Exploring The Use Of Music In Public Dioplomacy

Music, an art containing emotions as well as ideas and perceptions, plays aunique role in public diplomacy which still fails to draw people’s attention.This thesis mainly probe into the specific use of music, as an offensiveinstrument and a defensive instrument in public diplomacy. As an offensiveinstrument, this thesis tries to talk about how music, as a political pioneer and an ideaambassador, is used in public diplomacy to explore the political intentions, soften thenegative sentiments and strengthen the cultural identity. As a defensive instrument,this thesis tries to talk about how music, as an identity symbol and a cultural bridge, isused in public diplomacy to draw attention of the public of other countries, create theimage of the country and cultivate the trust of other countries. This thesis takes typicalcases of the United States and the Soviet Union to explore the use of music as anoffensive instrument and defensive instrument in public diplomacy in visitingbackground, target audience, mass media and result evaluation. The comparison andcontrast of the implications of music in the two countries helps us to study music inpublic diplomacy. This thesis also takes the Chinese mainstream Symphony Orchestrawhich directly subordinate to the Ministry of Culture and stands for the intentions ofChinese government as an example to explore the roles and problems of music inpublic diplomacy of China. In the end, this thesis discusses the restrictive factors ofmusic to separate the uncertain factors which might weaken the efficiency of publicdiplomacy and try to build a theory construction of music diplomacy.Nowadays, the development of Chinese dream is faced with the bottleneckproblem of how to win support and approval. The deep and through research of music,“the universal lauguage”might provide the useful references for China to sing loudlyin the world and attain response globally.