On The Image Of "Metropolis" In Shanghai From The Perspective Of Expo Report

A city’s image, including both objective infrastructures and people’s subjective perceptions, contributes to its competitive forces in the society of spectacles. The subjective comments part, as is put by Sherwood Anderson, was erected on the bases of imagination. It is by erecting a city’s image that mass media leads and gathers public’s opinions and recognition. Mass communication of a city’s image is right the process of spreading public’s impression and comments via the media. Government usually becomes the main body of the communication process, while major events and celebrations with global media coverage stages a precious platform for the city image presentation. That’s why the Shanghai government optimized the 2010 World Expo opportunity to build up its image of an "international metropolis".Moreover, as China is in the course of "peaceful rise", the Expo also avails an excellent opportunity for the Chinese government to shape the national image of China.Shanghai media, with no exception, joined in to shape Shanghai’s city image with Expo coverage. As media differentiated from each other in nature and connections with government’s publicity department, their level of involvement varied. Take daily newspaper as examples. Both the Party mouthpiece Jiefang Daily and market-oriented Oriental Morning Post (OMP) attached great importance to the Expo report. But differences are obvious in terms of the two’s news production and presentation. Combing through the two newspaper’s Expo coverage in 2010, the thesis restored Jiefang Daily and OMP’s efforts and strategies in city image-shaping by analyzing the stories, publicity documents and conducting face-to-face interviews with the two paper’s senior editorial staff.Shanghai Expo report reflects some advantages that socialistic publicity and journalism embraces, such as effective coordination between different media. It also demonstrated media’s distinctive reporting skills in complying with publicity requirement with unique characters. But all the coverage’s effects were confined within the Chinese realm, much like a "self-entertainment". It did not shake the foreign media’s impression on Shanghai, nor did it explain China the basic structures to the outside world. Comparing with the Shanghai Expo coverage of the New York Times, the thesis pointed out the plight of city image building in cross-cultural communication.