The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is a grand event attracting international attention. The hosting of this world-class event is an important event in the rise of China, and it is also an important platform for China to shape its national image and build its global discourse power. And the Winter Olympics and the traditional festivals in China — — The meeting of the Spring Festival represents the collision between the Olympic spirit and the traditional culture of China, and it is an excellent opportunity to tell the story of China and show the culture of China. Ice and snow competitions and winter festivals have been rooted in the lives of Chinese children in various ways since ancient times. During the Spring Festival, CGTN, together with the Chinese-foreign Cultural Exchange Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Tencent WeChat, jointly launched a series of live broadcasts and short videos of "Ice and Snow China" to convey China’s ice and snow spirit from an international perspective, vividly show China’s interesting traditional ice and snow sports and folk culture to the world, and add color to the upcoming Winter Olympics.
Taking ice and snow competition and winter folk customs as the main reference, the program selected three locations with regional characteristics, such as Altay in Xinjiang, Changbai Mountain in Jilin and Shahu Lake in Ningxia, as shooting locations, and added multi-dimensional "ice and snow expression" to the program content based on different angles, different national characteristics and different winter themes. It is worth mentioning that, in form, the series of "Ice and Snow China" adopted the multi-media communication means of Chinese journalists’ hosting, foreign video creators’ experience, live broadcast+short video+topic interaction, and was launched on WeChat video number and several overseas communication platforms. This undoubtedly shows the new opportunities brought by new technologies and new media for external communication under the trend of global social media videoization.
Transformation form: live broadcast+short video to enhance the effect of external communication.
Compared with words, the visual symbolization of content production and communication can convey the content and meaning more vividly, eliminating the complicated process of "encoding and decoding" and the problem of information access, thus reducing the cultural discount in the middle of communication and reducing the communication error. The traditional presentation methods of video content in China are mostly documentaries and promotional videos, which are difficult to attract the attention of foreign audiences for a long time. Moreover, such works are mainly disseminated through the official publicity platform, and most of them adopt positive publicity and guidance, which makes it difficult for local people to gain a sense of participation and interaction. The emergence of new media forms such as short video and live broadcast has innovated the form of China’s external communication and promoted the improvement of communication effect.
During the Spring Festival, "Ice and Snow China" launched three long-term live broadcasts on the WeChat video number, showing different winter folk customs and ice and snow competitions in different cities through the introduction and experience of the host, foreign guests and local guests. As a real-time and interactive mode of communication, webcasting can show the real scenes of various places more comprehensively, vividly and realistically than traditional graphic forms, thus breaking away from geographical restrictions and enhancing the audience’s sense of presence. Through the live shooting of Jilin, Xinjiang, Ningxia and other ice and snow resorts, the visual symbols of China’s ice and snow culture are conveyed to the audience, and the unique image of China is truly, stereoscopically and comprehensively constructed. The experience link and food tasting link set in each program fully mobilized the audience’s vision and hearing, so that the audience could quickly enter the scene where the live broadcast was held, feel the local environment more from the main point of view, and then deeply understand China’s traditional culture and ice and snow sports.
At present, "mobility" has become one of the survival characteristics of users, from "flowing" in real scenes to temporarily receiving information in video platforms, and then quickly pulling away because of changes in real life scenes. At present, people’s attention is limited, and they are more inclined to "fast food" consumption than to contact complicated and abstruse information. The characteristics of short video "short, flat and fast" provide a new choice for the audience to accept information. After the 120-minute live broadcast, Snow China selected the highlights of each live broadcast, edited it into a short video version with Chinese and English subtitles, and launched it on WeChat video number and overseas platforms. The short video reproduces the core content of the long live broadcast in fragments, which is more in line with the current user’s video consumption habits and is convenient for users to digest video content.
Whether watching the live broadcast or enjoying the short video, the audience can interact and provide feedback through the real-time comments in the live broadcast or the comment function in the platform, and quickly establish an emotional connection with the video creator, which greatly mobilizes the user’s sense of participation and enthusiasm.
Enrich the main body: gather the power of folk communication and promote the publicity of the whole people.
The traditional subjects of external communication are authoritative government agencies and official media, which are too macro, single, distant and lack of pertinence, so it is difficult to break through cultural barriers. Therefore, in the external communication, folk power can not be ignored. The platform of WeChat video number enables ordinary people to participate in the creation of content, starting from more elements and rich angles, and spreading the cognition and experience different from the official Winter Olympics. At the same time, the new media technology has also built a platform for people from all over the world to interact and promote the dialogue between the public at home and abroad in an equal manner.
