The impact of celebrity tourism on the Thai tourism industry: A study based on Noom Sornram Theappitak's Chinese fans behaviors that contributed to Thai celebrity tourism

Following the Korean culture so called 'Korean wave' has been successfully populated in many Asian countries, Thai entertainments are beginning to appear in the TV programmes in mainland China and has rapidly taken airtime in some of the provinces in mainland China. It has created initial Thai wave' among the mainland Chinese audience.However, though there are substantial studies done for Western film culture influences and the Korean culture influences, very limited studies have been done on Thailand film/TV drama influences on the behavior of the mainland Chinese behavior towards Thai tourism industry.This research is using the qualitative research methodology to examine the impact of Thai celebrity Noom Sornram‘s Chinese fans behavior that contributed to Thai tourism industry. The study provides methodological contributions as well as explores the potential of celebrity tourism to be developed in Thailand

Interactive translation in cyberspace : translator-reader dynamics in online translation of children’s novels

This thesis investigates a new mode of online literary translation characterized by translator-reader interactions. Its focus is on Internet-mediated exchanges between a non-professional translator Xiao Mao and his readers in the production, dissemination, and reception of his online translations of three novels by E. B. White from 2000 to 2001. By employing the methodological framework of actor-network theory (ANT), this thesis sets out to unearth not only the interactive dynamics among heterogeneous (human and non-human) actors but also how these engagements shape the translations at different stages. This thesis first unravels how readers in the New Threads online community participated in Xiao Mao’s translation process via a mailing list. Triangulating paratexts, mailing-list archives, and my interviews with the translator and two readers, it reveals the polyphony of voices and multiple translatorship in the translation production. This thesis then examines how and why the translations were disseminated in cyberspace. It uncovers a decentralized and participatory peer-to-peer online distribution network, in which online readers acted as distributors by reposting and discussing the translations on various social media. Using a quantitative and qualitative analysis of posts from the translator and readers in the discussion forum, Xianxian Shuhua, this study finds that reception is a dynamic process in which interpretations and evaluations are conditioned by interactional mechanisms in online communities. Taken together, translator-reader dynamics pervade the three phases of Xiao Mao’s translations, and his translation mode can be theorized as interactive translation, consisting of interactive production, interactive dissemination, and interactive reception, which foregrounds the participatory nature of online translation. This study is original in unleashing the descriptive power of ANT in researching online translation. It also reconfigures the notions of translation, translator, and reader, and prompts us to reconsider the translation profession in the digital age

The music industry and popular song in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, a historial and stylistic analysis

In 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, musicians and artists from different cultures and varied backgrounds joined and made the golden age of Shanghai popular song which suggests the beginnings of Chinese popular music in modern times. However, Shanghai popular song has long been neglected in most works about the modern history of Chinese music and remains an unexplored area in Shanghai studies. This study aims to reconstruct a historical view of the Shanghai popular music industry and make a stylistic analysis of its musical products. The research is undertaken at two levels: first, understanding the operating mechanism of the ‘platform’ and second, investigating the components of the ‘products’. By contrasting the hypothetical flowchart of the Shanghai popular music industry, details of the producing, selling and consuming processes are retrieved from various historical sources to reconstruct the industry platform. Through the first level of research, it is found that the rising new media and the flourishing entertainment industry profoundly influenced the development of Shanghai popular song. In addition, social and political changes and changes in business practices and the organisational structure of foreign record companies also contributed to the vast production, popularity and commercial success of Shanghai popular song. From the composition-performance view of song creation, the second level of research reveals that Chinese and Western musical elements both existed in the musical products. The Chinese vocal technique, Western bel canto and instruments from both musical traditions were all found in historical recordings. When ignoring the distinctive nature of pentatonicism but treating Chinese melodies as those on Western scales, Chinese-style tunes could be easily accompanied by chordal harmony. However, the Chinese heterophonic feature was lost in the Western accompaniment texture. Moreover, it is also found that the traditional rules governing the relationship between words and the melody was dismissed in Shanghai popular songwriting. The findings of this study fill in the neglected part in modern history of Chinese music and add to the literature on the under-explored musical area in Shanghai studies. Moreover, this study also demonstrates that against a map illustrating how musical products moved from record companies to consumers along with all other involved participants, the history of popular music can be rediscovered systematically by using songs as evidence, treating media material carefully and tracking down archives and surviving participants

