The Discourse of Mass Incidents: Party-Press and Investigative Media Representations of the Weng'an Incident (original) (raw)

A New Political Role? Discursive Strategies of Critical Journalists in China

2008

The simple opposition between free and restricted media is insufficient for understanding the dynamics within the Chinese media field. The media has diversified greatly during the last two decades, and social problems have become part of public discourse. Critical journalists in China have formulated a new professional identity. The hegemonic role of the Chinese media holds that journalists are propaganda workers, and that their main assignment is to forward the party line. Critical journalists oppose this definition of their role and seek to articulate a position that enables them to report more freely about social problems. Critical journalists are contributing to carving out a new political role for the Chinese media. The paper discusses how this role is a product of journalists’ attempts to increase their autonomy. On the other hand, the increase in critical journalism also reflects the party-state’s wish to utilize new media discourses, since limited exposure of local problems ...

The Language of Ideology in China’s English Press: Representations of Dissent - Chapter 1. THE SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT OF POLEMIC DISCOURSES IN CHINA

The Language of Ideology in China’s English Press: Representations of Dissent 中國英文報紙中的意識形態語言: 對不同政見的描述, 2014

This work presents a critical analysis of media discourses produced by China’s state-run English press (China Daily, People’s Daily Online, and Xinhua News Agency) on two famous dissenters, Liu Xiaobo (Nobel Peace Prize 2010 awardee), and Chen Guangcheng (blind human rights activist and recipient of Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize 2012). The thesis begins with the building of the socio-political context through an overview of key theoretical elements such as the Chinese people’s struggle for ‘dignity’ (Lee 2012) set against the backdrop of conflicting orders of discourse involving ‘human rights’ and ‘sovereignty’. The discussion of the polarization within Chinese society is augmented by definitions of what it means to be Chinese and what social actions result from this belief. Currently conflicting discourses are the centripetal forces of Maoism vs. the centrifugal forces of democracy as seen in pro-government vs. pro-democracy confrontations at the recent Southern Weekend protests in Guangzhou (Lam 2012, Gao 2013). China’s laws on subversion have attracted criticism for their ‘malleability’ (Béja, Fu and Pils 2012). In its defense, Beijing has embarked on its own ‘discourse of rights’, which gives the impression of offering a diverse range of rights except the one kind that matters most (Habermas 2010, Donnelly 2003). As a result, China’s media, in lockstep with CCP policies, is set in array against the wider world, and, at the same time, is paradoxically attempting a charm offensive through ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004; Kurlantzick 2006, 2007; Shambaugh 2013). Discourses of alterity, as a means of Othering, are investigated in this thesis through a historical perspective touching on the Confucian principle of zhengming (rectification of names) and ‘labeling’ as a practice of ‘class struggle’ during the Cultural Revolution. I argue that traces of the predilection for ‘strongly demarcating’ the enemy through categorization (Dittmer 1987), as promoted by Mao, continues its relevance in government discourse particularly regarding the West and dissidents who are framed as ‘traitors’ by their alignment with discourses of democracy. To open the way for economic development China had to reformulate its recent history, which lead to a 1981 document called the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, which in turn essentially re-structured the national myth and Mao’s role in it. This meant that the heterodox became orthodox, by which once sacrosanct doctrines were altered to make way for the ‘anathema’ of capitalism (Kluver 1996). This change in ideology precipitated a changing ‘order of discourse’ (Gu 2001) from ‘class struggle’ to ‘economic development’, the residues of which are still in conflict today. Based on the ‘ideological square’ (van Dijk 1998b, 2011) and ‘representation theory’ (Hall 1997), this study looks at how the CCP legitimizes its treatment of dissidents through discursive strategies such as trivialization and criminalization entextualized throughvpositive-Self/negative-Other representations. Discourses of victimhood, triumphalism, nationalism, national sovereignty, and ressentiment (Fitzgerald 1999) are also utilized by the state media as attempts to reconcile the ideological gap between the orders of discourse. Theoretically, the analysis is influenced by Norman Fairclough’s work on media discourse (1995a), Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical method (2001), John B. Thompson’s depth hermeneutics (1984, 1990), van Leeuwen’s social actor network (2008), and Teun van Dijk’s (1998b, 2011) research on the analysis of ideology and its influence in biased and discriminatory discourses. The influence of ideology and its manifestation as positive-Self/negative-Other representation (Us vs Them discourse) is problematized, theorized, and then applied to the collected data through analysis of certain aspects of systemic functional linguistics such as transitivity, passivization, agency, appraisal/evaluation, and particularly relational clauses (identifying and attributive). By this, I show how rhetorical strategies of Us vs Them discourses are realized linguistically in China’s state-run English press. From this analysis, salient linguistic features emerge and I am able to interpret the impact of language, ideology, and power inherent in the discourse. Of interest is how these individuals (Liu and Chen), whose qualities are admired in the West, are delegitimized in the Chinese media. The findings show how Liu and Chen are discursively stigmatized (i.e. ‘strongly demarcated’) as outgroup members (Liu ‘a criminal’; Chen a ‘mob organizer’) involved in treachery and collusion with ‘external forces’. Meanwhile, through the same mediatized political discourse, the interests of the governing elite are legitimized, protected and advanced.

