From Recording To Documenting: A Study Of Overseas Chinese Students’ Online Cross-Cultural Communication Practices

During the 30 th Collective Study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee,President Xi Jinping emphasized the need of strengthening and improving international communicate abilities to present a true,dimensional and well-rounded China.Since then,the importance of external communication has risen to a new level in current media environment.According to translator and external communication expert Mr.Shen Suru,external communication is,in essence,an act of cross-cultural communication.After sorting through the relevant papers and reports,it is found that the current research on external communication and cross-cultural communication is mostly focused on governmental media,while it is clear that there is a great potential of private media that has not been explored.Based on this,this paper conducts an in-depth study on the cross-cultural communication activities of Chinese overseas students who live in two different cultural environments.After watching and sorting out the online cross-cultural communication contents of Chinese overseas students from various websites in China and abroad,this paper selects the youth social media Bilibili,which is more multi-modal and has more sufficient samples,as the research platform,and selects 82 sample videos from 14 uploaders of 8foreign study countries to analyze according to the relevance of the research topic.Based on this,using Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis mode as the research framework and using Multimodal Discourse Analysis and Visual Grammar as the theoretical support,the study uses text analysis,content analysis and depth interviews to reveal how Chinese overseas students’ personal videos carry out their cross-cultural communication practices in cyberspace.To understand what kind of cultural icons that international students bring out,intentionally or unintentionally.And what kind of national image they construct in the process of recording their personal abroad experiences? What kind of discourse strategies do they use in the process of transmitting cultural elements? What kind of reality power is limited their communication strategy?The study finds that,first of all,at the micro level from the textual perspective,overseas Chinese students are not afraid of applying multiple symbols in the process of recording their personal experiences.A large number of these symbols are not directly serving to establish their own image,but to reflect the culture of their study countries or to emphasize Chinese culture.Secondly,in the production,distribution and consumption of the discourses,after a comprehensive analysis between the surface discourses and implicit discourses of cross-cultural communication videos among international Chinese students,it is found that: in the production aspect,international Chinese students’ media prefer those issues that can identify the cultural right of belonging,which are more advantageous to be spread by themselves,and which have the tendency to be synchronized with the public agenda in China and abroad;From the perspective of distribution,in the process of recording their personal experiences,the international Chinese students also construct an image of the country "related to me",and in this process,the distribution of the discourse on "powerful country","unfamiliar country" and "my nation" are different.At the consumption aspect,this paper analyzes the content that has been approved by audiences.In the process of cross-cultural communication,it should not be defined as good or bad,but should be presented as objectively as possible,and innovative content which adds and combines each other’s cultures will be more popular;Finally,in the aspect of discourse social practice,through deep interviews with audiences and Chinese international student video uploaders,it is found that they are shifting from unconscious to conscious cultural communication in the process of online cross-cultural communication.And the Chinese overseas student video uploaders can get self-satisfaction during this process,and this self-satisfaction will be different according to the difference of ideological environment between China and foreign countries.The audience can understand the differences in the backgrounds of different countries’ cultures and the social patterns of other countries through the online cross-cultural communication videos of overseas Chinese students,and form a more objective impression of other countries and also can let them think more deeply about the current situation and ways of Chinese cultural export.In conclusion,based on the above studies,the paper puts forward some suggestions for the future practice of intercultural communication and related cross-cultural academic research: One is that in the practice of cross-cultural communication it should stand on other countries’ fields to think about the acceptance of the content of intercultural communication,and in this process it should be allowed to make adjustment to some traditional culture’s external forms.The second point is that finding commonalities in the process of cross-cultural communication is more effective than differentiated communication,and cooperating with outstanding foreign cultures and ordinary people by resorting to common approaches may achieve better results.The third is that in future research on cross-cultural communication,the direction of research should be refined with cross-cultural "accurate country communication ",and if considering the effect aspect,it should try to adopt a combination method with quantitative research and qualitative research.