The Media And City Soft Power

As a concept originating from political science in western countries in early 1990s, "soft power" has aroused tremendous interest in China in recent years. The reasons are not only the efforts to seek theoretical support for China's peaceful rise, but also attempts to find the origin of soft power from China's profound five thousand years old culture to prove that China has never been short of soft power, and therefore, to emphasize that the only matter we face today is how to utilize soft power in a better way. The following two events signaled the start of in-depth discussion and study of soft power: the first Confucius Institute was established in Uzbekistan in June 2004, and the task of "improving soft power of our nation" was stated in the report of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2007 for the first time, which meant "improving soft power" was regarded a national strategy. One of the characteristics of soft power study is the extensive application of "soft power" at regional, city, corporate and organizational levels, in particular, city soft power. The 21^st century is a century of cities. As clusters of human resources, capital, technologies, information and other resources, cities have been the principal places of economic and social activities and cores of regional development. Knowledge of "city soft power" is vital to development of cities, even a country. However, the theory of "soft power" itself is in the process of improvement, and current studies have not found clear answers to fundamental questions such as what is the connotation of city soft power? What are the contributors to city soft power? And how to measure the level of soft power of a city?Focusing on the media, this dissertation aims to study the relationship between media and city soft power, and attempts to propose the media strategies needed for an overall improvement of city soft power and the tactics for implementing such strategies. Undoubtedly, the media is of special significance for city soft power: as an integral part of "cultural resources", it is a resource of soft power; it also determines the communications of other soft power resources as a "medium" and ultimately affects the construction of city soft power. Before we understand the relationship between the media and city soft power, it is imperative to define city soft power and its connotation based on a systematic review of and through drawing on previous study results, and then to clearly demonstrate the status, role and influence of the media in soft power with a model. Sound and effective media tactics may only be proposed based on models. This is the logic of this dissertation.Based on structural equation modeling, a new generation quantitative research methodology, this dissertation uses 281 cities at or above prefecture level across the country as samples to conduct empirical researches. According to the results of empirical study, this dissertation has proposed the media tactics for construction and communications of city soft power from the roles of the media as both a "resource" and a "medium". This dissertation consists of seven chapters and is outlined as follows:Chapter 1: Introduction. It includes the background and significance of the topic, research content and framework, research methodology, and originality of the paper.Chapter 2 is both a literature review and systematic summary of the origins, main points and current research of soft power theory and city competitiveness theory, the two theoretical sources of city soft power. This chapter also gives a commentary about research fruits of these two theoretical sources at different stages. All this serves as a basis on which the concept of city soft power is introduced. The definition and connotation of city soft power are stated through "projection" from a variety of perspectives: purpose, expression, resources and meta soft power. This chapter further discusses the relationship between the media and city soft power - the media is both a resource of soft power and a medium for communications of other resources of soft power. This statement justifies the proposal of media tactics for city soft power in the following part of this dissertation.Chapter 3 and chapter 4 provide actual proof of the argument. The connotation of city soft power as well as the definition of the relationship between the media and city soft power described in chapter 2 serves as theoretical guide for chapter 3. This chapter uses soft power resources (including four sub-systems: population quality, natural environment, cultural resources, and social harmony), power of communications and effectiveness of soft power construction as latent variables to create a city soft power structural equation model. Then 281 cities at or above prefecture level are compared with the model for three consecutive years of 2004, 2005 and 2006. This comparison has validated the hypothesis that "the media is both a resource and a medium for building up city soft power"; the best model is selected from three competitive models, and validity, reliability and validation of the model are tested. Chapter 4 focuses on application of the model. It sums up the direct effect, indirect effect and total effect of each soft power resource in the model, and gives an overall ranking of city soft power as well as specific rankings by each factor for three consecutive years of 2004, 2005 and 2006. Based on the latest division of eight national comprehensive economic regions, a dynamic analysis of soft power of cities in different regions is conducted to find out how soft power resources, power of communications and construction effectiveness vary from city to city.Chapter 5 and chapter 6 are based on the results of empirical study of city soft power using structural equation modeling. In chapter 5, the media is regarded as a "resource" and this chapter examines the effect of the media as well its contribution to the ultimate soft power construction. On this basis, this chapter further proposes the media tactics for construction of city soft power; chapter 6 examines the role and effect of the media as a "medium" and further proposes the media tactics for construction of city soft power. Ir chapter 5, we look at the media as a "resource". The first task is to enhance the communication power of the media and seek innovation in media policies and management philosophy. It is imperative to invest adequately in infrastructure, allocate resources in a sound and reasonable way, utilize a variety of means and give top priority to the content to make sure the media wins with its professionalism; what is more important is to expand the influence of the media. Based on accurate assessment of content, target recipients and coverage, enhance information quality of the media by improving its authority, uniqueness of content, depth of view points, extensiveness of coverage, speed, and closeness to recipients. It is also necessary to improve the influence of the media in an all-round way through news events, activities and marketing campaigns. In chapter 6, we look at the media as a "medium". This chapter shows the weaknesses of current resource communications for city soft power, and points out that we should use integrated marketing communications theory, strengthen management of "contact points", and improve effectiveness and appropriateness of soft power resource communication by means of brand, image and reputation strategies, product placement, PR, crisis change, variations, and customized tactics.Chapter 7 is the conclusion of this dissertation. The conclusions are: city soft power is a systematic engineering, and "soft power resources" must be distinguished from "soft power construction effect"; soft power resources may be further divided into four sub-systems of population quality, natural environment, cultural resources and social harmony; city soft power is geographically unbalanced, as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen rank top in China and this soft power landscape is dynamic and constantly changing; the media has dual attributes in the process of soft power construction as it is both a "resource" and a "medium"; regarded as a "resource", mass communication capability varies from one place to another, leading to different "cultural resources" and ultimately affecting the effect of soft power construction; regarded as a "medium", communication has a limited intermediary effect and this effect varies from one region or time to another region or time; the priority of media tactics for city soft power construction is to increase the power of communication and its influence; media tactics for communication of city soft power resources are the use of integrated marketing communications, flexible application of eight strategies, and contact point management to maximize the effect. The final part is a discussion of the weakness of this dissertation and my research concentration in the future.