From "breaking the circle" to "expanding the circle": a study of officials' live goods behavior in the new media era

: In the era of epidemic and post-epidemic, in order to help economic recovery, political officials are brave enough to break through the circle and open up the sales path for local agricultural products by means of live broadcast with goods, and some county governors have even won the title of "net red county governor", becoming the main body of the "broken circle". They have become the representative figures of "broken circle". Based on the national strategy of "rural revitalization", the live broadcast of goods by officials is based on e-commerce live broadcast, which has an obvious political and economic behavior. This paper adopts participatory observation and textual analysis to analyze this phenomenon of "breaking the circle", explore the economic communication behavior of officials' live-streaming with goods, and analyze how officials complete the identity transformation of "breaking the circle" and the challenges they face in this breaking behavior. We also analyze how the officials transformed their identities and the challenges they faced in the process of "breaking the circle", so as to create a better image of the government in the communication process and effectively play an active role and influence of the officials in rural revitalization.


Introduction
Live-streaming is a form of Internet economy and a derivative business model of e-commerce platforms, and this business model reached its peak in 2019, which is also called "the first year of live-streaming". Live goods first began in Taobao platform, and then Tiktok,Kwai,Little Red Book, Quora and other platforms have access to live features. All walks of life began to enjoy the wave of dividends brought by live goods. It is in the national live with goods in the boom, the main body of the live room is breaking the circle trend. In addition to stars, major brands of marketing personnel, there are political officials around the broken circle subject. Local governments seize the opportunity to officials as the main body of the effective use of new media platforms on the Internet, agricultural products live with goods, the innovative formation of a new model of government services to help farmers live with goods. This model not only broadens the broadening of agricultural sales channels, but also strengthens the government's sense of service, and makes a useful attempt to put the rural economy on the e-commerce platform and achieve leapfrog development.

Study of "broken circle" subjects and officials' live banding
"Circle" is a geographic concept and term used to describe the internal and external levels of geological structure. After being introduced into the humanities, it has been given a different meaning. "Stratification" refers to the dynamic field of categorization in human society, which includes three dimensions: the construction of relationships within the stratum, the breakthrough and socialization of relationships within the stratum, and the penetration of external forces into the stratum and socialization [1]. Circling is the basic mode of group composition, but it is not a solid and fully closed mode, a space and scope of flow and absorption at any time. Under the influence and promotion of the Internet, this "circle" is more easily broken, or even fused, to reach the ideal model of no circle [2]. This ideal model has been similarly interpreted in Merovitz's media context theory. After fusing McLuhan's media theory with Goffman's contextual theory, he proposed that the newly emerged media would break the original context and emerge a new media environment by fusing and linking the old and new contexts, and people would form new behaviors and performances to adapt to this context [3]. This new context forms new "circles", only that the boundaries are no longer clear. In the new media era, people are constantly entering, exiting and breaking the circle, and in this process, cultural interaction and communication of the whole circle is established, presenting a benign symbiotic ecology of multiple cultures [4]. After breaking the solid barriers between the "circles", the "broken circle" subjects survive and develop through the differences of the circles and the continuous supply of content, and share the traffic and achieve complementarity with the opinion leaders [5]. The officials, as a member of the live broadcast subject, fully demonstrate the dominant position of the opinion leaders in the live broadcast with goods and the efficiency of breaking barriers, and their content and discourse in the live broadcast media scene as an economic behavior, between the innovative practice of bringing goods [6]. This practice brings about the formation of the phenomenon of "consumer spectacle", which completely overturns the traditional media marketing model and is accepted by the audience with a new identity and a new scene different from that of the officials [7].
The officials repeatedly construct the group identity symbols in the live broadcast, so that the interactive rituals occurring in a cycle eventually form an interactive ritual chain in the macro sense under the long-term positive feedback. The "live broadcast with goods" is one of the manifestations of the interactive ritual model. Through literature combing, we found that there seems to be not much research on "subject's behavior" which is detailed to the concrete level, but more on the macroscopic description of its behavior. However, the qualitative in-depth study of the "broken circle" subjects can explore the impact of the behavior of the "broken circle" subjects at a deeper level, which is also important for the political officials of the "broken circle" subjects. This is also of great significance to the political officials of the "broken circle".

Research Methodology
During the fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic, more than 100 county mayors broadcasted live to promote thousands of special agricultural products. Officials' live broadcast with goods showed a trend of scale and universality. Based on this, the research method of this paper adopts the participatory observation research method to study the behavior of officials' livestreaming with goods by taking the live-streaming of county mayors, who are widely concerned by netizens and are called "net-celebrity county mayors" by netizens, as a sample. We also take the language texts used by the "broken circle subject". In the live broadcast, the content production with the anchor's assistant, and the interaction text records of netizens as the corpus, including the body language and clothing shown by the anchor in the video, and describe the content and image construction methods of the "broken circle subject". The content production form and image construction method of the "broken circle subject" are described and analyzed, and the logical relationship behind them is explored through the behavior and performance of specific officials' live broadcast, so as to focus on the benign operation demand of multiple social subjects' practice of helping farmers and promote the development of China's rural revitalization and governance modernization.

