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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.
Zhu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.