China Seminar: Mass Culture and the Construction of Political Discourse

Mass Culture and the Construction of Political Discourse – Visual Communication in Popular Chinese Television Dramas

Speaker:  Dr. Florian Schneider (LIAS, Chinese Studies) 
Expertise:  Politics of Modern China

Date and time:  Wednesday, 2 May 2012, 15.15 - 17.00h
Venue:  Lipsius 147
Language:  English

Abstract:
We live in the age of mass art. Watching popular entertainment formats such as TV drama series has become one of the most common pastimes, in China as much as elsewhere. In China, this format consistently scores the highest viewer ratings out of fifteen television programming categories, attracting more than a third of the nationwide audiences. The average Chinese person watches between one and two episodes per day. This makes TV dramas twice as popular as the second most-commonly watched television format: the news. The ubiquity of drama entertainment raises several questions: what messages do popular series communicate to their audience? Who is behind these messages, and what social and political implications might they have?

Speaker's resume:
Florian Schneider is Lecturer for the Politics of Modern China at the Leiden University Institute of Area Studies. His research interests include questions of governance and public administration in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, political communication strategies and political content of Chinese popular culture, as well as Chinese foreign policy. His research approach combines discourse analysis with semiotics as well as cognitive sciences. His monograph Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series is forthcoming for October 2012. Schneider’s most recent project focuses on the political relevance of staged mass-media events in mainland China, such as the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, the 60th Anniversary of the PRC in 2009, and the Shanghai Expo 2010.