usc presentation 19 jan 16

ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA, CULTURAL POWER AND POST-GLOBALIZATION:

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHINA’S MEDIA AND CREATIVE

INDUSTRIES

Terry Flew, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

Presentation to US-China Institute, USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, Los Angeles, CA, 19 January 2016

Digital Media Research Centre

Joseph Nye’s Concept of soft power

• ‘Ability to shape the preferences of others’ based on:– Culture (in places where it is attractive to others)– Political values (when it lives up to them at home

and abroad)– Foreign policies (when others see them as

legitimate and having moral authority) Digital Media Research Centre

Nye on soft power and partners

• ‘Whether potential soft power resources translate into the behaviour of attraction that can influence others toward favourable outcomes … With soft power, what the target thinks is particularly important, and the targets matter as much as the agents. Attraction and persuasion are socially constructed. Soft power is a dance that requires partners’ (Nye, 2011, p. 84).


Use of the term ‘soft power’


Institute for Government ‘soft power index’ (2010)

• Culture: level of inbound tourism; international reach of state-sponsored media; number of foreign correspondents in the country; international use of national language; number of winter and summer Olympic gold medals;

• Diplomacy: foreign aid as percentage of GDP; number of languages spoken by the head of government; strictness of visa requirements; ranking of the national “brand”; and the number of dedicated cultural missions abroad;

• Government: position on the UN Human Development Index; position on the World Bank Good Governance index; position on the Freedom House index of political freedom and liberty; measures of trust in government; measures of personal life satisfaction;

• Education: number of universities in The Times Higher Education top 200; number of foreign students studying at a nation’s universities; the number of “think tanks” in a country;

• Business/innovation: number of international patents as a percentage of GDP; business competitiveness as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index; the level of corruption as measured by Transparency International; innovation index measured by the Boston Consulting Group; and foreign investment as a percentage of total capital investment;

• Subjective measures: the quality of high and popular cultural outputs; quality of national food and drink; relative international appeal of national celebrities; perceived quality of the national airline; the reputation of a nation’s embassies; and the perceived global effectiveness of its national head of government.


Institute for Government Soft Power Index Results (2010)


Portland/Facebook index (The Economist, July 18, 2015)


Soft power debates in China• ‘If a country has an admirable culture and ideological system,

other countries will tend to follow it … It does not have to use its hard power which is expensive and less efficient’ (Wang Huning, 1993)

• ‘The overall strength of China’s culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China’s international status’ (Hu Jintao, 2007)

• ‘To strengthen our cultural soft power, we should disseminate the values of modern China … More work should be done to refine and explain our ideas, and extend the platform for overseas publicity, so as to make our culture known through international communication and dissemination’ (Xi Jinping, 2015)


Dimensions of public diplomacy


1. Listening: collecting information on international opinions, whether by legal or covert means i.e. spying and intelligence gathering;

2. Advocacy: promoting particular policies, ideas or interests to foreign publics, typically through one’s own embassies in other countries;

3. Cultural diplomacy: promoting a nation’s cultural resources overseas and/or facilitating cultural transmission abroad (tourism, art shows, Confucius Institutes, British Council etc.);

4. Exchange diplomacy: promoting reciprocal exchanges of people with other nations e.g. as students and researchers (US Fulbright Scholarships, China Scholarships Council);

5. International broadcasting: the use of news bureaus, radio and television broadcasting, and Internet communication to engage with foreign publics (BBC World, CCTV International, France 24, Xinhua News Agency, China Radio Service, Russia Today).

