Chinese Audiences Research Articles

The Influence of Douban Reviews and Ratings on Chinese Audiences' Movie-watching Choices

In the process of word-of-mouth, recurring social media ratings and strong reviews can influence viewers' perceptions of a film and result in changes in viewing choices. As the most authoritative movie review website in China, Douban's high score and popular movie reviews are a household name, and even the rating of a movie on Douban and whether the review is good or not become the reason for people to choose whether to watch the movie or not. This paper examines the influence of Douban's movie reviews and ratings on Chinese movie-watching choices through the use of questionnaires in the context of the media environment and media psychology, based on Douban's unique media culture. The results of the questionnaire show that in a film market surrounded by all kinds of information, Douban movies largely satisfy the needs and psychology of users' viewing guides, and in the eyes of a large proportion of people Douban's ratings and reviews have become the main measure of whether viewers will watch them or not.

Features of Chinese Media Coverage of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine

With the beginning of the SMO in Ukraine, the world media began to actively publish news about the events taking place. China was no exception. Information from both sides of the military conflict is carefully analyzed by the Chinese audience, raising many questions about the smallest details of the Russian military operation. The relevance of the work lies in the fact that for the first time the key aspects of the media influence of the Chinese media on public opinion in the initial period of the Northern Military District were analyzed, when news from the battlefield was covered on media platforms both by the journalists themselves and by participants in the events equipped with smartphones. The emerging phrase “WarTok” began to mean posting the latest events from the battlefield and comments on them on the TikTok platform. The study took into account both the official media coverage of the SMO and the attitude of Chinese new media towards this event. The development of a special military operation as a media event was carried out by comparing the information index with the search index, as well as by comparing keyword searches and citations. The study revealed a trend of changes in the attitude of the Chinese media and the Internet community to this event, and the acceptance of the Russian position by the Chinese media community. Three Weibo accounts were studied (Russian Embassy in China, Ukrainian Embassy in China and Russia Today). Based on the results of the study, it can be stated that the term “Russian-Ukrainian conflict” has become established in the media field of the PRC, and the attitude of the Chinese audience to Russia’s actions is assessed as positive. On the one hand, this is due to the official position of the Chinese government itself, on the other, the Russian Federation has successfully used Chinese social networks for close and effective interaction with the Chinese media community, and, unlike the situation in Western social networks, has taken control of this discourse. The emerging media agenda, with social media becoming the main battleground for public opinion, is forcing the journalistic community to recognize the particular importance of state ownership and control of new media platforms during the unfolding media wars.

Attention-consuming or attention-saving: an eye tracking study on punctuation in Chinese subtitling of English trailers

Abstract Chinese subtitling of English trailers is essential for marketing foreign films in China, and there is a need to focus on audience reception. Ideal subtitles are expected to provide a necessary aid to the audience but to attract as little attention as possible. Paralinguistic factors like punctuation can influence the audience’s attention and reception. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impact of punctuation on a Chinese audience’s attention distribution between subtitles and visuals via the eye tracking technique. We recruited 62 participants and selected ten English trailers for films to be released. We prepared two parallel Chinese versions for each trailer, one using punctuation marks and the other using spaces. The participants were randomly assigned into two groups to watch the two versions respectively and filled out a questionnaire afterwards to rate their desire to watch those films. Data analyses show that, while punctuation does not have a significant impact on participants’ attitudes towards the films, the version without punctuation causes less fixation on subtitles, implying that omitting punctuation marks can ensure more attention to the visual and hence a better viewing experience.

Jinxed byIncantation? Contemporary Chinese Netizens’ Reactions to a Horror Film

AbstractIncantationis a horror film released in the Republic of China (Taiwan) in March 2022, which is inspired by a real-life story and features a woman’s rescue of her six-year-old daughter after the latter is cursed by an abhorrent deity with occult powers. This film is adulated as one of the scariest Taiwanese films and attained prodigious commercial success. Nonetheless, in mainland China,Incantationis regarded as more of a contentious film than a fearsome one: audiences’ prevalent feedback is that they feel jinxed and offended, as indicated by their complaints on social media platforms as well as reviewing and question-and-answer websites. The primary reason lies in that the film’s heroine breaks the fourth wall and addresses audiences directly, which is further intensified by the film’s mockumentary shooting style and found-footage technique. In this research, I explore the rationale behind Chinese audiences’ negative and emotional comments onIncantationfrom a viewer’s perspective, by means of investigating their self-initiated comments and user-generated responses in China’s cyberspace, focusing on feedback posted on Weibo, Douban and Zhihu. Data cumulated from these sources manifest Chinese netizens’ mindset concerning contentious religious/supernatural discourse in cyberspace as well as their rationality towards superstitious constructs.

