The local mainstream media plays an irreplaceable role in telling the story of China. Especially since 2018, international communication centers around the country have been established like mushrooms after rain, and they have made active efforts in innovation of ideas, topics, platforms and mechanisms, and gradually become the important town for telling good stories, the flagship for foreign exchanges, the base for investigation and research, and the cradle for talent cultivation.
Of course, local media still have great potential in international communication, especially in accurate communication, which needs great efforts to improve and continuously improve its efficiency.
Accurately understand the central government’s work requirements for international communication
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary of the Supreme Leader has put forward a series of new ideas, new viewpoints and new conclusions on strengthening and improving international communication, and made a series of new major arrangements, which have pointed out the direction of progress and provided fundamental follow-up for doing a good job in international communication. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Decision on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Promoting Chinese Modernization, adopted by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, puts forward that "we should build a working mechanism and evaluation system suitable for all-media production and communication, promote the systematic reform of mainstream media" and "deepen the reform and innovation of the international communication mechanism of mainstream media, and accelerate the construction of a multi-channel and three-dimensional external communication pattern".
Focusing on accurate communication, General Secretary of the Supreme Leader emphasized in the 30th collective study in 19th the Political Bureau of the Central Committee that it is necessary to adopt accurate communication methods close to audiences in different regions, countries and groups, promote the global expression, regional expression and differentiated expression of China’s story and China’s voice, and enhance the affinity and effectiveness of international communication. In his congratulatory letters to the launch of China Global Television Network (CGTN), the 70th anniversary of the founding of People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, China News Agency and Economic Daily, the Supreme Leader put forward clear requirements for the media to tell the story of China well.
For local media, it is necessary to find their own unique advantages in actively integrating into the strategic communication system with China characteristics. At present, the theory and practice of international communication have changed from communication orientation to relationship orientation. Compared with the national level, local communication is easier to do people-specific work, and the essence of cultural exchange and mutual learning is people-to-people communication. Therefore, local media can focus on cultural exchanges and help Chinese culture go abroad, which will help to jump out of the traditional media business and find the direction of business expansion in a broader space.
Accurately grasp the current relationship between China and the world.
At present, the relationship between China and the world is undergoing historic changes. China needs to know the world better, and the world needs to know China better. Overall, the strategic situation of international development is favorable to me. The international community has paid more and more attention to China’s plan and China’s proposal. The initiative of China’s national image building has been further enhanced, and our confidence and confidence in doing a good job in international communication have become more and more sufficient. At the same time, however, China’s international communication work is facing great external pressure, especially the severe external challenges brought by the all-round suppression of China by the United States and the West, and the long-term, complex and arduous struggle against American public opinion has become increasingly prominent.
Compared with the strategic needs of the Party and the country, the pace of the construction of China’s characteristic strategic communication system is still not suitable for China’s information needs of the international community, which requires more subjects, including local media, to find their own position under the "two overall situations" and comprehensively enhance their fighting capacity and winning power.
Accurately serve the needs of local development
The establishment of local international communication centers is adapted to the characteristics and needs of the new era. Therefore, the establishment of local international communication centers needs to closely fit the strategic positioning of the country to the local area. From the practice in recent years, most local international communication centers have focused on the local area, and some local international communication centers have taken the regional driving role as their development goal. For example, the earliest established Chongqing International Communication Center, in the process of its own development, combined with the central government’s strategic positioning of Chongqing’s development, upgraded and built the western international communication center, and played a leading role in Chongqing’s opening up in the western region.
The premise of serving local development is to strengthen the research and study of local development planning and find the job requirements that are most directly related to the media. For example, in the 14th Five-Year Plan of Shandong Province, it is proposed that by 2035, "the cultural soft power will be comprehensively enhanced, the national quality and social civilization level will reach a new height, and it will become a highland for exchanges and mutual learning of world civilizations", and "actively serve the country’s overall diplomatic and development strategy, build a series of open platforms with world-class China style and Shandong style" and "create an important window for spreading China culture and displaying Chinese civilization". Therefore, for the local media in Shandong, it is necessary to make more efforts in the exchange of civilizations, the creation of open platforms and the construction of important windows.
For this reason, Volkswagen Daily builds a mass international communication center to tell the story of Shandong well to the world, and strives to make "Volkswagen" a "new window" for the world to know about Shandong, a "database" for Shandong’s foreign language information, a "loudspeaker" for the province’s external communication, and a "good helper" for serving overseas users. This is a vivid embodiment of serving the overall situation based on one domain.