China’s Soft Power Initiatives• Hosting global events (Beijing Olympics 2008,

Shanghai World Expo 2010)• Promoting scholarly exchanges (China Scholarships

Council)• Confucius Institutes• CCTV International, international expansion of

Xinhua News Agency and China Radio International• Co-production arrangements in films, TV programs

and online games


Three dimensions of cultural soft power


MEDIA PRIMARY AGENT CULTURAL FOCUS

Information/News Media State led High culture

Entertainment Media Commercially led Popular culture

Cultural Diplomacy


• ‘An actor’s attempt to manage the international environment through making its cultural resources and achievements known overseas and/or facilitating cultural transmission abroad. Historically, cultural diplomacy has meant a country’s policy to facilitate the export of examples of its culture’ (Cull, 2008)

• ‘’The goal underlying the use of this concept is for a country, particularly one with global influence, to convince the world of the correctness of its principles and ideas and to have these principles and ideas accepted. In this vein, culture is seen as a means of public relations and a method of strengthening a country’s influence. Cultural industries play a major role in this process. Propelled by commerce, they are powerful carriers and distributors of values and beliefs; disseminating cultural products and images to accommodate a wide range of malleable audiences’ (Otmazgin, 2008)

Strategies behind cultural diplomacy


• Increasing familiarity – making people think about your country and updating their image of it;

• Increasing appreciation – creating positive perceptions of your country and getting others to see issues from your perspective;

• Engaging people – encouraging people to see your country as an attractive destination for tourism and study and encouraging them to buy its products and subscribe to its values;

• Influencing people’s behaviour – getting companies to invest, encouraging public support for your country’s positions and convincing politicians to turn to it as an ally.

John Holden, Culture and Soft Power in the 21st Century, Report for British Council, 2013.

Issues with ‘soft power’ theories


• Tendency to conflate cultural diplomacy (intentionally-driven governmental practice) with cultural relations (primarily driven by non-state actors)

• What is ‘cultural’ in this concept?– ‘high culture’ or mass media?– Information or entertainment?– Commercial culture or state-supported culture?– Culture as things or processes?

Issues with ‘soft power’ from a communications/cultural studies perspective


• Transmission model of culture – distributional bias• Culture as things/artefacts rather than as connected to human

processes• Behavioral conception of power• Where does media/cultural power reside? – producers,

distributors, audiences?• ‘there is no guarantee that the audience for international

programming will decode the meaning of messages in a way the source would prefer, since interpretation occurs according to the prevailing cultural, social and political beliefs, attitudes and norms among individual audience members’. (Rawnsley, 2015, p. 280)

Actors in cultural diplomacy


• There are four categories of actor who can be regarded as making meaning with cultural products in this context, and who can therefore be described both as cultural producers and cultural consumers: namely, policy-makers themselves; institutions and individuals charged with implementing cultural diplomacy policy …; cultural practitioners; and, finally, individuals engaging with cultural products which are produced for or used in cultural diplomacy (Clarke, 2014, p. 8).

‘Active audience’ debate in communication and cultural studies


• ‘The field of Cultural Studies has perpetually oscillated between an emphasis on ‘power’ in terms of the imposition of ideology through culture, on the one hand, and ‘agency’ in terms of the relatively freedom of the consumer, on the other’ (Gibson, 2007, p. 167).

‘Soft power’ and ‘cultural imperialism”


• Cultural imperialism as ‘the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system’ (Schiller, 1976, p. 9).

• Nye and Schiller both see: – American culture as globally pervasive– Media having direct behavioral effects– Culture as defined around its distribution

Cultural power• Culture as resource• Culture as governmental• Nation branding• Links to cultural trade and creative economy strategies• As soft power ultimately derives from a communications

framework, we need to take questions of transnational communication flows and cross-cultural reception more seriously, and better apprehend the limits of cultural power as it is exercised through cultural diplomacy strategies involving global media.


US and UK as problematic exemplars for China

• US = entertainment/commercial = Global Hollywood?

