Meaning Interpretation And Pluralistic Negotiation: "Generation Z" Audience Of The CCTV Spring Festival Gala Decoding Analysis

It has been forty years since the CCTV Spring Festival Gala was first broadcast in 1983.Most studies have discussed in detail the development and multiple functions of CCTV Spring Festival Gala from the textual level,pointing out that it relies on the ideological construction of "family and nation" and tries to enhance the viewers’ sense of national identity.In contrast,less research has been conducted on the audience of the Spring Festival Gala.Existing studies show that domestic audiences’ interpretations of the Spring Festival Gala are mainly negotiated,but no empirical studies have been conducted specifically on young audiences,whose tendency to interpret the show is related to whether the event can continue to exert its influence.Therefore,based on Hall’s coding/decoding theory,this paper explores the specific negotiated interpretation methods and characteristics of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala among "Generation Z"(born in1995-2009)through in-depth interviews.The study finds that "Generation Z" clearly perceives the inevitable political propaganda needs of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala,which is misaligned with their own entertainment needs,and they compromise out of patriotic stance and settle for the second best,expecting the Gala to be softer and less preachy.Moreover,they are not satisfied with the way the Spring Festival Gala has adopted a large number of celebrities to attract young people,which they think is unfair to other performers."Generation Z",in turn,has adopted various ways of negotiating the Spring Festival Gala: avoiding hard preachy content through focus shifting and memory generalization,abstracting from subjective position evaluation to ensure safety,and skillfully deconstructing the narrative and didactic mode of the Spring Festival Gala in a non-immersive posture,but at the same time,they have also unconsciously absorbed At the same time,they also unconsciously incorporate political discourses such as "lao baixing",pointing out from the perspective of ordinary people that the Spring Festival Gala is detached from the masses,and expressing their attitudes through playful trolling.The reason why the "Generation Z" negotiate is that,firstly,they know that they are far from the center of the grand narrative of the Spring Festival Gala as ordinary individuals and are unable to resist it;secondly,they need to continue the family habit of watching the Spring Festival Gala to confirm the ritual of the Spring Festival;thirdly,their internalized sense of family and nationality and their emotional ties to the collective have prompted them to actively identify with the Spring Festival Gala at the macro level as a means of strengthening family cohesion and reinforcing Chinese identity.What is reflected behind this dynamic negotiation is the unbalanced power relationship between ordinary viewers and the CCTV Spring Festival Gala,a pluralistic negotiation that does not break the official framework,i.e.,the establishment.