The engineering of sentiment and desire : unraveling the aestheticized politics of ideotainment in China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- We are entering into a post-truth era where the divide between propaganda, news, and entertainment is increasingly blurred. With the aid of social media, propaganda seeps into the interstices of everyday life and becomes pervasive, unobtrusive, and ambient. This is especially the case in authoritarian regimes. My dissertation investigates the shifting paradigm of propaganda in China, particularly an emerging trend on social media known as ideotainment, in which ideological messages are packaged in entertaining forms such as hiphop songs, short videos, photo-editing apps, and interactive mini-games. Much of the ideotainment content is produced and/or promoted by state-run media in China. Through case studies of viral ideotainment campaigns (with up to several billion page views) and interviews with their producers in Chinese state-run outlets in 2018 and 2019, this dissertation reveals how the Party-state appropriates digital technologies and popular culture genres to reinforce the legitimacy of the political regime, incorporating entertainment and the logic of play into a process of ideological subjectification that taps into netizens' nationalist sentiment and materialistic desires. It also traces the continuity and discontinuity between the Chinese Communist Party's pre-digital propaganda arts since 1930s and social media-based ideotainment in the current era. On the one hand, this dissertation documents the Party's long tradition in utilizing cultural entertainment as a means of propaganda that thrives on different media forms and technologies; on the other hand, it examines how media convergence in China over the past decade has afforded new possibilities for the innovation of propaganda and thought work. This dissertation makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to propaganda studies, China studies, and digital journalism studies
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Zou, Sheng |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Glasser, Theodore L |
| Degree supervisor | Hamilton, James |
| Thesis advisor | Glasser, Theodore L |
| Thesis advisor | Hamilton, James |
| Thesis advisor | Christin, Angèle |
| Thesis advisor | Wang, Ban, 1957- |
| Degree committee member | Christin, Angèle |
| Degree committee member | Wang, Ban, 1957- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Communication. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sheng Zou |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Communication |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Sheng Zou
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