The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History by Austin Jersild

<i>The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History</i> by Austin Jersild

A Relevance Theoretical Approach to Translators Subjectivity in Subtitle Translation

While translation is always indispensable in international communication and exchange, the value of translators always seems to be underestimated. As an intermediary between the source and target language, translators can and should play their subjectivity in the translation practice. The translators subjectivity can be further interpreted from a relevance theoretical approach. This theory believes that translators are responsible for leading the way of comprehension of the audience by building a most identical cognitive environment and avoiding misunderstanding. Translators also play the main role in the two ostensive-inferential communication processes between the author and the translator and between the translator and the audience. Specifically, this paper uses the relevance theory as a foundation to analyze how translators subjectivity is manifested in subtitle translation. It picks out three examples from the lines of a popular American sitcom and finds out that translators do use amplification, conversion, and other strategies to make the ostension in the target language more acceptable for the Chinese audience. From the theoretical basis, the author also gives suggestions for optimizing the translation to retain the same comic effect.

"A Study on Perception Changes of Chinese Audiences in Rugby Before, During, and After the Tokyo Olympics "

"A Study on Perception Changes of Chinese Audiences in Rugby Before, During, and After the Tokyo Olympics "

The Reception of Wuthering Heights in China: English-Chinese Translation, Dissemination, and Adaptation

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has been translated, disseminated, and adapted for various Chinese audiences. This study employed historical and archival research methods to probe this phenomenon. We retrieved data from Wuthering Heights and its Chinese-translated versions, children’s literature works, monographs, academic papers from China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and comments from the Douban Movie website. First, the researchers investigated Wuthering Heights’ translation in China from monographs and academic papers to explore the features of representative Chinese-translated versions. Second, the researchers explored Wuthering Heights’ dissemination in foreign literature education and literary study in China by analyzing the literature textbooks and academic papers. Third, the researchers examined the features of children’s literature works adapted from Wuthering Heights and the comments viewers made on the films adapted from the novel. The researchers found that the past nine decades witnessed the successful reception of Wuthering Heights in China for four reasons. First, the policies in the literary field contributed to its translation. Second, the reviews of the work in British literature textbooks and academic studies promoted the original text’s dissemination. Third, disseminating the movie adaptations enables more Chinese readers to know the classic, contributing to the original text’s dissemination. Fourth, the transmission of the children’s extracurricular bilingual reading material adapted from it gave Chinese teenagers a chance to know the novel’s plot and enhanced their reading ability, promoting the dissemination of Wuthering Heights in China.

Prejudice in Films in Cross-Cultural Context: Take the Example of Mulan

International communication has become more and more frequent in recent societies, but misunderstandings and miscommunication due to stereotypes inevitably exist in cross-cultural exchanges. Therefore, this paper would analyze the live-action film Mulan, a Chinese story told by Disney that reflects the stereotypes of Chinese culture from the Western perspective. Due to the cultural differences between China and the U.S. (such as the different pursuit of individualism and collectivism), the filmmakers’ misunderstanding of the story, especially the important plot of Mulan replacing her father in the army, Disney sets the core viewpoint of the story as Mulan pursuing proving herself, instead of the traditional Chinese culture’s understanding that Mulan makes the decision to take her father’s place in the army for the sake of her family and the country’s collective interests. There are many other stereotypes in the film, these stereotypes have caused dissatisfaction of Chinese audiences with the film. The paper gives some suggestions to improve the acceptance of cross-cultural film and television works in the local market, like investors can choose local market cultural figures as the film’s main producer. The film producer should be rigorous in the examination of local culture and it is better to choose the local language for the dubbing of cross-cultural films. This paper profoundly analyzes the situations and causes of misunderstandings and deviations in cross-cultural communication and provides suggestions, which to a certain extent improves the efficiency of cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural film and television production in future.