China's Contentious Journalists: Reconceptualizing the Media

Problems of Post-Communism, 2008

While scholars of both Chinese politics and contention have occasionally recognized the power of the media in shaping or suppressing protests, they have largely ignored the possibility of media workers themselves as contentious actors. Despite a prominent Chinese government media crackdown, contentious action among China’s newspaper journalists – including open letters, refusal to cover specific topics and even a strike – has become dramatically more visible. The actions of China’s contentious journalists have implications for mainstream social movement theory and illuminate the importance of grievances in spurring contentious action.

The conditional autonomy of the critical press in China

2008

In the same period, the internet has revolutionized information access, and has contributed to the fierce competition within the Chinese media market. Combined with a decentralized control structure, this has made more problem-oriented, critical journalism possible within Chinese media. When in the 1980s the party-state reduced subsidies and allowed the media to retain its own profits, this raised observers' expectations of a potential transition. Political liber-RESEARCH QUESTIONS The dissertation is structured around two research questions. The first addresses how critical journalism adds new dimensions to the political roles of the media, and the second addresses the relationship between party-state authorities and critical journalists. To explore the political implications of critical journalism in China, the first question asks: What are the political roles of the Chinese media? The understanding of the term political that is applied in this dissertation goes beyond practices that are limited to formal, political institutions. Within discourse theory, politics are connected to the way people organize and control meaning. They are means of producing identities and antagonisms. Through mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion they make some social acts and strategies more likely than others (Howarth, Norval and Stavrakakis 2000, Laclau and Mouffe 2001). In a discursive understanding, the political denotes conflicts of interests, and the strategies of power, domination and resistance that are inherent aspects of every social system. Politics, on the other hand, are strategies designed to reduce or deny conflict (Mouffe 2005). Hence, the political role of the Chinese media is not limited to what it is assigned by the party-state authorities, How is the media's conditional autonomy being restricted, and how do critical journalists attempt to increase their autonomy? The conditional autonomy of the media is a concept that is designed to capture the combination of increased freedom and the continuation of con-By asking what critical journalists do to increase their autonomy, I address how the social and discursive strategies of journalists are conducted within a particular context. Critical journalists' social strategies involve choices about issues, locations and investigative methods. Their strategies are designed to avoid crossing boundaries while retaining their ability to communicate about social problems and critical issues in the media. Discursive strategies are important in achieving this end because conscious and careful choices of narrative techniques, framing and vocabulary make it possible to discuss issues that would otherwise be judged to be too critical and not suitable for publication. ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION Chapter two, Media, power and spaces of representation, is divided in two parts. Part one addresses theoretical perspectives on the conditional autonomy of the media. Media scholars are among the main contributors to this debate, and a central question under discussion is whether or not state-independent ownership is a precondition for the media's ability to serve as a democratizing force in society. This argument is criticized by critical media scholars who argue that in many cases state-owned media have served the public interest precisely because they are not subjected to the same economic interests as privately owned media. The ownership and organization of media institutions are not sufficient to determine what role the media plays in state-society relations. To answer this, it is necessary to take the media's social and discursive practices into account. In particular, the media has a central role to play in shaping public discourse, and this is a crucial aspect of the political agency of critical journalists in an authoritarian context. Chapter two-part two is entitled Containing resistance: hegemony and domination. The perspectives under discussion here all relate to the concept of power. Power is a nodal point for social science, it is contested and is inscribed with different meaning depending on its theoretical context. In the scholarly debate in the 1950s, power denoted the ability of a social actor to decide the outcome of a conflict. Subsequent Foucauldian perspectives have suggested that power is about the structuring of meaning, and have described it as a capillary and productive force. To analyse Nevertheless, critical journalism in China has developed because journalists have found ways to work within and around the limits and boundaries imposed by the party-state. They apply investigative methods, are skilful in utilizing their own networks and seek to approach issues and problems in the ways that are least likely to invoke negative sanctions. The result has been the emergence of new spaces of representation within the Chinese media that allow voices other than those of the authorities to be heard in the public sphere. at "Workshop on media politics and investigative journalism in China".

