Bo Liwei School of International Journalism and Communication at Beijing Foreign Studies University in China.
Yu Yang, School of International Education at Shandong University in China.
yuyangsdu@sdu.edu.cn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHOmBV4js_EIn his masterpiece Mainstream: Enquete Sur Cette Culture Qui Plait A Tout Le Monde, the French scholar, Frédéric Martel, once asked which country could gain victory in the global cultural war under the background of globalization and digitalization (Martel, 2010). As to the communication among different cultures, Chinese President Xi Jinping has proposed a Chinese approach: “Diversity spurs interaction among civilizations, which in turn promotes mutual learning and further development” (Xi, 2022, p. 543). It is also advocated that different cultures need to respect each other, treat each other as equals, uphold the beauty of each civilization and the diversity of civilizations around the word. Moreover, we need to stay open and inclusive, draw on each other’s strengths, advance with the times and explore new ground (Xi, 2020, pp. 543-546). Along with the tremendous development of media technology, artificial intelligence has been widely applied to mobile media, and has exerted significant influences on the content ecosystem of global communication in a subtle manner. Thus, as an important component of media content, the production, dissemination and reception of cultural products in various forms are being profoundly affected by artificial intelligence technology. This study attempts to explore the ways of how artificial intelligence affects the practices of intercultural communication, so as to have a deeper understanding of the impact of artificial intelligence on the transnational flow of cultures. The influence mechanism of artificial intelligence on intercultural communication practices The Canadian communication scholar Harold Adams Innis and his colleague Marshall McLuhan initiated the tradition of studying communication from the aspect of communication technology, focusing on examining the history of communication development from the perspective of the evolution of communication technology. The enormous impact of communication technology on communication activities was highly stressed (McLuhan, 1994). In the same vein, the application of artificial intelligence has already exerted great impact on intercultural communication practices. The impact has even exceeded that of cultural content itself on intercultural communication. Intelligent identification of the needs of international users and precise recommendation of cultural products Through artificial intelligence technology, the mobile devices could capture the data about the users’ habits, and then predict the preferences of users and precisely recommend related cultural products that may be favored by the users. That is the basic logic on how intercultural communication is influenced by the artificial intelligence technology. In the past, the estimation about user preferences and psychology relied heavily on vague and empirical judgement, or based on sampled surveys. While in the mobile Internet context, artificial intelligence could accurately identify the data of the use and consumption of cultural products by mobile device users, and thus could produce a sketch and description of the users. That estimation provides the basic market data for the production and dissemination of cultural products, and could help push the products to their target audience. The concept of “Information Cocoon” proposed by the American scholar Cass R. Sunstein (2006) is often cited to criticize the precise identification and content recommendation, which is concerned with the possibility that the identification of artificial intelligence would push users to lose more chances to choose diverse cultural products and therefore get restrained within a narrow information space. Such criticisms are enlightening. However, it can also not be denied that, before the wide application of intelligent identification technology, the users (audiences at that time) were already filtering and screening their favorite media content through a selective psychological mechanism. In this sense, nowdays artificial intelligence could help users “select” their favorite content in a more intelligent way. Currently, it is quite common that YouTube, Douyin, TikTok and other mobile terminal applications identify the user preferences through algorithms and target them with their favorite cultural products. In the process of the interactions between users and applications, artificial intelligence could recommend cultural content to users in line with their reading habits. Enhanced users’ participation in the reprocessing and multi-level dissemination of cultural products The identification through artificial intelligence of the potential users is not only limited to the content preference of users, but also their habits and behaviours. The mobile device applications could capture users’ behavior data, such as reading, viewing, liking, favoring, forwarding and commenting on cultural products, and therefore estimate the users’ attitudes towards the cultural product. To some extent, the users also play the role of the producer in the process of receiving, reading and viewing cultural products. Under this situation, the user has been transformed to a “Prosumer” (Toffler, 1980). The data and traces left by the users when they were viewing, liking, favoring, forwarding and commenting will become a part of cultural products themselves. In a broad sense, the users have become the collaborators in the actual production of cultural products. On social media, the users’ data of reading, viewing, liking, favoring, forwarding and commenting on cultural products would be collected and recommended to relevant users through the algorithms. Moreover, through the interpersonal communication networks of users and the intelligent recommendation of media platforms, the users have become important nodes for the multi-level dissemination of cultural product content. Each user becomes an integral part of the network of cultural communication, jointly facilitating the flow of cultural products to each corner of the world that can be reached by the mobile Internet. For instance, the works of Chinese cultural bloggers, including Li Ziqi, Ms Yeah, Brother Dianxi, and Grandpa Ah Mu, are very popular with international users. The domestic and foreign users enthusiastically participate in the discussions of the content, and engage in lively exchanges and interactions with bloggers and other users. These comments themselves have become an organic part of the cultural short videos. On TikTok, around the topic of “Chinese Year”, a large number of international users also shoot relevant short videos and shared their understanding of “Chinese Year”. The result is that they co-created a series of cultural works about “Chinese Year” on TikTok. Facilitating the dialogue between content production and the surfaced “implied reader” Hans Robert Jauss, the German literary theorist and the founder of receptional aesthetics, once proposed the concept of “implied reader”, believing that literary works are unfinished enlightening texts (Jauss, 1982). However, in the Internet context, the Internet readers are usually not “implied” but “surfaced”. The cultural content on social media is more often than not “semi-finished products”. Most of the cultural products disseminated on social media are continuously updated in series. This allows the content creators to make adjustments based on the user feedbacks, or modify the previously released works. Hence, it means that the creator and the recipient of cultural products jointly contribute to the creation process through constant interactions. Therefore, users’ participation in cultural product content creation has twofold meanings:
The first is that users could enrich the content of cultural products through reading, viewing, liking, favoring, forwarding and commenting, which would influence the subsequent users who might get in touch with the cultural products later on. These additional contents would be regarded as an organic component of the cultural products content. The second refers to the fact that the creator of cultural products would make adjustments on the previous or subsequent products according to the user feedbacks. The recipient may take part in the creation process by influencing the psychological activities of the actual creator of cultural products. Intelligent robot’s participation in the content production of cultural products Artificial intelligence technology is slowly but gradually replacing human labour in multiple fields, from manual labor fields to mental work. For example, the “Writing-bots” launched by Baidu in China can do data collection, make analysis, write and review, and can meet the requirements in multiple fields and styles. The intelligent writing-bot works far more efficiently than human writers. This momentum will have revolutionary impact on the production of cultural content. In the field of news production, the robot journalist of Xinhua News Agency “Kuai Bi Xiao Xin” could produce reports in seconds. The interviews we conducted with the short video practitioners show that a mobile application named “Kuai Ying” can automatically and pictures to the text content accordingly. All of the above cases show that intelligent robots have strong content production capacity. Cultural products can be generated according to the setting behavior of the producers, and further assist the flow of cultural products in the global market. The impact of artificial intelligence plus data on intercultural communication should deserve our great attention, so that we could re-recognize and re-participate in the international and intercultural communication.
Conclusion
Only through adequate exchanges and mutual learning on an equal footing that different cultures in the world could renovate and develop further. Artificial intelligence, together with social media platforms and mobile Internet, to some extent provide more approaches and channels for intercultural communication and exchanges among civilizations. Artificial intelligence recommends cultural products to target users by identifying their psychological needs and behavior preferences. This