The Changing Face of Diplomacy: Analyzing the Use of New Media in Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Office Douyin Account
Poster Number
37
Introduction/Abstract
Under the development of internet technology, news media is constantly iterating and updating and is becoming more social and mobile at a faster pace. Mainstream media, which once occupied a dominant position, is facing competition and challenges from social new media such as institutional media, platform media, and self-media. Against this background, mainstream media is actively exploring and adapting to the new media ecological environment by making efforts on social media platforms, attempting to change their traditional media content production methods and distribution channels, and trying to win a place in the social media era. From self-media to official media, various industries are starting to expand their new domains in the new media field. Government new media refers to the official accounts registered on social media platforms by various government departments through real-name authentication. They have become the main way for providing public services, promoting positive interactions between government and citizens, and enhancing government legitimacy.
Since its launch in September 2016, Douyin short video has become the short video platform with the largest number of daily active users and the fastest internationalization process. According to the "2020 Douyin Big Data Report," as of August 2020, the daily active users of Douyin have exceeded 600 million. As of December 2020, more than 400 million videos were viewed every day. Since March 2017, major mainstream media have successively entered the Douyin platform and opened their official Douyin accounts. As of December 2017, 1,344 media accounts had entered and more than 152,000 short videos were uploaded on the short video platform.
On July 8th, 2019, the "Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Offices" launched its account on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) with the aim of better explaining China's foreign policies and positions on major international issues, responding to external concerns and doubts. On its launch day, the account's number of followers surpassed 2.17 million. As of August 2021, the account's number of followers has exceeded 14.37 million, with a total of 82.591 million likes.
Purpose
With the acceleration of the global integration process, dialogues and exchanges between countries are increasing. As a bridge of China's foreign exchanges, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not only needs to answer questions about China, but also needs to eliminate various doubts and confusions about China at home and abroad. At the same time, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also needs to clearly state China's views and propositions, demonstrating the authority and credibility of the country. Nowadays, various new media platforms are emerging. From a macro perspective, although a small number of scholars have begun to study government new media from the perspective of international communication, research on the government new media of the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still relatively lacking. Therefore, this study focused on the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s Offices Douyin Account to investigate its messages, communication characteristics, emotional characteristics, and discourse system construction.
Research Questions
RQ1: What are the topics covered in the short videos on the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Offices Douyin account?
RQ2: What are the characteristics of the short video content on the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Offices Douyin account?
RQ3: What are the similarities and differences between the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Offices Douyin account and other government Douyin accounts?
RQ4: What are the unique features of the content on the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Offices Douyin account compared to their content on other platforms?
Method
This research adopts content analysis to analyze the short videos posted by the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Offices Douyin account. After removing invalid videos, a total of 1357 valid samples were obtained. A random sampling approach was used, with every fifth video selected, resulting in a final sample of 272 valid videos for analysis.
Based on the previous research of scholars and taking into account the different characteristics of the videos, a category system was established, and a code table was determined. Based on the study of short video content, the analysis framework of this study is composed of four dimensions: quantity statistics, video format, video content, and video emotion, specifically including 15 indicators such as likes, comments, shares, background music, video type, subtitles, cover design, video duration, release date, video copywriting, video themes, dialogue types, countries involved, emotional color, and emotional typeThe analysis framework is shown in Figure 1.
Results
After analyzing all these videos, we can notice that the issue of "COVID-19", "China's domestic affairs" and "US-China relations" respectively occupy the top three positions, and these three categories of content account for 60% of the total sample.
Among them, short video content related to the COVID-19 pandemic occupies the topic center with a proportion of 23.5%, indicating that the COVID-19 pandemic issue has become an important engine affecting China's foreign relations.
According to the data, among the 272 video samples, a total of 16 countries other than China were mentioned. Among them, there were 127 short video works related to the United States, accounting for 47% of the center position of the Foreign Ministry spokesperson's diplomatic language. Following closely was Australia, which appeared 18 times, but the number of appearances of Australia and the United States was still far apart, indicating that US-China relations are still the focus of China's foreign relations at this stage.
The short videos related to China-US relations are mainly characterized by negative emotions such as condemnation and ironic questioning, and conflict, friction, and competition are still the main themes of China-US relations.
Since the foreign ministry spokesperson's office Douyin account is concerned with international issues, and is subject to physical space limitations, the account uses a non-scenic deduction method, with videos presented in the form of "press room + spokesperson," creating its unique "Blue Room" mode (the foreign ministry press room is mainly blue, hence it is widely known as the "Blue Room"). The non-scenic deduction method increases the objectivity and authority of its video works.
Due to the time limit of short videos, the official TikTok account of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson's office presents a "composite fragmentation" feature, with both video form and content showing fragmentation.
There are three kinds of emotions in these short videos, which are approval emotions(18%), condemnation emotions(41.9%）, sarcasm and questioning emotions(9.2%). The compound emotional mode only has one combination of "condemnation + sarcasm and questioning," with a total of 34, accounting for 12.5%. Overall, condemnation and sarcasm and questioning are the main emotional tones of the account, indicating that China's diplomatic policy has shifted from the implicit, tactful, and restrained "hide one's capacities and bide one's time" policy implemented since the 1980s to a direct, outward, and decisive style.
To adapt to the new media ecology, the spokesperson's office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken a trend towards networked and popularized language in the short videos posted on its Douyin account. News spokesman often borrow words from the internet, use popular phrases and proverbs to express their views, and use rhetorical techniques such as metaphors and irony to express their diplomatic attitudes, thus narrowing the distance between spokespersons and audiences.
Significance
According to the initial results, we can see that there are a lot of traditional Chinese cultural elements in these videos. This may help the government to cultivate the sense of identity for the Chinese people and spread Chinese culture to the world.
But traditional Chinese culture is hard for the people from different countries to understand and identify. Will this practice offer some positive communication effect? It requires further investigation. .
Location
Library and Learning Center, 3601 Pacific Ave., Stockton, CA 95211
Format
Poster Presentation
The Changing Face of Diplomacy: Analyzing the Use of New Media in Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Office Douyin Account
Library and Learning Center, 3601 Pacific Ave., Stockton, CA 95211
Under the development of internet technology, news media is constantly iterating and updating and is becoming more social and mobile at a faster pace. Mainstream media, which once occupied a dominant position, is facing competition and challenges from social new media such as institutional media, platform media, and self-media. Against this background, mainstream media is actively exploring and adapting to the new media ecological environment by making efforts on social media platforms, attempting to change their traditional media content production methods and distribution channels, and trying to win a place in the social media era. From self-media to official media, various industries are starting to expand their new domains in the new media field. Government new media refers to the official accounts registered on social media platforms by various government departments through real-name authentication. They have become the main way for providing public services, promoting positive interactions between government and citizens, and enhancing government legitimacy.
Since its launch in September 2016, Douyin short video has become the short video platform with the largest number of daily active users and the fastest internationalization process. According to the "2020 Douyin Big Data Report," as of August 2020, the daily active users of Douyin have exceeded 600 million. As of December 2020, more than 400 million videos were viewed every day. Since March 2017, major mainstream media have successively entered the Douyin platform and opened their official Douyin accounts. As of December 2017, 1,344 media accounts had entered and more than 152,000 short videos were uploaded on the short video platform.
On July 8th, 2019, the "Foreign Ministry Spokesperson's Offices" launched its account on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) with the aim of better explaining China's foreign policies and positions on major international issues, responding to external concerns and doubts. On its launch day, the account's number of followers surpassed 2.17 million. As of August 2021, the account's number of followers has exceeded 14.37 million, with a total of 82.591 million likes.
