ScholarOne - Exploring Chinese Governments’ Attitudes towards
Deliberative Democracy through Visualization of Communicative City: A
Computer-assisted Visual Analysis on City Promotional Film
Abstract
Objective:The present study aims to explore the attitudes of Chinese
city governments towards deliberative democracy, as portrayed in city
promotional films that depict a communicative and democratic urban
environment. Additionally, the investigation seeks to discern the
influence of geographic factors on the representation of a communicative
and democratic city. Subjects and Methods:A comprehensive analysis was
conducted on a corpus comprising 2,539 images extracted from 12 city
promotional films produced by local governments between the years 2019
and 2021. Categorization of cities and film images into three groups was
undertaken based on geographical regions. Utilizing the Baidu AI image
recognition platform, each image was systematically labeled according to
12 predefined categories derived from three dimensions of the
communicative city concept, including spatial space, imagery space and
practice space. Descriptive analysis was employed to delineate the
distribution of emphasized dimensions and specific items. The impact of
geographic factors was scrutinized through independent sample T-tests.
Results:The findings elucidate that all 12 cities allocate substantial
screen time to showcase 12 dimensions, thereby presenting a multifaceted
communicative city. Notably, the highest emphasis is placed on
illustrating imagery space (49.08%), followed by spatial space
(40.00%), whereas the practice space receives comparatively less
emphasis, averaging around 10.92%. Importantly, the study identifies
that geographic factors significantly influence the portrayal of
practice space and citizens’ activities. Western cities in China exhibit
a lesser concern for practice space compared to their eastern
counterparts, and they place less emphasis on citizens’ activities than
both eastern and central cities. Conclusions: The notion of the
“communicative city” has emerged as a common aspiration for the
governments of large and medium-sized cities in China. Furthermore, this
study underscores the substantial impact of geographic factors on
governments’ perceptions and attitudes towards deliberative democracy,
particularly in the realm of practice space.