On the one hand, there are huge creator resources in the WeChat video platform. Through the integration and coordination of resources, users from different industries, nationalities and backgrounds can participate in the process of external communication. For example, in this live broadcast of Snow China, in addition to CGTN reporters, foreign videographers, local guides and ice sports enthusiasts also participated in the recording. From the perspective of foreigners, foreign guests experience China’s multi-local, multi-type and multi-ethnic winter folk customs and ice and snow sports, and share their true feelings. Foreigners in China decode Chinese culture with the language and thinking mode understood by overseas audiences, which weakens the cultural barrier caused by cultural background differences and values differences, and the information they convey is more likely to be trusted and accepted by foreign people. However, the content described by guides in Ningxia and Xinjiang has a more microscopic perspective, which is vivid and close to the official words, making it difficult for foreign audiences to resist when receiving information.
On the other hand, short video and live broadcast, as a relatively "friendly" media form, weaken the requirements for shooting technology, picture quality and editing methods. Users can produce works with the help of smart devices and the editing tools that come with the platform. Video number has lowered the threshold for users to participate, shifted the focus to the expression of personality and emotions, and widely stimulated the public’s enthusiasm for participation.
Deeply cultivate content: adapt to the characteristics of media and find common feelings.
Short video and live broadcast users mostly regard leisure and entertainment as their main use demand. Therefore, compared with serious hard news, interesting and story-telling soft news is more easily accepted by such users, which coincides with the concept of external communication. "Storytelling" is the main idea of China in Snow and Ice. For example, the live broadcast of Shahu Lake in Ningxia takes "breaking the ice" as the main line, from talking with Ningxia people on the icebreaker, to experiencing the icebreaking of Shahu Lake, to completing the "breaking the ice", stepping on Shahu Lake to experience the cricket competition on ice, and finally taking a cruise on Shahu Lake to taste Ningxia cuisine, forming a complete narrative chain with story, plot and logic, showing a three-dimensional and vivid image of China from tourism, sports, culture and diet.
In international communication, finding emotional commonalities is often better than appeal to reason’s. Short videos are short in duration, concise in narrative and large in presentation, which has advantages in emotional transmission. "Snow China" follows the principle of "the greatest common denominator" of global culture, and takes the public symbol "sports" as the entry point, which can resonate with overseas audiences and fit the tonality of the communication platform. In terms of communication content, Snow China combines the short video and live broadcast with human nature, with the theme of "Winter’s Love", "Winter’s Source" and "Winter’s Warmth" as the live broadcast, starting from the micro level, focusing on Chinese’s sports spirit and attitude towards life, and planning the communication content from the common meaning level of human beings, changing the introduction of the Beijing Winter Olympics itself into a review of the history of ice and snow sports in China, weakening the propaganda color in the communication content.
Expand channels: based on new media platforms, enhance communication influence.
As the communication platform of the series of "Snow China", WeChat video number provides a new position for the dissemination of related content. As a popular instant messaging software all over the world, WeChat has now formed a stable user base of over 1.2 billion. The low entry barrier of video content makes more users around the world become potential viewers of WeChat video number, which expands the channels for China culture to spread to the outside world and helps the media to gain greater autonomy and freedom in communication. The content distribution mechanism of WeChat video number platform makes high-quality content have the opportunity to reach the "recommendation" module of every WeChat user, thus expanding the audience. Some time ago, the Westlife Video Concert was watched by more than 27 million people. The Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands once led tens of thousands of China audiences to appreciate the masterpieces of post-impressionist masters through live video. These cases can prove that WeChat video number, relying on the powerful content resources and huge user groups of WeChat, has outstanding advantages in realizing extensive connection and full coverage of content dissemination, and is a high-quality medium for cultural exchanges between China and the West.
In addition, a major feature of WeChat video number is that it is embedded in WeChat, developed around WeChat relationship chain, and has natural social attributes. On the one hand, users can achieve "acquaintance communication" by sharing content with friends and friends. On the other hand, users can see the content praised by their friends in the "Friends" module in the WeChat video number, and even the videos that have been published for a long time will get attention again because of this private domain push mechanism. This allows high-quality video content to be repeatedly exposed in a longer time span, maintaining the long tail heat and forming "fission propagation".
The attempt of "Snow China" opens the link between public domain traffic and private domain traffic, expands the communication channels, promotes the innovation of communication content and form, and provides a brand-new idea for the media to spread abroad. Nowadays, short videos and live broadcasts are gradually becoming important carriers of external communication. The media should actively pay attention to and adapt to the development of new technologies, and make innovations and adjustments in content according to the characteristics of different media forms and platforms, so as to truly, stereoscopically and comprehensively display and spread China’s traditional culture and help enhance the influence of Chinese culture. (Zhou Min Song Jing)