Audiences of distant suffering in authoritarian regimes: Denial mechanisms and acts of moral justification

The study of the audiences of distant suffering in authoritarian regimes has received relatively little scholarly attention. This article begins to ameliorate this gap in knowledge by examining how Chinese audiences legitimise their unresponsiveness to mediated victims of global disasters. Drawing upon data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with participants ( N = 81), the study discusses the dominant regimes of justification which inform audience inactivity, the associated argumentation strategies and patterns of reasoning, and their sociocultural and ideological underpinnings. We find that decision-making about the moral justification for inactivity is influenced by state-propaganda media narratives, preferences for ideologies, perceptions of national identity and global responsibility, and geopolitical imaginations. These findings have implications for expanding the ontological horizons of distant suffering studies that are currently embedded in Western spatial and ideological dimensions, particularly in a world of crises spawned by globalisation and mediatisation.

The Research on the Preference of “Role Play” Acts in Audiobook upon Chinese Audiences

Nowadays, in the new media environment generated by science and technology such as digital technology, Internet technology, and mobile communication technology, the way people acquire information and knowledge presents diversified characteristics, and people's reading methods also have more choices. Sound, which serves as one of the most vital parts of the reading industry, also has been making progress in its development. And the behavior of listening to audiobooks has been fulfilled in people’s lives. Although the previous related research does have essential contributions to studying the audiobook industry, they just introduce the audiobook market and some of the uses appear in people’s lives. This literature does not address what interests people about audiobooks, and it does not fully address what makes audiobooks appealing. In this research, the authors want to explore the factors that influence audiobooks so that the authors can figure out how can the authors make audiobooks better for the listeners. The research topic is whether the element of “role play” acts on the most influential part in the audiobook industry. An e-questionnaire was designed to collect the data mainly about the users’ preferences on three elements: the cast of the voice actors, the post-production, and the form of the audiobook. And the result shows that most of the young people may care about the form of the audiobook, especially liking the form of performing the stories like drama.

A Study on Chinese Audience's Receptive Behavior towards Chinese and Western Cultural Hybridity Films Based on Grounded Theory-Taking Disney's Animated Film Turning Red as an Example.

For a long time, Chinese audiences have not had a high opinion of hybrid Chinese and Western movies. However, the unanimous praise for Turning Red in China se ems to have reversed this situation. In order to verify whether the attitudinal behavior of Chinese audiences toward the film's hybridization of Chinese and Western cultures has changed, this study collected textual materials reflecting the Chinese audience's receptive attitudes toward the film: Douban reviews, short reviews, questionnaires and Mtime.com reviews. Through a grounded study of 664,312 words, a total of 16 initial categories and four main categories were obtained. Finally, a cognitive-emotional-attitudinal mechanism model was formed to explain the audience's receptive behavior process. The study found that Chinese audiences' positive reception of Turning Red comes more from the fact that the film touches on personal emotions and focuses on a series of issues such as growing up, family, and gender, with intergenerational conflict as the core. The audience achieves self-projection and empathy while watching the film, rather than recognizing the Chinese culture presented therein. On this basis, the research further found that the internal structure of the current cultural hybridity has not changed greatly. The reason audiences do not give a high evaluation of cultural hybridity films lies in the lack of conscious distinction between the hybridity culture and the local culture. At the same time, in terms of cross-cultural creation, we should abandon the blind pursuit of cultural symbols, take root in cultural soil and then pay attention to more specific problems. This study reveals that the key factor affecting the audience's receptive behavior toward cultural hybridity films is not necessarily the performance of local culture, which is of great significance for establishing new evaluation criteria.

The Chinese National Image in A bite of China from the perspective of Appraisal System: A Literature Review

The appraisal system, which was founded by Martin, White and other scholars in the 1990s, completed the interpersonal function of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It includes three major sub-systems, namely the engagement system, attitude system and graduation system. At present, the appraisal system is widely used in the study of various texts. As a business card of foreign exchanges, national image plays an important role in enhancing national competitiveness and promoting international cooperation and development. As a special type of film and television, a documentary takes real life as the material, people and real events as the objects and tries to convey the most authentic information to the audience. The documentary series, A Bite of China toke the Chinese diet culture as the core and left a deep impression on the Chinese audience through the relaxed and lively narrative rhythm. What's more, its English version, translated by BBC, shows the daily diet of Chinese to an overseas audience. In this way, Chinese culture got dissemination, and also it shaped the Chinese national image. At present, most of the studies on documentaries are derived from the perspective of translation and communication science, while from the perspective of appraisal systems to study documentaries are few. Therefore, the author intends to study the construction of the Chinese national image of the English version of A Bite of China (I) from the perspective of the appraisal system.

