"Positive Energy" and Its Role in Regime Legitimisation in China: A Case Study of Keep Running

Abstract

As the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the media plays an important role in spreading the ideologies of the Party-state to enable it to secure legitimacy for its rule. Hence, the media is a point of entry for analysing the ideological discourses of the CCP and how these ideologies contribute to regime legitimisation. Existing literature commonly use hegemonic consensus to explain how ideological work contributes to Party-state legitimacy. In recent years, the term “positive energy” gained massive traction in online media and even entered the vocabulary of the Party-state. It was also adopted by the popular variety show, Keep Running, which markets itself as a television programme that spreads “positive energy”. This thesis aims to find out how the media discourse of “positive energy” serves to reinforce the CCP’s regime legitimisation efforts by using Keep Running as a case study. More specifically, content analysis is employed to systematically analyse how “positive energy” manifests in the show. This thesis argues that the “positive energy” discourse can be traced to Core Socialist Values and traditional Chinese (Confucian) values that the CCP promotes. Given that this “positive energy” discourse is notably different from ideological work, Foucault’s concept of governmentality is introduced to make sense of how “positive energy” contributes to Party-state legitimacy in China.