance. Some analysts argue that the dramatically enlarged mainland Chinese diaspora has effectively become an instrument of China’s soft power agenda, while others point out the positive role that members of this group play in their host communities. In particular, they highlight the potential of Chinese-language social media—and in particular WeChat, which is widely used by Chinese people both within and outside China—to have a beneficial impact on Chinese immigrants’ prospects for social integration in the countries where they now reside. The pursuit of these questions entails a brief foray into a number of research areas, including the Chinese diaspora, the history and transformation of Chinese-language diasporic media, the infrastructural and regulatory framework of WeChat, and public diplomacy via diaspora. Addressing these questions also has the benefit of broadening, and possibly enriching, the concepts of digital diaspora, on the one hand, and digital citizenship, on the other.

scholarly journals Bazaar aesthetics: On excess and economic rationality

2020 ◽  
pp. 136787792097164
Author(s):  
Maitrayee Deka
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Economic Rationality ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Internet Connectivity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

For more than a century, social theoretical writings on consumer culture and commodity aesthetics have concentrated on the world of capitalist commodities and commercial spaces: on brands, shopping malls and global media culture. Popular commodity aesthetics have had a marginal presence in the literature. However, today, as the popular masses are entering commercial culture to an unprecedented extent, through cheap electronics, ubiquitous internet connectivity and accessible knock-offs, popular commodity aesthetics have increased in importance. In this article, I use fieldwork in Delhi’s electronics bazaars to develop an inside perspective on the popular aesthetic of the bazaar. I argue that bazaars are characterized by excess: the excess of a seemingly chaotic architecture, household objects, and unhindered sociality. The excess is not simply a symptom of an underlying irrationality. It is deeply embedded in the social and economic life of bazaars and contributes towards the ability of small-scale commerce to endure and survive.

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