Wo shi Zhali ma? : the representation of the Charlie Hebdo case in Chinese press commentaries and editorials (original) (raw)
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© Lars Flottorp Ness 2013 The Discourse of Mass Incidents: Party-Press and Investigative Media Representations of the Weng’an Incident http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo, 2013
ABSTRACT This study will examine two different media representations of the Weng’an incident, a social riot that took place in Weng’an county in Guizhou Province during the summer of 2008. The aim of my thesis is to scrutinize how the party-press and the critical press cover the sensitive topic of mass incidents. For this purpose, I have carried out a discourse analysis of the media coverage by the provincial party-paper Guizhou Daily and the investigative newspaper Southern Weekend. This dual focus on both the party-press and investigative media texts is undoubtedly one of the strong aspects of the thesis, because such a comparative view can help highlight the media diversity one actually can find within state-dominated media systems, such as the one in China. The analysis of the party-press coverage will contribute to not only getting a better understanding of how the orthodox party-papers handle very sensitive topics in the discursive domain, but also making it easier to grasp and assert the role of investigative journalism and its significance in contemporary Chinese media. One of the most interesting findings in this thesis is how investigative newspapers conduct critical journalism under conditions of domination. My analysis shows the subtle discursive strategies of resistance used by the critical press in order to camouflage critical comments and discussions of sensitive aspects, therefore to make them politically acceptable and publishable. This thesis shows that one major discursive strategy of resistance is polyphony – a multitude of official and non-official voices, which is also a particular feature of critical investigative media representations. In this polyphony, the strategic use of the official voice and discourse plays an instrumental role in making non-official critical voices and views seem more legitimate and therefore less transgressive. Other subtle strategies of resistance include conscious lexical and syntactical choices that help to downplay the discursive representation of social conflicts by implicitly pointing to the contradictions between an illegitimate corrupt local government and the masses. My study shows how Southern Weekend’s role and function are connected with the use of such strategies, which enable investigative newspapers to resist the traditional party-press style of journalism. I argue that Southern Weekend’s media representation of the Weng’an incident can be understood as an example of how investigative journalism in China has created new spaces of media representations.