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS − A UNIFYING DEFINITION, COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORK, AND ASSESSMENT OF ALGORITHMS FOR IDENTIFYING INFLUENCERS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Given its relative infancy, there is a dearth of research on a comprehensive view of business social media analytics (SMA). This dissertation first examines current literature related to SMA and develops an integrated, unifying definition of business SMA, providing a nuanced starting point for future business SMA research. This dissertation identifies several benefits of business SMA, and elaborates on some of them, while presenting recent empirical evidence in support of foregoing observations. The dissertation also describes several challenges facing business SMA today, along with supporting evidence from the literature, some of which also offer mitigating solutions in particular contexts. The second part of this dissertation studies one SMA implication focusing on identifying social influencer. Growing social media usage, accompanied by explosive growth in SMA, has resulted in increasing interest in finding automated ways of discovering influencers in online social interactions. Beginning 2008, many variants of multiple basic approaches have been proposed. Yet, there is no comprehensive study investigating the relative efficacy of these methods in specific settings. This dissertation investigates and reports on the relative performance of multiple methods on Twitter datasets containing between them tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of tweets. Accordingly, the second part of the dissertation helps further an understanding of business SMA and its many aspects, grounded in recent empirical work, and is a basis for further research and development. This dissertation provides a relatively comprehensive understanding of SMA and the implementation SMA in influencer identification

WAITING FOR 2008 OLYMPICS: POLITICS BETWEEN PEOPLE, THE WEST AND THE CHINESE STATE

In this dissertation, I primarily examine the power complex formed by the People/the peoples, the Chinese state and the West, particularly its embodiment before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. This dissertation will adopt Giorgio Agamben's theorizing of People/peoples to map the dialectical power dynamics through which the state sovereign of China tended to reinforced itself through hosting the Beijing Games. In addition, by engaging critical theories of cultural studies, I hope to avoid structural formalism caused by relying on one particular theory. Thus, by bringing post-colonial theories, theories of intersectionality, theories of transnational feminism and theories of globalization together, I want to capture the role discursively played by the West that shape and reshapes the People/the peoples. The focus of my empirical study is the People/the people. Each chapter explores one group of individuals - the peoples confined by constructed identities. According to Agamben, the People/the peoples are nothing but pure construction by the power of the state. Although the People/the peoples are sometimes "fragmentary multiplicity of needy and excluded bodies" (Agamben, 1998), it is often the case that the People/the peoples resist the power, acquire new subjectivities, and even actively engage in power negotiation with the state and the West. In this sense, the People/the peoples are not what Agamben theorized "bare life" that can only unconditionally subject themselves to the power. Instead, they carry the potential to disrupt power construction by forming transcendental subjectivity. Following Andrews' (2008) suggestion of embracing Physical Cultural Study, I employ a variety of qualitative methodologies to articulate the dynamic power complex. By doing so, I hope to make my limited contribution to breaking the confines that the power used to construct the People/the peoples, and possibly leading China to its proper place in this cosmopolitan world

Marx, Myth and Metaphysics: China Debates the Essence of Taijiquan

This article traces the mythologization, demythologization and remythologization of the origins of taijiquan in China. It describes the association of legendary immortal Zhang Sanfeng with the creation of an ‘internal’ martial art by Ming loyalists during the Ming-Qing transition, the historization of the origins by progressive intellectuals during the late Republican and Mao eras, and the reemergence of the cult of Zhang Sanfeng in the present period as a kind of fundamentalist revival. Using anonymous online informants, it documents the recent appearance of new language and philosophical paradigms – materialism and idealism, physics and metaphysics, and self-defense and self-cultivation – in debates around taijiquan’s true essence. Further, extrapolating from the latest ideological spectrum surveys, the article attempts to divine correlations between views on taijiquan’s essence and general alignments on a ‘liberal-conservative’ axis. The study concludes with an exploration of the special elusiveness of taijiquan as an object of definition and the potential for modern movement science to throw light on its essential uniqueness

Trajectories

This volume gathers artiche related to different research areas within the field of East Asian Studies. Organized in a Japanese and a Chinese section, these studies use different approaches within humanities disciplines to explore topics ranging from classical and contemporary East Asian literature to the study of second language acquisition across European and Asian languages. The collection offers an intentionally interdisciplinary approach so to provide a broader perspective on the literatures and languages of Japan and China. The authors featured in the volume are Claudia Iazzetta, Luca Capponcelli, Gala Maria Follaco for the Japanese section and Lara Colangelo, Franco Ficetola and Xu Hao for the Chinese section