Accurately study the target audience
Only the communication chosen and accepted by the audience is effective communication. Compared with central-level international media and institutions, local international communication is more granular, and it is easier to deepen and refine international communication through specific cultural and life exchanges. At the beginning of 2024, a survey report jointly released by Meltwater, a global media monitoring agency, and We are Social, a social media organization, showed that the number of active users of social media in the world had exceeded 5 billion, which means that nearly two-thirds of the global population used social media regularly. Obviously, these users should be the important direction of our work.
With the help of big data, cloud computing and other technologies, we need to fully understand the social and economic status, hobbies, knowledge structure, cultural background, religious beliefs and value orientation of these target users, so as to achieve accurate portraits and help and promote overseas people to form a positive view and correct understanding of China culture with more meticulous work.
Of course, for different places, the geographical distribution of their main audiences is also different. For example, for Shandong, we must first aim at Japan and South Korea, which have close economic, trade and cultural relations, and then jointly build "Belt and Road" countries and regions, while constantly expanding and deepening cooperation with Germany, the United States, Singapore and other countries; For frontier provinces, the spread to neighboring countries is naturally the top priority.
In terms of age, youth groups are generally friendly to China, and they are also the most flexible. Local media can increase the intensity of topic selection planning according to the characteristics of youth groups, and invite them to experience and interact with each other in various places, especially overseas students and young entrepreneurs. In this regard, Wenzhou Overseas Communication Center has made a good exploration. They have successively recruited more than 300 overseas communication officers and 500 international communication volunteers who work and live in Wenzhou, and more than 100 original videos produced each year have been translated into English, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Spanish and other languages, with overseas hits exceeding 250 million.
Accurately provide high-quality communication products
No matter how advanced the technology is, how rich the means are, how picky the audience is, and "content is king" is still the unchangeable iron law, content production is still the vitality of the media. Of course, in addition to the scale and diversity of products, whether the production can be targeted, the accuracy of delivery and the difference of competition is also very important for the media to achieve high-quality communication.
At present, we need to provide high-quality communication products, including the Internet and new media, books, special issues, creative products and other multi-modal international communication products. However, it is precisely because of its richness and diversity that it becomes more difficult for the audience to receive useful and effective information.
Recently, the domestic 3A game "Black Myth: Wukong" continued to "break the circle and go out to sea", which caused phenomenal spread around the world and brought us a lot of enlightenment. The game is based on China’s classic The Journey to the West, and tells the story of the Monkey King’s becoming "Fighting to Overcome Buddha". The Journey to the West and the Monkey King are the classic IP of China culture, which has already aroused resonance and recognition at home and abroad. Therefore, the topic selection is very accurate.
In addition, the game aims at the common ground of Chinese and foreign youth, that is, individualism and heroism that are not afraid of power and dare to challenge, and it is easy to win the love of young overseas players. Not only that, it also combines China’s traditional IP with a global perspective, which is the key to its success, and it is also the direction for many China cultural products to "go out to sea" in recent years.
For local media, we can speed up the implementation of the international communication product quality project. A book, a documentary, a song, a stage play and even an excellent news work may become an explosive product of international communication, provided that we can produce according to the needs of the audience and put the audience in the heart and in the whole chain of communication.
Accurately use various communication channels.
The smell of wine is also afraid of the depth of the alley. Without channels, good content can only become "inventory" and be shelved, so it is difficult for the media to have communication power, let alone to expect influence and competitiveness. Practice has proved that every expansion and improvement of communication channels will greatly promote the dissemination of content.
Judging from the development in recent years, international communication centers around the world often take the construction of a core platform as the starting point, gradually extend the mobile, social and visual communication matrix, and form a communication framework that adapts to new media conditions. This exploration direction is desirable. At present, the rapid progress of technology has a profound impact on international communication. From graphic technology that focuses on displaying effects to intelligent technology that focuses on sensory experience, it has changed the production mode and communication mode of media content and become an increment to enhance the efficiency of international communication in China. For example, intelligent generation technologies such as ChatGPT, the main international media, are embedded, which are widely used in online news manuscript translation, pre-compilation in breaking news, manuscript polishing and polishing, and auxiliary topic planning, thus improving work efficiency. Many local mainstream media have launched virtual anchors, most of which are used to host cultural programs. Combined with intelligent voice technology, they all have the potential to spread Chinese culture to the outside world.
