Produce results and issue special issues? How China Can Tell the "College Story" to the World

Author | Elegant

As an important position for talent training and academic innovation, universities and colleges bear the important responsibility of communicating between China and foreign countries and connecting the world in international communication. In the context of multiculturalism, the improvement of its external communication power also determines the width and narrowness of the international vision of universities to a certain extent.

However, it is not an easy task to tell the story of China's colleges and universities to the world and achieve accurate dissemination and effective arrival of content, not only to have a change in communication ideas, but also to keep pace with the times in content and channels. In this regard, mainland universities still have a long way to go.

Recently, Nanjing University's plan to publish a special issue on the school anniversary in Nature has aroused heated discussion. In fact, issuing special issues in international journals has become a common practice for many colleges and universities to celebrate, reflecting the strong external communication needs of Chinese universities.

Under the background of "double first-class" construction and high-level university construction, external communication is an important way for mainland universities to promote international exchanges and enhance their influence. According to the "2021 Report on the Construction of Overseas Network Communication Power of Chinese Universities" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by Beijing Normal University not long ago, the overall overseas network communication comprehensive index of mainland universities in mainland China still needs to be further improved.

In terms of the ways and methods of telling the story of colleges and universities to the outside world, what better ways can mainland universities and colleges and universities?

Raising awareness is a common challenge for universities at home and abroad

Yu Hailiang, a professor at the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering of Central South University, often sees some advertising information published by European, American and Japanese universities in Nature. "Many international universities will 'advertise', and it is not necessary to publish promotional articles in well-known journals." In an interview with China Science Daily, Yu Hailiang said that not long ago, when he communicated with a Russian professor, he gave the other party several brochures introducing the relevant achievements of Central South University as promotional materials, and the "effect was also good."

Yu Hailiang also pointed out that in recent years, the international popularity of domestic universities has increased, but a university to expand its international popularity and reputation, "advertising" is only one of the means.

For the international influence of Chinese universities, Guo Yingjian, a professor at Chinese Min University, has an intuitive experience. Guo Yingjian has many years of overseas study experience. In the process of communicating with international scholars, he felt that after the reform and opening up, especially since the 21st century, foreign universities have experienced a transformation from "initial ignorance" to later "understanding" of Chinese universities.

In his view, the degree of understanding of Chinese universities by foreign universities can be divided into three different stages: 20 years ago, 10 years ago and the present. In terms of popularity and reputation, the top domestic universities have greatly improved internationally in the past 20 years.

20 years ago, "universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University began to enter the field of vision of foreign scholars." Guo Yingjian said that by around 2010, with the development of mainland universities and the gradual deepening of international cooperation and exchanges, the popularity of domestic universities in academia has also been greatly improved. He clearly felt that "foreign universities not only know the top universities such as Tsinghua and Peking University, but also know that Fudan University, Zhejiang University and other universities are also china's top universities."

However, in Guo Yingjian's view, although the popularity of domestic universities has increased significantly in the world, the popularity of a specific major of colleges and universities is still the shortcoming of the international popularity of universities. "The popularity and reputation of a university, including the reputation between different disciplines within the university. According to this, in addition to those university professors and experts who have in-depth exchanges and cooperation with the corresponding disciplines and majors, foreign professors and experts are not a problem of insufficient understanding of domestic universities, but are basically in a state of ignorance. Guo Yingjian said.

Guo Yingjian believes that this is also a common problem faced by international universities in enhancing their international visibility. "We all know that MIT is the number one science and engineering in the world, but many people may not understand that MIT's liberal arts ranks among the top three in the world. If you don't look up the information, it's hard to know anything about it. Guo Yingjian said.

He said that in the current environment, the fundamental way to enhance international influence is to produce innovative academic achievements with international influence.

The external communication power of Chinese universities is still insufficient

Yu Hailiang and Guo Yingjian's personal feelings were confirmed by a survey data from Beijing Normal University.

In October 2015, Beijing Normal University released the first comprehensive research report in China to comprehensively evaluate the overseas social influence of universities, the "Report on the Communication Power of Chinese Universities overseas networks (2015)". The report shows that there is still a big gap between the communication power of mainland universities and world famous universities in the English network world.

In 2021, the latest report released by the researchers shows that the comprehensive index of overseas network communication of mainland universities in mainland China is basically normally distributed, with Tsinghua University, Peking University and Zhejiang University ranking among the top three in the overseas network communication power of Chinese universities in 2021, and the gap between the communication power of the top ten universities has narrowed. The construction of social platforms in mainland universities has been strengthened, and the activity of accounts has increased significantly, but the interactivity needs to be improved. Tsinghua University, which ranks first in the overseas network communication power of mainland universities, and Harvard University, the first reference university in the United States in the same year, still has a certain gap in the communication index.

