Soft-Power Composition And Innovation Of Chinese Journalism And Communication

In the context of economic globalization, peace and development have become the themes of the time, together with a more and more prominent impact of the soft power in international competitions. Though the remarkably lagging construction of the soft power in China has aroused extensive attention in the leadership and the academia, strategies in this regard have been rarely examined from the perspective of journalism and communication. Against the theory of Joseph Nyh on the soft power, this paper indicates that the globalization in real life is not equal, and that the voices of the less developped countries have always been muffled or toned town in the process of globalization. Globalization should be handled with reason and objectivity, and its influences upon different nations and states, esp. on the cultural level, should be considered with a developmental point of view. The soft power theory of Nyh illustrates the merging of different cultures in today’s world and the significant impact of such phenomenon, yet describing culture as a force to strike or occupy cultural domain and thus to conquer another, the theory, both its ground and presentation, is in fact quite limited and inadequate in many ways. The paper demonstrates that on the one hand, the contruction of soft power in China should draw lessons from the theory of Joseph Nyh and, on the other hand, take the characteristics of Chinese culture as the basic point, dialectically review the soft power theory, and eventually set up our own core values in the construction of soft power. At home, the traditional culture should be promoted vigorously with enriched and wholesome cultural products that can lead the public attention and earn common identification. Externally, the Oriental identity and the cultural standpoint of China should be stressed, creating cultural products with "inter-culturality" in globalization that can pass on the tradition and at the same time are easy to be understood among different cultures. The passing down, the development and the advancement of any nation or country’s culture, none of these can do without efficient communication. The construction of a country’s soft power system has to rely on an upgraded soft power of media. As one of the key elements of soft power construction, the construction of the journalism and communication system should at least include both the internal and external aspects:firstly, to consciously place spreading socialist key values as the core spirit; and secondly, to form the visible features of our own soft power. The construction of media soft power should also be carried out according to the existent mechanism of communication in order to develop the media in various aspects-social communication, cross-cultural communication, agenda-setting capacity, innovation of media production, etc., so that the media can make its proper contribution in building a harmonious society.The paper suggests that besides its fucntion of circulating information precisely and integrating society, press and media have many other important roles in building a harmonious society and developing the soft power of the country, such as to supervise efficiently and to entertain and educate the public. Effective supervision will raise the influence of the media, while "supervising" for sensations and with biases will make the media extreme and superficial without public trust. Investigating through the factors of the communication process, we can see that the severe trend of "pan entertainment" displayed in media competition is actually a disease growing from the inside of the media and should be taken as an alarm signal. While the western media began to report on China in depth, "misreadings" have become frequent and common as well. Therefore, communication capacity should be raised up, esp. in comparing the Chinese and the western media in their audiences, emphases in report and presentations. We should improve our strategies of localization and crisis communication, take the intiative, cut down the room for negative reports, and to make a difference in cross-cultural communication. The mass media should also make use of the strategy of agenda-setting-by using continuous, non-stop news report, it can creat positive social atmosphere, imfluence the common views towards certain phenomena and issues, so that to lead the public opinion. Once the agenda-setting of the media is misconducted or absent, damages will occur. Externally, we should break the agenda-setting model of the West, cover suitable subjects including some negative or sensitive topics, and to set back in proper ways, recognizing the inadequacies and differences in order to win the understanding of western audience, to creat favourable environment for public opinion and to turn negative subjects into positive effects. Domestically, we should try to realize the association of three agendas-media agenda, policy agenda and public agenda-and to create positive environment for public opinion, to innovate in structural reform, brand marketing and technical renovation, and to promote our culture’s capacity of understanding and integration in different cultural environments, thus to form the core competitive strength for a media culture with Chinese characteristics.Beginning with an analysis of the essence of the soft power concept and a comparison between Chinese and western cultures, this paper detects a hegemonic structure of cultural soft power and points out the innovations that should be included in the construction of Chinese cultural soft power. Based on socialist studies of press and communication, media functionalism, as well as on the fact that we are in the age of intermediacied media, it reveals the one-way thinking of traditional communication theories. And by combining theoretical innovation and journalist practice, the paper examines the construction and innovation of Chinese soft power of communication with multi-dimentional expositions and clear inclinations, which provides meaningful reference for the soft power construction of the media in transformation.