Academic Journal of Science and Technology ISSN: 2771-3032 | Vol. 7, No. 2, 2023 210 Study on the Development Path of Lingbi Shadow Theater in the Age of Self‐media Panpan Jin*, Shuang Liu Anhui University of Finance and Economics School of Art, co233030, China *Corresponding author: 1628658743@qq.com Abstract: As an intangible cultural heritage of Anhui Province, how to better inheritance and development is an important issue that Lingbi shadow theatre is facing now. This project mainly explores how Lingbi shadow theatre can make use of the fast and convenient self-media platform to reach the public in the age of self-media. Through the field investigation method, literature reading method and other research methods, we study the artistic characteristics and cultural connotation of Lingbi Shadow Opera, and analyse the dilemmas and reasons it is facing nowadays. According to the communication methods and advantages of self media, combining with the current development situation of Lingbi shadow theatre and the humanities of Lingbi County, we discuss how to combine Lingbi shadow theatre with self media to give full play to its cultural value, economic value, social value and so on. It is proposed to combine traditional media, new media and self-media, everyone can be a non-heritage communicator, and develop cultural and creative products, in order to expand the audience of Lingbi shadow theatre and achieve the common development of self-media and Lingbi shadow theatre. This study is based on the national policy of protecting intangible cultural heritage, the inheritance and development of Lingbi shadow puppet theatre, not to cater to the public to destroy its own cultural characteristics, and to strengthen the supervision of its output culture while using self media. In conclusion, through the results of this study, new vitality is injected into Lingbi shadow theatre, and it is hoped to provide some references and lessons for the inheritance and development of other intangible cultural heritages in China. Keywords: Self media era, Lingbi, Shadow theatre, Development. 1. Introduction Comrade Xi Jinping proposed in his important speech that civilization is the foundation of a country and a nation. Chinese shadow puppetry has undergone evolution and constant renewal over the long years. Due to the vastness of the country and the different dialects, many schools have been formed. Nowadays, there are even more complicated branches, and different local styles and genres have been formed in the whole country. Lingbi shadow puppet is one of the branches of shadow puppet in our country, which has its own characteristics in the carving of arrowheads, character modeling, operation techniques, singing style and traditional repertoire. Lingbi Shadow Shadow Shadow began in the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, about one hundred and fifty years ago, and its founder was Lai Xingkuan. The founder was Lai Xingkuan, who learned the art from a shadow puppet troupe in order to make a living. After returning to his hometown, he set up a shadow troupe in his hometown, and since then, this ancient traditional folk art has been emerging in Lingbi, enriching the folk cultural life in this area. However, in recent years, due to the continuous development of society and economy, people are more and more pursuing the trend and learning the culture, local conditions and customs from all over the world. Some western customs have been introduced into China, and the impact of western culture and other aspects has led to the decline of the development of Lingbi Shadow Play, which is struggling and even on the verge of disappearing. Nowadays, people's daily life is basically inseparable from information technology, in addition to the new media technology and self- media platform to show people the charm of shadow art, but also the use of self-media to promote the shadow products and sales has also become an important means to promote the culture of the Lingbi shadow to be recognized by the people. By setting up jump links for videos, live broadcasting with goods, remote interaction and other ways to promote the common development of e-commerce and offline sales, further promote the development and design of shadow culture products and publicity and sales, injecting new vitality into the shadow art of Lingbi. 2. The Significance of The Dissemination of Lingbi Shadow Theater in The Era of Self Media 2.1. Theoretical significance Lingbi shadow puppets artists are silent on the history of the development of Lingbi shadow puppets and their carving techniques and artistic characteristics, not to mention the lack of theory. Although the state attaches importance to the development of non-heritage culture, there are special seminars, but the scholars and experts who pay attention to the shadow art are still a few, and the related books published are only a few, and it is difficult to form the relevant conclusions in the seminars with textual support and most of them are not open to the public. In this paper, while exploring the development path of Lingbi shadow in the age of self- media, we pay attention to its cultural connotation and artistic characteristics, and consider the dilemmas faced by Lingbi shadow art and its reasons, which will be of guiding significance for the theoretical study of non-heritage culture in Anhui and other regions. 2.2. Practical significance As an intangible cultural heritage of Anhui, Lingbi Shadow Opera is subject to a series of protection and development 211 measures carried out by the government and social organizations, but it lacks the status quo of combining social and economic development in the process of protection and utilization, and does not keep abreast of the times, so there are still many deficiencies and problems in the protection actions. Therefore, it is necessary for academics to carry out relevant research on the integration of Lingbi Shadow Opera and digital media according to relevant theories of heritage composition and heritage protection. The author plans to fully understand the history and current situation of Lingbi Shadow Puppet Theater through reviewing the literature and field research, and deeply realize the importance and necessity of combining the non-heritage culture with the current social development. Therefore, this paper takes Lingbi Shadow Play as the research object, comprehensively analyzes its multiple values, establishes the connection between intangible cultural heritage and self media, and seeks the strategy of mutual benefit and mutual promotion. Through a series of researches, on the one hand, it is hoped that it can provide corresponding theoretical support for the protection of Lingbi shadow play and promote the protection of Lingbi shadow play; on the other hand, it is hoped that it can realize the synergy between the development and utilization of intangible cultural heritage and the development of self-media. 