Cultural propaganda and live-streaming with goods together
In recent years, the "live broadcast + e-commerce" marketing model has developed rapidly, making the retail industry has set off a reform wind to reconstruct the relationship between "people, goods and fields". It can be seen that the most direct function of the live broadcast with goods is to drive consumption, especially during the home prevention and control of epidemics, but also an important means to open the sales of agricultural products. Government officials, represented by mayors and prefects, have joined the live-streaming bandwagon, jointly promoting the universality and equality of the live-streaming carnival, and the function of live-streaming bandwagoning has changed. In the process of live broadcast, the governors have to introduce the efficacy of the products and their own commodity value to the netizens in a clear and smooth manner, and there are some additional values that attract the netizens' attention. The first added value behind the word "helping farmers" is the kind image of "helping others", as long as the netizens consume it, they are helping others; secondly, the live broadcast of the governors is also free of charge, and all the income driven by it goes to the farmers, which is the value of social welfare. The social welfare value contained therein also attracts many netizens willing to spend for the public good, especially during the epidemic, the value of "public welfare" is even more eye-catching; there is also the value of publicity, in the live broadcast with goods, the governors will always introduce from food to beautiful scenery, from beautiful stories to the historical style, these publicity will not only add value to the product, but also attract netizens to go to the local tourism. These promotions will not only add value to the products, but also attract netizens to travel to the local area. Even though the epidemic is restricted, when the epidemic passes, it will definitely promote the development of local tourism, thus driving the economy. The governors show the value of the products to the netizens as much as possible through sincere promotion, singing mountain songs and folk songs, sending welfare benefits, etc., so that the netizens will willingly pay for the products. This not only opens up the sales of agricultural products, but also makes the first shot from the long-term planning of brand building, which is a win-win marketing behavior.
These actions do not only have the function of driving the economy, but also play some other unexpected functions when the governors transplant these added values to the products and leave traces on the Internet through live streaming. In the dual context of "fighting the epidemic" and "poverty alleviation", the officials' live broadcast of goods became one of their jobs, and the concept of governance changed from the delivery of ideas to the marketing of services to the industry. In addition to the direct economic function of bringing goods, public welfare promotion, local image publicity, work style innovation, etc. are the more important functional demands of officials live with goods, in this way, the function of "officials live with goods" will develop in the direction of diversification.

Complete the transformation of identity by "pro-people"
In the early days of live streaming, the netizen anchors themselves had a natural Internet gene, which was formed in the carnival scene built by language, scenes and pop-ups, and was constantly reinforced as their personalized label. Government officials who entered live-streaming with goods during the epidemic needed to transform from the identity of government personnel to that of a bandwagon anchor. However, it is not possible for them to enter the role completely by mocking, disliking and teasing each other like some netizens or anonymous viewers, but to complete the identity transformation by "making it personal".
The officials in the live broadcast, from clothing, language and action have changed. It can be seen through Table 1, the officials have changed from their usual style of wearing suits and sitting upright to being the anchors of the live broadcast in their everyday clothes. The officials changed their serious language style and showed their "grounded" side with "people-friendly" language. The official language of the speech has turned into a paragraph-style expression, gaining the goodwill of fans, which in turn produces a better effect of live goods. In the live broadcast room, they "are no longer the mayor and governor in suits and serious words, but more like an old friend who frankly shares product experience with netizens. The officials in the live broadcast room also from time to time to the camera than the "V" cute, close the distance between the netizens.
In this aspect of "pro-people", the first thing the governors do is to familiarize themselves with this new way of facing the people, in many of the interviews with the webmaster, especially the "premiere" preparation, they will study the live replay of the live webmaster in advance, will learn They will learn the vocabulary and language expressions commonly used in live webcast, such as "babies, buy it, buy it, buy it", "old iron", "planting"......Secondly, the governors in the live scenes will pay extra attention to their image, clothing, even in a suit, will not tie, in order to show more casual, but also untie the collar, while the long sleeves of the shirt will be pulled up to reveal the small arms. In the live broadcast scene, the officials will also go into the greenhouses, mountains and orchards to talk to the farmers and convey the efficacy of the products, bringing the officials and the people closer together. Finally, in the interactive content, singing, price cutting, bursting golden words, sending free gifts, etc., these interactions show that the governors are trying their best to live anchor identity closer.