After 7 years of development, why is there still a gap in the external communication of Chinese universities? Fang Zengquan, a member of the report's research group and director of the Education Journalism and Media Research Center of Beijing Normal University, believes that at present, many colleges and universities are still doing "external communication" with the idea of "internal communication", and the use of overseas network communication platforms is extremely limited, and external communication is not promoted as an important work to shape the international image of the school and expand the international influence of the school.

Taking the construction of foreign language websites as an example, Fang Zengquan said that at present, many domestic universities still only translate the Chinese content into foreign languages, and the administrative management color is relatively heavy, "but the websites of overseas universities will be disseminated in the form of 'storytelling', and pay great attention to visual effects and personalization and refinement."

Qi Xuejing, an assistant researcher at the School of Journalism and Communication of Beijing Normal University, pointed out that the main paths for Chinese universities to carry out overseas communication are as follows: building English websites, publishing relevant articles on media platforms such as journals at important time nodes, organizing communication through holding report meetings, and building overseas dispatch agencies. In recent years, with the development of social media, universities have also paid attention to social media and other means of interpersonal communication.

"At present, social media represented by Facebook, Twitter, etc. is still the main path of external communication, and most domestic universities have not made full use of these online new media for overseas exchanges, and compared with non-native English-speaking universities such as Japan and South Korea, the communication power needs to be improved." Qi Xuejing said.

External communication needs to be "long-term achievement"

Fang Zengquan pointed out that overseas dissemination by domestic universities should not be "sports-style", but a long-term work and deep exploration of connotations. In recent years, the Internet has become the main front and main channel of information dissemination, and the widespread popularization of social media and short videos has become the main communication method of cross-cultural and cross-regional communication.

The "Report" pointed out that in the process of overseas communication, mainland universities have gradually changed the "grand narrative" model, paying attention to the use of concrete, visual and accessible communication methods, and tending to use experiential, scenario-based and individualized narrative methods to start from daily scenes, so that overseas audiences can generate strong emotional links and enhance the effect of overseas network communication.

For example, on Tsinghua University's Twitter platform, the number of forwards and comments ranks first in The list of Chinese universities is a tweet about Tsinghua University student Yang Qian winning the first gold medal in the Tokyo Olympic Games; on Facebook, Peking University, Beijing University of Foreign Chinese and other universities use Vlog forms, with students as the first perspective, integrating audiovisual means such as sound, picture, text and other audio-visual means to truly restore Chinese society and Chinese university scenes, and disseminate them in a scenario-based manner. "It can be found that university characteristics + international issues are one of the important ways to enhance communication power." Qi Xuejing said.

It is gratifying that domestic universities are gradually realizing the importance of telling foreign communication stories.

In September 2021, at the 7th National Seminar on Foreign Communication Theory, 17 universities across the country, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Chinese Min University, and Tianjin University, jointly issued the "Initiative on Strengthening the International Communication Work of Universities" formed after full deliberation and discussion, calling on domestic universities to discuss cooperation, jointly build platforms, share experiences, and enhance the comprehensive effectiveness of international communication of universities in comprehensive exploration and breakthroughs.

How can we tell the "story of foreign communication" of Chinese universities? Guo Yingjian believes that the most attractive nature of colleges and universities is the latest scientific research results, international awards, and achievements in talent training, etc. Colleges and universities should attach great importance to the construction of foreign language websites.

"We can see a phenomenon - the Chinese websites of domestic universities are very well done and rich in content, but if you click into foreign language websites, it is more like a special website for recruiting international students, all of which are to attract relevant information about international students." Guo Yingjian said.

In terms of communication content, Qi Xuejing believes that the academic achievements and cultural issues of the university have received more attention and recognition. On google platform, academic information such as the release of academic innovation achievements of Chinese universities and major research progress has constructed a positive image of each university.

"To tell the story of Chinese culture well, we must understand and interpret it in an international context and enhance its international influence." Chinese universities should focus on their own positioning, take academics and culture as the starting point, promote Chinese culture to go global, and create international communication characteristics. Qi Xuejing said.

Fang Zengquan mentioned that domestic universities lack the awareness to interact with the audience, the interaction method is single, and the audience rarely gets a response. On Twitter, for example, only three universities on the Chinese mainland have more than 100 retweets, and only one university at Tsinghua has a highest number of comments of more than 100. Universities have made innovations and breakthroughs in the content and form of communication, and the next step should be to consider how to improve the reach rate of content and effectively disseminate it. Universities can adopt new interactive methods such as prize Q&A and open solicitation to enhance the connection with the audience, enhance the appeal and persuasiveness, and enhance the communication effect.

In addition, domestic colleges and universities should also increase or allocate compound and specialized overseas communication talents. "The special team and professional operation enable colleges and universities to unify their voices and collectively speak out when disseminating overseas, which helps to improve the volume of discourse and enhance the sense of presence." Fang Zengquan said.