• UK = information/state-led = BBC World?• Governments connected to both ostensibly

“independent” entities Digital Media Research Centre

Case Studies: United States


• Soft power appears to be in commercial entertainment media

• US information/news media remains very globally significant, but has faced crises of credibility in recent years (Iraq War WMD)

• Commercial entertainment media not too far away from government influence (US State Department; international trade agreements)

• Move towards networked ICT media (“No-Cal”) in competition with entertainment media (“So-Cal”)

Case Studies: Russia


• Insignificant in entertainment media• Russia Today (RT) established in 2005: state-

funded news channel in English, Arabic and Spanish

• Major international news service trying to ‘break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams’ (Vladimir Putin, June 2013)

Case Studies: India


• Insignificant in news media: Doordorshan largely unavailable outside of India

• Major global player in entertainment media (“Bollywood”)

• Films appeal to family/community values – also to religious sentiments – very popular throughout South-S-E Asia and Middle East

Case Studies: Japan


• Some significance in news (NHK) but major influence in entertainment media

• Commercial/popular culture led: manga, anime, animation, games, technology products – major influence in Asia

• Japanese government has developed “Cool Japan” strategy in 2000s – “Gross National Cool” led by media and creative industries

• Seeking to reinforce economic infleucne and match it to soft power - "the ability to indirectly influence behaviour or interests through cultural or ideological means” (Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 2015)

Japan viewed favourably in Asian region generally, but less so in China and South

Korea

Case Studies: South Korea


• Mixed model; state-supported/protected popular culture up to 1990s

• First Korean Wave in 2000s: films, TV programs, K-pop

• KOCCA: Korean Creative Content Agency – established in 2009

• Second Korean Wave: K-pop, Gangnam Style• More positive views of South Korea in China in

2010s

Some case studies of soft power


The case of China


• The Chinese culture belongs not only to the Chinese, but to the whole world.

(Hu Jintao, address to the Australian Federal Parliament, October 2003).• ‘Going-out’ strategy:– News/information: CCTV International, CRS, Xinhua– Entertainment: films, animation, games– Other cultural: art exhibitions, Confucius Institutes

Communication and cultural understanding


• ‘The Chinese have an abiding faith in the ability of international broadcasting to shape the global conversation about China, and an unshakeable belief that the Chinese must explain themselves and their behavior to an international audience that allegedly misunderstands them. Hence public diplomacy activities are designed around the principle ‘To know us is to love us’ … the intangibles of public diplomacy can be converted via communication and international broadcasting into tangible foreign policy benefits’ (Rawnsley, 2015: 274-75).

China’s Opportunities


• Large capacity for capital investment in new cultural products

• Large domestic market (domestic market has been key to US media industries)

• Chinese diaspora• Partnerships/co-productions: opportunities for

knowledge transfer and acquisition of “soft skills”• Tech-savvy national population with high aspirations• Growing global power of Chinese tech firms

China’s Challenges


• Strong separation of news and entertainment in terms of state policy

• State censorship and “Great Firewall”: “walled garden” social media e.g. Twitter used by CCTV International but unavailable within China

• Different domestic/international audience entertainment expectations e.g. popular Chinese films are “foreign” films in the US

• Ambivalent relationship to the US e.g. TPP excludes China• Who is the target? - easiest audiences (e.g. expatriate

Chinese) will not be generators of significant soft power

Blockbusters


• The Hollywood blockbuster has had great cultural influence in China

• Appeal of Chinese blockbusters has declined over time – mid-budget films more popular with local audiences (e.g. Lost in … series)

• Chinese interest in co-productions– Outlet for investment capital– Access to knowledge and soft skills

• US interest in co-productions– Access to Chinese finance– Access to Chinese domestic market

Generic culture of blockbusters


Vernacular power: If You Are The One


• If You Are The One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao (非诚勿扰 ) – dating show on Jiangsu TV – commenced in 2010 – est. audience 36m.

• Based on unsuccessful Australian TV format (Taken Out) – now very popular in Australia on SBS 2

• Contentious program – SARFT warned in 2011 against conspicuous displays of wealth and “wrong values” – “I’d rather cry in a BMW”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vmz-zydQ7o

Cultural power and post-globalization• Political, economic and cultural power – interconnected

(critical political economy) or divergent (globalisation theories)

• How does cultural power intersect – or not – with political and economic power?

• How active are audiences in the shaping of cultural meaning?

• What implications do new media have – “new public diplomacy” debates

• Continuing power of nation-states in global context – post-globalization
