Visual Culture Communication Builds China’s National Image

Visual culture communication studies have become more and morepopular in recent years. These studies are mainly conducted from theperspectives of culture studies or intercultural studies. Based on theseformer researches and analyses of China’s national image film CHINA,this thesis represents the visual culture analysis process, and at the sametime, offers suggestions on our national image build-up; moreover, thethesis attempts to enrich the existing scholarship in this field.The first part of thesis concentrates on the definition of visualculture, visual culture communication and visual culture communicationsymbol; the second part examines Roland Barthes’s theory about ‘twophases to produce meaning’ and certain method to produce meaning,such as ‘Implicit Meaning’‘Myth’‘Symbol’; Next, the thesis, under theframework of Roland Bather’s theory, makes visual culture analyses ofChina’s National Image film CHINA, Beijing2008OlympicsApplication film, London2012Olympics Application film and otherfiles of the same genre.Last but not least, the thesis offers some advice to readdress theseproblems: first of all, national image presentation should maintainconsistent in all national promotion films. Secondly, more visualsymbols of high artistic quality, especially those that can representtraditional Chinese culture, should be added to these films. Thirdly, the films should adopt new Chinese culture symbols as the new elements ofvisual culture communication symbols, in order to gradually increaseChina’s soft power.