{"id":2063,"date":"2013-07-01T10:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T08:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/?p=2063"},"modified":"2015-08-23T01:00:45","modified_gmt":"2015-08-22T23:00:45","slug":"the-futurities-and-utopias-of-the-shanghai-world-exposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicseastasia.com\/staging\/3558\/research\/mass-media-events\/shanghai-expo\/the-futurities-and-utopias-of-the-shanghai-world-exposition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Futurities and Utopias of the Shanghai World Exposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Expo 2010 Theme Pavilions<\/h2>\n<p>The Shanghai World Exposition, hailed by the PRC\u2019s official news media as &#8216;the largest ever\u00a0Expo in history&#8217;, was far more than a theme park. It was a large-scale attempt\u00a0at political communication. This paper examines this communication process,\u00a0which the Chinese government initiated as a core part of its public relations\u00a0strategy for the 21st century. It\u00a0analyses multi-media data collected at\u00a0the Expo site in July 2010 to answer the questions: what futurist and utopian\u00a0visions did the five themed pavilions present to visitors of the Expo, and what\u00a0relevance might these visions have to our understanding of how media events\u00a0like world fairs construct political discourse?<\/p>\n<p>To answer this question, the paper engages with recent\u00a0research on the Expo and reviews theoretical concerns about the general\u00a0power of media events to manipulate audiences. It then provides an analysis\u00a0that shows how the themed exhibits provide diverse interpretations of modernity\u00a0and utopian futures. These visions at times collide with the worldview that\u00a0the Chinese government is trying to foster, and which is communicated\u00a0throughout much of the event. Yet this is not to say that the institutional constraints\u00a0and the general set-up of the Expo collapse the entire event into a\u00a0monolithic discourse that re-enforce the political ideals of the Chinese authorities,\u00a0or that the participants and visitors of the event are successfully co-opted\u00a0into an overarching narrative of capitalist modernity. In fact, the\u00a0Shanghai World Exposition offers\u00a0opportunities of utopian thought that demonstrably escape control.<\/p>\n<p>The research for this project was made possible with the generous financial support of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hum.leiden.edu\/lias\/\" target=\"_blank\">Leiden University Institute of Area Studies<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asiascape.org\/beyondutopia.html\" target=\"_blank\">NWO project Beyond Utopia<\/a>, run by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hum.leiden.edu\/philosophy\/staff\/gotojonescs.html\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Goto-Jones<\/a> from 2010 to 2014.<\/p>\n<h3>How to reference this article<\/h3>\n<p>Schneider, Florian (2013), &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.asiascape.org\/resources\/publications\/asiascape_ops_7.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">The Futurities and Utopias of the Shanghai World Exposition &#8211; A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Expo 2010 Theme Pavilions<\/a>&#8216;. <em>Asiascape Occasional Papers<\/em>, 7, 1-17.<\/p>\n<p>[button text=&#8221;More via asiascape.org&#8221; link=&#8221;http:\/\/www.asiascape.org\/publications.html&#8221;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This paper examines the theme pavilions at the Shanghai World Exposition  &#8211; a large-scale political communication effort that the Chinese government initiated as a core part of its public relations strategy for the 21st century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[56,54],"tags":[43,64,175,58,181,176,174,57],"class_list":["post-2063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publications","category-shanghai-expo","tag-china","tag-discourse","tag-mass-events","tag-political-communication","tag-shanghai-expo","tag-theme-pavilions","tag-utopia","tag-visuality","post_format-post-format-image"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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