Looking to the future, local media, especially international communication centers, need to strengthen strategic investment and layout, strengthen cooperation with central media and new technology enterprises, promote the combination of new technology and culture, expand the construction of independent and controllable external communication platforms, make breakthroughs in personalized production, accurate distribution, preference maintenance, loyalty cultivation and value feedback, and enhance the ability of international communication work in content production and distribution, public opinion monitoring and response. Of course, in addition to the new track, traditional news production, friendship city publicity and other useful old channels can not be easily given up.
Accurately mobilize social resources and all forces.
The General Secretary of the Supreme Leader stressed: "We should mobilize all parties to do ideological and public opinion work together, strengthen overall coordination, integrate all kinds of resources, promote the integrated development of internal publicity and external publicity, play symphonies and chorus, tell the story of China more and more brilliantly, and make China’s voice louder and louder." Most of the local international communication centers are newly established institutions, and most of their businesses are built from the ground up. It is even more necessary to strengthen the concept of "playing a chess game" based on local conditions, serving the country and facing the world, actively attract and tap resources, funds, platforms and talents from all sides, and establish a working system of departmental linkage and multi-participation.
Building a strong team of specialized talents to meet the needs of international communication in the new era is the premise of effective work. In this regard, local media should not only tap their own potential, but also attract more external forces to participate. In recent years, while attaching importance to the construction of international communication disciplines, colleges and universities around the world have also taken an active part in international communication practice. A number of international communication colleges (departments) have been established to create their own characteristics and focus on the country’s major strategic needs from different angles. Jiangsu and other provinces have also established an international communication capacity-building alliance for universities in the province. For local media, strengthening cooperation with local universities is an effective way to solve the urgent need for talents.
In addition, some local international communication centers employ foreign employees, foreign spokespersons, and invite world-renowned online celebrity to explore foreign contacts, which has achieved initial results. For example, in less than a year since its establishment, Hainan International Communication Center has set up a foreign language editing and production team composed of many people with overseas study experience, and invited foreign hosts and foreign peer reviewers to support it. At the same time, more than 120 "overseas communication officers" have been hired in more than 40 countries, achieving global coverage.
Of course, in addition to human resources, technical empowerment, obtaining policy and project support, and cooperation with practical departments are all the proper meanings of local media to improve their accurate communication ability.
Accurately evaluate the effect.
In the end, international communication depends on the effect. It depends on whether others can "hear, understand, listen and understand" and whether they can "understand and trust us more". To improve the efficiency of international communication, it is necessary to develop international communication with high quality and build a scientific and effective evaluation system to meet the needs of all-media and cross-cultural communication.
Western mainstream media have always attached importance to effect evaluation. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) mainly measures the "public value" of its audio-visual programs from four aspects: program arrival rate, program quality, influence and consumption value. American public television (PBS) regularly evaluates the broadcast programs by using ratings, questionnaires and TQR research methods, paying special attention to the evaluation effect of program content and program quality, and comprehensively measuring the coverage, awareness and satisfaction of programs, so the market share of viewing has increased year by year.
Domestic local media also pay more and more attention to using various means to evaluate. Jiangsu Radio and Television General Station has set up a program R&D and user research center, and established an audience testing laboratory consisting of a testing room, a focus discussion room and an observation room. The scale and equipment are in a leading position at home and abroad. Through the first-hand investigation of overseas audiences, we can dynamically grasp their interest points, satisfaction and even opinions and suggestions on related programs and Jiangsu, and the effect is obvious.
Of course, with the diversification of communication means and the iteration of technical means, the evaluation method should effectively combine questionnaire survey, big data monitoring, expert evaluation, focus group survey and third-party agency survey to comprehensively and effectively evaluate the international communication effect from different perspectives and dimensions. At the same time, it is necessary to build a multi-dimensional evaluation system, including the content quality, form and method, channel platform, audience awareness, satisfaction, memory, coverage, communication power, credibility and influence, etc. Only in this way can the effectiveness of international communication be improved in an all-round and multi-angle way.
In short, only by taking the evaluation work as the fulcrum and arm, exerting the leverage effect, strengthening the dynamic supervision, scientific guidance and effective rectification of media communication, can local media achieve twice the result with half the effort and be accurate and powerful with limited resources.
Source All Media Explore WeChat official account
Editor Jing Shiyao
Ceng Min of second instance
Chen Fawen in the Third Trial