3. Problems of Lingbi Shadow Theater in Artistic Dissemination 3.1. Stale communication content and form, lack of depth communication With the change of popular culture consumption behavior, there is a certain cultural distance between traditional shadow art and modern lifestyle. At present, most of the means of communication of Lingbi shadow art are the live interpretation of traditional repertoire, interviews with inheritors in newspapers and magazines, appreciation of shadow art works, documentaries, etc. The above traditional content and forms of communication lack novelty, and they are not attractive enough to the users who are in the new media environment. In addition, due to the lack of systematic organization and insufficient depth of excavation of the resources of Lingbi shadow art by the inheritors, media communicators do not get enough information content resources, thus it is difficult to form an overall understanding of the art, which ultimately leads to the communicators not being able to effectively and completely present the art of Lingbi shadow art to the audience. 3.2. Serious Loss of Audience and Generational Imbalance The inheritance of intangible cultural heritage needs to be realized through vivid communication practice, and its existence and continuation need to be appreciated and shared by the audience. With the rapid development of modern emerging media, digital media has become an important platform for information dissemination, and the traditional performance norms and programs adhered to by shadow artists have been difficult to get the recognition and acceptance of young audiences, and the loss of audience resources is a serious problem. In addition, the lack of school education and publicity in the area of non-legacy culture has, to a certain extent, led to a lack of understanding of traditional Chinese non-legacy culture among young people, and exacerbated the intergenerational imbalance in the audience for the dissemination of non-legacy culture. 3.3. Dissemination of the main body of their own, the lack of synergistic mechanism Nowadays, the dissemination of Lingbi shadow art is still mostly dependent on oral tradition and on-site interpretation, and part of the shadow art audience spreads spontaneously with the help of new media in the form of short videos and microblogging information, but the lack of synergistic mechanism and unified norms and guidance has led to the dispersion of the strength of the main body of dissemination. And due to the uneven professional ability of the disseminators, most of the relevant information is disseminated from personal aesthetics, coupled with the chaotic content of the dissemination, so it is impossible to standardize and systematically reflect the interpretation of the shadow art of Lingbi, the characteristics of the carving and singing, and the effect of the dissemination is not optimistic 4. The Development Path of Lingbi Shadow Puppet Theater in The Era of Self Media Research 4.1. Moderate commercialization with new media and development of new product forms The report also discusses the topic of commercialization of non-heritage, non-heritage practitioners and the general public on the commercialization of non-heritage attitudes appeared different, nearly 40% of the people feel that non- heritage should avoid commercialization as far as possible, nearly 20% feel that it should be commercialized, and non- heritage related people about 30% think that to avoid commercialization, 34% support commercialization. Overall they are most supportive of the combination of non-heritage skills with modern mature branded goods. This issue needs to be treated on a case-by-case basis, and different forms and degrees of commercialization should be adopted for different types of NRLs. For traditional festivals and customs, commercialization may not necessarily be a necessary option, but for traditional handicrafts, commercialization is more necessary, and failure to combine these NRLs with modern life faster will only accelerate the demise of NRLs. Therefore, new media technology can be fully utilized to accurately position the audience or consumers, and redevelop new products that adapt to modern life and aesthetics without losing the traditional cultural connotations and aesthetic feelings. Such as Nanjing pompoms as ancient women's hair ornaments, its complex patterns are not suitable for modern daily life, can use big data technology to collect the preferences of contemporary girls, re-create pompom hair ornaments suitable for modern life scene wear, and can use a variety of ways to carry out the new media marketing, so as to facilitate the living heritage of non-legacy. 4.2. Relying on "content" to form triggering points In recent years, several discussions and concerns about non-legacy have formed a small climax, almost all of which are related to "high-quality content". All of them are related to "high-quality content", "National 212 Treasure", "China on the tip of the tongue", "Yanxi Raiders" are all based on high-quality content, set up the topic of "non- legacy", and constructed a three-dimensional communication channel, so that the non-legacy along with the high-quality content has been widely disseminated. For example, during the broadcast of "Yanxi Raiders", the non-heritage techniques used in the costume channel of the drama, such as point cui and pompom, captured people's attention once again with its own unique temperament accumulated over thousands of years, and spread with soft articles of the public number, illustrations of historical knowledge on Weibo, short videos and other ways, forming a communication explosion point. Therefore, in the process of dissemination and protection of non-heritage, no matter whether it is related to film and television dramas, documentaries, variety shows, even if it is a lower threshold of writing articles and sending short videos, we should pay great attention to the content creation, screen the publicity of non-heritage in the qualities of the content and interactive creativity, to form a publicity explosion. 4.3. Integration of online and offline, "experiential communication". The "experiential communication" emphasizes the use of offline experience to feed the online communication mode in the current situation where the new media traffic dividend is facing a bottleneck. At present, the popularity of offline activities, exhibitions and experiential projects about non- legacy is not high, but people of all levels of education and regions are more willing to choose to learn about non-legacy through travel and physical store experience. The experience of sensation, emotion, thought and action are all innovations in the form of content selection, which makes People's Daily no longer a seated old man on the WeChat platform, but a friendly and intelligent little assistant. It helps readers to collect and understand the necessary information in daily life. Whether it is the innovation in title and structure or the breakthrough in content selection preference, People's Daily is becoming more diversified and inclusive. Acknowledgment Anhui University of Finance and Economics 2022 Graduate Student Research Innovation Fund Project "Research on the Development Path of Lingbi Shadow Theater in the Age of Self-media", Project No.: ACYC2022292 References [1] Wang Kui and Huang Rishuo. An Examination of Anhui Lingbi Ma Family Shadow Theater[J]. Jianghuai Forum. 2015(03). [2] Ji Heming. Consideration of Cultural Significance of Mobile Phone Media in the Digital Age [D]. Northeast Normal University, 2011. [3] Ding Qiong. 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