Events

China Media Centre 2013 Spring Seminar

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China Media Centre 2013 Spring Seminar

ONLINE GAMING ADDICTS’ WAR

Understanding Online Youth Discourse in China

Speaker: Dr Yuntao Zhang

Chair: Professor Hugo de Burgh

Date: Tuesday 5th March 2013

Time: 1:30pm-3pm

Venue: A7.3, Harrow Campus, University of Westminster

OPEN TO ALL

 

Abstract

In this seminar, I will explore the attitudes of young Chinese netizens towards the state through a case study of the online ‘e’gao’ film (machinema), ‘Online Gaming Addicts’ War’. The ‘Online Gaming Addicts’ War’ – was an ironic but none the less provocative response to the Chinese government’s online censorship policies and great britain drugs levitra brand broader issues of political corruption.  It demonstrates the post-80s generation’s grass-roots spontaneity and defiance of authority, as expressed in the emergence of this ‘spoofing’ subculture. The talk aims to understand how spoofing culture discourses emerged and developed within the contradictory cultural context of the new market economy and the continuing authoritarian state. It concludes with some reflections on the implications of this case for the broader issue of political change in China.

 

Dr. Yuntao Zhang is lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies in the School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, UK. She is the author of The Origins of the Modern Chinese Press (2007: Routledge) and of several other articles on Chinese media and culture.  She is currently researching into the cultural dimensions of new media technologies and vardenafil best price practices in contemporary China.

 

More about China Media Centre and seminars see https://chinamediacentre.org. If you have any queries about CMC events, please contact Hong Li at hong.li@my.westminster.ac.uk

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China Media Centre 2012 Autumn Seminar

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China Media Centre 2012 Autumn Seminar

Making the Voice Heard: CCTV Expansion Abroad

 

Speaker: Dr Si Si

Chair: Professor Hugo de Burgh

Date: Monday 3rd December 2012

Time: 1pm-3pm

Venue: A7.4, Harrow Campus

OPEN TO ALL

 

Abstract

This is an ongoing research project, in this presentation: Dr. Si Si will first lay out CCTV coverage rate and current issues out of China. She will then draw upon the main overseas strategies of CCTV. It is the official destination of CCTV overseas part to broadcast news and programmes and to build Soft Power of China. However, based on some interviews and reports from western world, she will present the debates regarding the destination of CCTV expansion abroad. Dr. Si Si will conclude with a few thoughts on both CCTV overseas expansion issues and the state-owned television broadcaster.

Dr. Si Si is currently a visiting academic fellow at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. She is an assistant professor in Media Management and commander levitra sur internet Economics at China Conservatory, Arts Management Department. She is also a research fellow of Media Management & Transformation Center – East Asia Institute (MMTC-EA), Jonkoping University & Tsinghua University. She holds a PhD degree in media economics both from Communication University of China and Case Western Reserve University in the US.

She was a director of editorial department at China Business Update (2005-2008), a journal published by the Ministry of Commerce of China. From 2008-2009 she was a journalist of USA Sino News, covered all home court games of Cleveland Cavaliers 08-09 NBA season in the US.

Dr. Si Si is now leading one of a Key Projects of Beijing Municipal Commission of Education: ‘The Research on Media Industry Cluster in Beijing’. During her visiting at RISJ, she will research on CCTV expansion strategies in Europe. Her research interests are media economics, media cluster, media strategies and revenue in the context of television and new media.

 

More about China Media Centre and seminars see https://chinamediacentre.org. If you have any queries about CMC events, please contact Hong Li at hong.li@my.westminster.ac.uk

 

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China Media Centre 2012 Autumn Seminar

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China Media Centre 2012 Autumn Seminar

CASTING AN ‘OUTSIDER’ IN THE RITUAL CENTRE

Two Decades of Performances of ‘Rural Migrants’ in CCTV Spring Festival Gala Show

 

Speaker: Dr Yan Yuan

Chair: Dr Xin Xin

Date: Wednesday 28th November 2012

Time: 2pm-4pm

Venue: MHW A7.1 General Teaching, Harrow Campus

OPEN TO ALL

 

Abstract

For those who want to experience the power of the media ritual in contemporary China, the best example is China Central TV’s (CCTV) Spring Festival Gala Show, a televised ceremony aired on every Chinese New Year’s Eve since 1983. Previous studies have been focused on how this invented tradition wields its ritual effects to impose a hegemonic national identity and social order as part of the propaganda of the authorities. Very little, however, has been discussed about what made this official TV programme look like a ritual that was integral in the broader festivity of the year turning, and how its ritual authority has been historically constructed. One remarkable phenomenon in the broadcasting history of the Gala Show offered us an interesting angle to addresses this gap. From 1990 to 2011, a social character representing the increasing presence of rural migrants in Chinese cities arose as a central role on the stage of the Gala Show. Content analyses of two decades of performances related to this character demonstrate a four-stage scripting process in the portrayal of this ritual subject, including ‘demon intrusion’, ‘status reversal’, ‘status elevation’, and ‘grassroots celebrity’. Each stage enacted a different ritual mechanism in response to the agenda emerging in the according historical period of the Gala Show. Such a dynamic process exemplifies an important form of ritualised action in the media world: the persistent and strategic casting of the ‘social outsider’ in the ritual centre. By shedding light on this previously less developed domain, the case study reveals another layer of complexity of how the sacred power of the media ritual is constructed, negotiated, and sustained under the entanglement of multiple social forces.