ОПЫТ РАЗМЕЩЕНИЯ НОВОСТНЫХ МАТЕРИАЛОВ В ФОРМАТЕ КОРОТКИХ ВИДЕО КИТАЙСКИМИ ТЕЛЕКАНАЛАМИ НА ПЛАТФОРМЕ DOUYIN

Due to the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2022, the broadcasting of state-owned Russian TV channels was banned in many countries. In response to the changing media environment, Russian TV companies are compelled to explore new markets worldwide to provide information about the Russian Federation. The authors identify China as a key alternative to the lost markets, given the booming Chinese media industry that offers a variety of news consumption options to the audience. Among these options, short online videos have gained significant popularity, with Douyin emerging as one of the most successful short-video platforms. This article analyzes the evolution of this phenomenon in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and aims to observe the reasons behind the format’s popularity among the Chinese audience. The relevance of this paper lies in the necessity to study effective and legitimate methods of news production on Chinese internet platforms for Russian TV companies. Analyzing a total of 5765 posts, the authors focus on the topics, length, and content creation methods used by three television companies (CCTV, Henan TV, Shanghai Dragon TV) when posting news on the social media platform Douyin. Additionally, a review of the regulations governing the work of Chinese and foreign media in China has been carried out. The study describes the distinctive features and development strategies of the accounts of these TV channels and concludes with recommendations that Russian media can utilize in adapting news content for well-known Chinese online platforms.

Impact of Salome on Chinese Literature &amp; Response to its Imagery in Early Twentieth-century China and Britain

Salomé, a classic one-act play created by Oscar Wilde born in the Victorian era, was adapted from Bible but given a new meaning under Wilde's secondary production. This richness of imagery contributes to a deeper understanding of the texts the exploration of the imagery in Salomé from different perspectives and in different historical and cultural contexts is an important way to expand the content and spiritual richness of the play, which offers an opportunity to explore both the characteristics of Victorian literature and the literary values derived from Salome over time. At the same time, Salomé’s one-act play was also well received in China in the early twentieth century, influencing many Chinese audiences. In short, Salomé has become popular around the world because the imagery in Salomé and its main themes have been able to give birth to different critical understandings and cultural values in different cultures and from different perspectives. This approach will facilitate the research and investigation about the similarities and differences in the cultural connotations of the work from different perspectives in the future.

A Study of American Readers’ Reception of Chinese Children’s Books—Indepth Interviews Based on a Comparative Perspective between Chinese and American Readers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the acceptance of Chinese children’s books by American audiences through in-depth interviews. The study is defined as the investigation of two key questions: whether American audiences perceive the cultural proximity between China and the United States and influences their acceptance of Chinese children’s books; and whether ethical phenomena presented in children’s books influence American audiences’ perceptions of Chinese children’s books. The interview group discovered that the assumptions of Chinese audiences differ greatly from the actual perceptions of American audiences by comparing interviews with 53 Chinese audiences and 51 American audiences. In this sense, cross-cultural communication should emphasize analyzing cultural differences rather than focusing solely on cross-cultural communication.

Product promotion by means of influencer marketing in the Chinese perfumery and cosmetics market

The paper discusses the development of ways to improve the procedure of selecting the most effective opinion leaders (influencers) for the promotion of perfumery and cosmetic products based on the results of the empirical study of the audience’s subjective perception in the Chinese market. The analysis was carried out on the basis of a formalized online survey of perfumery and cosmetics consumers — 992 out of 1,032 responses from the Chinese audience were included in the final sample of the study and handled by means of the partial least squares structural equation modeling. The study proposes a conceptual model of the impact of the characteristics of an opinion leader and their messages on the effectiveness of influence marketing represented by consumer intentions and formed brand image through the process of transmitting a message to influence consumer opinion. As a result, the features of the promotion of perfumery and cosmetic products in the Chinese market were revealed. It was found that overestimating the attractiveness of an opinion leader and underestimating their subjective perception by the consumer result in a low effectiveness of influence marketing. The analysis of the message transmission process showed that its moderators come to the fore, namely, consumer engagement and their valence to advertising. Yet, the impact significantly depends on the category of an opinion leader (number of subscribers, type, etc.). It was found that the direct influence of the opinion leader on the intentions of consumers is ineffective. The study offers practical recommendations to improve the procedure for selecting the most effective opinion leader in order to promote products taking into account the identified features. The directions for further research are outlined.