Fan economy model under the double celebrity effect
The celebrity effect refers to the effect of people with certain social status and identity appearing to attract the attention of others and continuously expanding this attention and influence. In the major live streams, celebrities are invited as the main attraction to achieve the purpose of attracting audiences and start the economic behavior of live streaming with goods. The economic behavior under this effect can not only maximize the commercial value of the stars, but also call on fans to complete their consumption behavior through collective purchase, further strengthening the emotional ties within the fan community. In this way, it can expand the distinction between fans and ordinary consumers (Li K H, 2016). This model is a unique fan economy model derived from the development of media technology. The officials act as the "star" anchors in the live broadcast.
By virtue of their local popularity and influence, officials are as influential as professional anchors. They precisely promote local goods through the connection between local goods and culture, giving them a cultural value beyond their commercial value and enhancing consumers' desire to buy them. In addition to officials, anchors from local TV stations enter the live broadcast room in the guise of live broadcast assistants, making the content of the live broadcast richer, more entertaining and highly ornamental. And these anchors have a good reputation and good fixed fans in the local area, to achieve a double celebrity effect. So, a live broadcast with goods also delivered a bright report card, forming a win-win model of economic benefits and cultural effects.

Beware of the solidification of live behavior pattern
The governor in the live subject belongs to the "non-mainstream" group, but can use its identity special, in the live platform through rich content, interesting interaction and interview form, the real introduction of agricultural and sideline products, and then realize the online sales of agricultural and sideline products, and the netizens form a positive interaction at the same time, shaping a good image of the government. However, in the process of official live broadcast, most of the officials take the big anchor as the object of imitation, constantly saying "babies", "buy it" and other network terms, to a certain extent, to close the distance with the netizens, but the live broadcast is also modeled. In fact, in addition to the language of the people, you can also use the scene and folklore to convey more feelings. For example, officials out of the live room, from the production to the sale of goods to introduce, so that buyers feel confident to buy; in addition to "baby" and other network terms can also use the local dialect to tell stories or sing folk songs to liven up the atmosphere, a variety of flowers, each with its own characteristics of live, naturally attract more attention to the netizens, thus boosting the sales of agricultural products.

The role perception between "officials" and "net celebrities
The current live broadcast of the governor is mostly for the agricultural products "endorsement", belongs to the nature of occasional "test water", mostly by the e-commerce platform or government department cooperation organization, aimed at helping poverty alleviation. In the live broadcast field of "government + enterprise + public", the top-down information circulation is really realized, breaking the information barrier formed by the circle, and realizing the double chain virtuous cycle of goods and services. In the special period of the epidemic, it also enables local specialties to be sold far and wide to achieve economic value, thus promoting local development and collaborative governance. Some county governors, on the other hand, extend the breadth and depth of the governor's live broadcast, deriving the label of "Netflix" from government officials, but not too deep into the drama. Although the current network of public opinion for the governor live generally encourage a positive attitude, but how to balance the role of "officials" and "weblebrity" between the conversion, so that the governor live can not only "bring goods The "live" is a kind of grounded service for the people "live government", which still needs to be tried and explored.

The integration and balance of propaganda and consumer thinking
In the field of live broadcast with goods, government officials are the "spokesman" of government image and local culture. They often make sufficient preparations before participating in the live broadcast, study the local special products and explain the content, promote the local products comprehensively and meticulously, and can answer the questions of netizens timely and accurately, providing the public with real and effective information and products in the live broadcast. However, there are also some officials who are not very familiar with the live broadcast process and product content, and just promote the local characteristics and culture, which is disconnected from the products, resulting in the live broadcast becomes a form of propaganda, making it difficult to mobilize the public's participation and achieve effective communication effects. An important reason is that the nature of publicity and promotion and consumer consumption needs do not match, live with goods did not meet the public expectations. Therefore, in the live broadcast, the officials should be as far as possible to reduce the propaganda thinking, and go to the live broadcast from the perspective of consumers, and always insist on the organic integration of social benefits, communication content and quality of goods.

Conclusion and Prospect
In the epidemic era when live e-commerce has become a new economic model, government officials have followed the development trend of China's economy and society to live-stream with goods, pooling the flow of netizens and realizing the commercial efficacy and political function in the same direction. In the post-epidemic era, government officials should also play the role of a bridge between the public and e-commerce, create local brand characteristics and industries, deeply explore their potential value from the inside out, truly stimulate market vitality, and establish a correct government image. In addition, the "broken circle" subject also needs to "expand the circle" to fully release the innovative value of the live broadcast of county officials with goods, to lay a solid foundation for the orderly participation of multiple subjects in political life and collaborative governance of society, to realize the win-win situation of social and economic benefits, and to promote the development of China's The development of rural revitalization and governance modernization.