NEW MEDIA EVENTS AND THE IMAGE OF CHINA: THE BEIJING OLYMPIC GAMES

Välkommen till seminarium i serien KOMMUNIKATION: KULTUR, TEKNOLOGI,
VETENSKAP


Tid: Torsdag den 14 maj, 2009, kl. 14.15-16

Plats: Torget, Lindstedtsvägen 5, plan 6, Skolan för datavetenskap och
kommunikation, KTH

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Föredragshållare: Professor Gong Wenxiang, Peking University


Titel: NEW MEDIA EVENTS AND THE IMAGE OF CHINA: THE BEIJING OLYMPIC GAMES

Abstract:

This paper borrows and revises the theory of Dayan & Katz from their book
Media Event: the Live Broadcasting of History, and views China's mass
media coverage of 2008 Olympic Games as a major media event for the
Government to propagate its ideology, values, policy, and political goals,
and the utmost purpose is to present the bright image of China to the
whole world. The paper goes further to argue that with the advent of the
Internet Age, and the unprecedented growth of Internet users in China,
things have changed. The monopoly of traditional media is being eroded or
even replaced at times by the active participation of the newly emerging
Netizens mainly composed of the educated younger generations. Rules
governing the working of Dayan’s Media Events have been altered by the
interruption of New Media Events initiated not by the Authorities, but by
NGOs, sub-cultural groups, or simply individuals. The paper presents
several cases, such as the case of condemning the CNN commentator
Cafferty, the case of boycotting Carrefour, etc, to illustrate the
characteristics of new media events, and to compare the similarities and
differences of Media Events old and new. Both types of media events during
the Beijing Olympic Games are analyzed as persuasive campaigns especially
for constructing the good Image of China. Since the construction of the
State image is a very complicated process, goals always are not easily
reached, and so would be the case with the Beijing Games. The final
question, have the events online created the potential for a sort of
E-democracy, remains to be answered.


Mer information om vårens seminarier inklusive vägbeskrivning finns på:
http://xml.nada.kth.se/media/Research/k-sem/k-sem-aktuell/

Bakom seminariet står Leif Dahlberg, Per-Anders Forstorp, Eva-Maria
Jacobsson,Francis Lee, Daniel Pargman, Minna Räsänen, Jenny Sundén.
Kontaktperson under VT 2009 är Per-Anders Forstorp (forstorp@kth.se).