 

Dr. Yan Yuan is a graduate of School of Media, Art, and Design at the University of Westminster. She finished her PhD in 2011 with a research titled: ‘A Different Place in the Making – Everyday Practices of Rural Migrants in Chinese Urban Villages’, which presents an ethnographic investigation into the place-making process through everyday life practices of Chinese rural migrants in their urban settlements and its influences on the formation of the migratory identity. Before her PhD, Dr. Yan Yuan was a vice-professor of School of Journalism and Communication at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. She also has many years of TV journalistic experience in China, including working as an investigative journalist for CCTV.

 

 

More about China Media Centre and seminars see https://chinamediacentre.org. If you have any queries about CMC events, please contact Hong Li at hong.li@my.westminster.ac.uk

 

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CAN WEIBO CHANGE CHINA?

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China Media Centre 2012 Autumn Seminar

CAN WEIBO CHANGE CHINA?

Weibo and Ideal Communication Situation in China

Speaker: Professor Junchao Wang

Chair: Professor Hugo de Burgh

Date: Wednesday 14th November 2012

Time: 2pm-4pm

Venue: A7.1

OPEN TO ALL

“To be or not to be, that is the question.” But to the Chinese Micro-blogging site Weibo, Hamlet’s famous soliloquy is not a question; the question is whether or not Weibo will able to change China. The speaker will discuss the following four aspects:

1) Can Weibo be considered a Habermasian ‘public sphere’ in China?

2) Will the ‘Weibo community expert committee’ completely replace official instructions?

3) Will Weibo turn into a free market for public opinions by gradually eliminating or diminishing online rumors?

4) Can Weibo eliminate ‘systematically distorted communication’ so as to realize the ‘ideal communication situation’?

Professor Junchao Wang, Tsinghua University. Dr Wang obtained his Ph.D. from the J-School of Renmin University in 2000. He joined the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University in 2002 from his previous post as a Senior Editor for the Overseas Edition of People’s Daily, where he had worked for eight years. He was Faculty Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University in 2007 and Visiting Reseacher at Goldsmith and Oxford Internet Institute in 2012. His Chinese publications include Media Criticism: Origins, Criteria and Methods (2001, Beijing Broadcasting Institute Press), Third Eye on Mass Media (2009, Tsinghua University Press), New Perspectives on the Communication Strategies of the CCP Newspapers (2009, Tsinghua University Press, Author of the first Volume in the series), 25 Lectures on Mass Media (co-edited, 2004, Tsinghua University Press). He has published more than 40 papers in Chinese on micro blogging and expression, media criticism, media and society, and journalism studies.

Dr. Wang is a media critic with ten years’ experience in media criticism teaching and practice. He has served as media adviser for the China Business Times since 2002, CCTV-Focus On Program in 2004. He has also been involved in two national social science projects on the development of Chinese news commentary and communication strategies of CCP newspapers respectively. He is now the principal investigator (PI) of “The Freedom of Expression and Ideal Communication Situation of Micro blogging” which is supported by The Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of the Ministry of Education. He founded and acted as the former editor-in-chief of the first media criticism website in Mainland China in 2007.He has been the Deputy Director of Tsinghua University News Centre during July 2010-June 2012 and simultaneously the joint Chief Editor of the official news website of Tsinghua University, which is of great help to his new media criticism research.

More about China Media Centre and seminars see https://chinamediacentre.org. If you have any queries about CMC events, please contact Hong Li at hong.li@my.westminster.ac.uk

 

 

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Soft Power and the Creative Industries: China and Britain

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Palace of Westminster

Wednesday, 25 April 2012

The Chinese Government has just committed itself to using ‘culture’ and ‘public diplomacy’ as a driver to increase global understanding about China. This reflects concern that China must do better in promoting its culture at home and abroad; recognition of the part that the creative industries will play in boosting domestic demand; determination that ‘made in China’ be replaced by ‘created in China’.

To demonstrate that commitment, Vice-President Xi Jinping recently attended the signing of a major creative industry deal between Shanghai Media Group and the famous USA Dreamworks Group. Vice-President Xi’s attendance was a sign of the grasp of the importance of the creative industries at the highest level.

The implications for Britain of these culture industry initiatives by China:

The British Government wants many more business links between the UK and Chinese creative industries. The UK is recognised as being one of the most advanced creative industry centres in the world and Chinese companies know this. The UK has been a global leader in cultural industries and public diplomacy since the foundation of the British Council and the BBC in the 1930s. The government of both countries are determined to increase cooperation.

The Forum was opened by Minister Zhao Qizheng, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the CPPCC, and spokesperson for the CPPCC. Until recently head of the State Council’s Information Office, he is acknowledged as the pioneer of China’s public diplomacy.

The Forum on April 25 at the Palace of Westminster drew UK attention to the recent policy changes in China, extrapolated on the implications for Britain, and provided a valuable occasion for our creative businesses to identify opportunities, and for ministers and parliamentarians to understand the potential of China partnerships.

FINAL Soft Power and Creative Industries Programme

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