[Cultural Analysis] Short videos build a communication "bridge"
【Cultural Analysis】
A phenomenon has recently become a hot topic: the number of video views on the account of the "Office of the Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs" on a social media platform exceeded 100 million times, and the single video with the highest number of views was only 22 seconds long.
With the development of new media formats, paper media has turned to "finger media", the world has become "vision", users' media usage time has become more fragmented, and the combination of external communication business with the Internet and short videos has become the general trend.
Looking at the development of short video dissemination in recent years, representative cases have emerged in the aspects of cultural refinement, story voice, technological innovation, form innovation and self-confidence expression.
"The essence of culture is worth more than a thousand words." To promote Chinese culture to follow the local customs and the sense of reason, we must not stop at lion dancing, making dumplings, and writing big characters, but also to extract the achievements of excellent traditional culture that can be used for mutual learning between civilizations.
On overseas social media platforms, many short videos about Chinese cuisine, ancient costumes, and natural scenery are quite disseminated, and many of them are "foreign internet celebrities" in China.
The Beijing Winter Olympics is also a concentrated demonstration of cultural "empathy": the countdown to the twenty-four solar terms was broadcast live at the opening ceremony, showing Chinese romance and human feelings in every poem and painting; during the competition, people from all over the world can "see it at a glance" The bartending robots, accommodation facilities, anti-epidemic materials, smiling faces of volunteers, and short videos of "hard to find a pier" were independently sent by athletes from all over the world, effectively reducing the phenomenon of "cultural discounts", and international communication also showed China's excellent traditional culture. More contemporary value, the essence of world significance.
"A story is better than a dozen truths." Comrade Mao Zedong told the "Yan'an Story" to American journalists Snow, Smedley and others, to the creation of a credible, lovely and respectable image of China in the world today, and to tell China well Stories are the basic method of communication.
Produced by the State Council Information Office, "Being a Chinese for a Day" is a micro-documentary about cultural collision and professional experience, inviting foreign friends to come to different cities to be professionals for a day.
In the video, a Venezuelan boy traveled halfway across the world to teach at Dazu Primary School, a German rapper became a courier, and an Australian boy became a moat in Dujiangyan... People from all over the world who came to China expressed their real experience of integrating into China's development through their native languages. It shows a real, three-dimensional and comprehensive China to the world.
"Technological innovation empowers communication effects." "The Story of Poverty Alleviation in a Cup of Coffee" is co-produced by China Good Story Database and Fuxing Road Studio.
The short video of 3 minutes and 34 seconds has been played over 100 million times on overseas social platforms.
Then the 15-second essence version appeared in Times Square in New York, USA, which triggered a new round of craze.
Influence is the result of technology empowerment: the main creative team moved artificial intelligence and big data mining technology forward to the creative planning link, reversely crawled data related to "China" and "poverty reduction" in overseas search engines, and used knowledge graph technology Deeply dig the correlation between data, and match a batch of candidate topics with large search volume, high attention, and high correlation with poverty alleviation, turning massive data into a solid basis for topic selection planning.
"Form innovation drives voice change." Xinhua News Agency's short video program "Di Erxiu" launched a public opinion struggle against the United States in the form of "Miss Guoshe" talk show.
Among them, "China-US Anti-epidemic Comparison" has been viewed more than 400 million times at home and abroad, and the number of interactive comments has reached 24 million.
The video sorts out the anti-epidemic timeline between China and the United States in the form of a musical, and integrates China's anti-epidemic action of solidarity and life first, and the United States' failure to fight the epidemic and its bad deeds into sharp lyrics. The advantages of Chinese solutions, Chinese wisdom, and Chinese ideas are clear at a glance.
"Expression of confidence shows the right to speak in the world." Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, my country's international influence, charisma, and shaping power have been increasing, and the gap between "the West is strong and I am weak" in the international public opinion pattern is narrowing. Tell Chinese stories well and spread the word. A good Chinese voice, when necessary, you need to speak with a sword.
In 2019, Tracey Reagan, the anchor of the American FOX business channel, promoted the "economic war against China" remarks, and China International Television immediately launched a short video "China will not accept unequal treaties" on its Twitter account, refuting it with reason, evidence and restraint The other party's false statement.
The video has been viewed more than 30 million times worldwide, and Western mainstream media such as Reuters, The New York Times, and the BBC rushed to report it.
At present, the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, and the task of enhancing international discourse power and enhancing national cultural soft power is unprecedented.
Only by making good use of short video creation and accelerating innovation in external communication can we better base ourselves on our own national conditions and speak the "reasons" of contemporary China; we also fully respect differences in understanding and cross the "bridge" of international communication.
(Author: Lv Fan, Director of the Audio and Video Office of the Center for Media and Media, Peking University)