Russian participle and its functional homonyms in the texts of modern Russian mass media about science and technology

In modern Russian media, Russian participles and participial adjectives, nouns and pronouns, which are functional homonyms (similar-sounding etymologically related words), are widely used. In the present paper, based on 3,462 examples selected from the National Corpus of the Russian language, we analyze the prerequisites and the specifics of the transition of participles to other parts of speech, and show the differences between participles and their functional homonyms. The main prerequisite for adjectivation, substantiation and pronominalization of the participle is the attribute of the adjective contained in it, while the semantics of the participle, its position in the sentence and context play an important role. The transition of the participle to other parts of speech is of a gradual nature. Syncretic grammatical character, semantic compression and variability of syntactic functions make the participle one of the priority means of expressing such characteristic features of scientific texts as accuracy, consistency, conciseness and informativeness. In scientific texts, participles and their functional homonyms have different functions: substantive participles mainly perform a nominative function, adjectivated participles — a characterizing function, and pronominalized participles — deictic and other text-forming functions. Studying Russian participles is very difficult for Chinese students due to the fact that Chinese, unlike Russian, is the language of the analytical system, there is no form of participle in it. The division into parts of speech in Chinese is a special problem, since there are no specific morphological indicators in Chinese that characterize each part of speech. The results of the study can be useful when considering complex grammatical issues of the Russian language in the Chinese audience.

Teaching Russian to Uyghurs in PRC universities: pedagogical toolkit of nationally oriented methods

The relevance of the study is determined by the search for a compromise in teaching the Russian language to the Uighurs in the universities of PRC. Having completely different mental, cultural and linguistic traits, the Uyghurs and the Chinese study in programs that are focused only on the Chinese audience and do not take into account the characteristics of national minorities. The purpose of this study is to consider the basics of a nationally oriented methodology for teaching Russian to Uyghurs in Chinese universities and to propose its pedagogical tools. The materials were the works of scientists on nationally oriented education and methods of teaching Russian as a foreign language, works on the history and culture of the Uyghur people, as well as a survey of Uyghur students and teachers studying and working at Beijing State University. Methods of complex theoretical analysis and questionnaire-diagnostic were used. The cultural and historical path of the Uighurs was analyzed, which determined their mental characteristics, which must be taken into account when developinga nationally oriented methodology. The results of the survey made it possible to identifythe specifics of teaching the Uyghurs the Russian language and to characterize the main difficulties that students face in universities in the PRC. Ways of solving the indicated difficulties were determined by developing a nationally oriented methodology for teaching the Uyghurs the Russian language and its pedagogical tools were proposed. The prospects of the research are the approbation of the proposed foundations for the nationally oriented teaching of the Uighurs in the Russian language in the universities of the PRC and their further development.

The power within: Mass media, scientific entertainment, and the introduction of psychical research into China, 1900-1920.

How did a new science initially promoted by only a few individuals eventually become a widespread cultural phenomenon practiced and known by thousands of people? Following a transnational approach, this article traces the introduction of psychical research into China during the first two decades of the 20th century. Known in the Republican period (1912-1949) as Spiritual Science (xinling kexue or xinling yanjiu), psychical research flourished between the 1920s and 1930s, playing a key role in the popularization of applied psychology and mind-cure across China. This article takes a step back from the heyday of Spiritual Science by looking at the period that immediately preceded and helped define it. Focused on wide-circulation newspapers, popular manuals, and stage performances, it teases out the ways in which Chinese popular culture translated European, American, and Japanese psychical research to local Chinese audiences in the midst of China's search for modernity. By naturalizing the reality of psychic powers, spiritual scientists blurred the boundaries between science and superstition in a period when these were posited as diametrically opposed.