Press self-censorship in China: a case study in the transformation of discourse

Discourse & Society, 2009

This article examines the way in which newspaper discourse gets changed. Original reports of three social problem events that journalists sent to two different newsrooms and reports that were published are compared using critical discourse analysis. It is argued that the practice of self-censorship helps newsrooms bypass political 'minefields', and at the same time increase the possibilities of the publication of reports on highly politically sensitive topics. In this sense, in the Chinese authoritarian media system, self-censorship has potentially become a force that increases media freedom instead of a threat to media freedom. This special function of self-censorship fits what Gramsci describes as a 'war of position' for Chinese journalism.

What is the state of the Emperor's clothes? An investigation into the Chinese news as the mouthpiece of the Party and government

Media education, training people to understand media, has a particular resonance for Chinese journalists. On the one hand, they train to make media, and therefore are trained in the meanings media make. On the other hand, journalism training and practices in China are changing as the Chinese media landscape changes. With this in mind, this study investigates one site of news production – the CCTV (China Central Television) English News – in an attempt to isolate the specificities and meanings of news production at this site. Through a combination of content analysis and participant observation, a picture of news-making in China emerges which undermines the assumption that the Chinese news is simply a mouthpiece for the Party and government. This study is therefore an intervention into the debate currently underway in China as to the direction media, and ipso facto media education, should take.

Wo shi Zhali ma? : the representation of the Charlie Hebdo case in Chinese press commentaries and editorials

The terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7th January 2015 received extensive media coverage in Europe, creating a discussion that mainly revolved around the issues of terrorism and press freedom. The Chinese media also paid attention to the event, and this study, based on analysis of a corpus of news commentaries published in the aftermath of the attack, highlights the discursive features of the positions on the Charlie Hebdo case of two Chinese language papers, the party-run Huanqiu Shibao and the market-oriented Xinjingbao. A qualitative and quantitative approach has been used to identify relevant themes and to measure the frequency of related terms. The research question is whether news commentaries expressed a plurality of views on a controversial subject such as freedom of speech in China. The results show that the case has generally been used to reinforce the official discourse on both terrorism and press freedom. However, while Huanqiu Shibao’s news commentaries failed to perform the genre’s purpose to voice independent opinions, some Xinjingbao’s articles were able to present original viewpoints. This can be considered a sign that some debate is possible in China even on highly controversial topics, and that the writers of commentaries, who often are freelancers, play a key role in widening the discussion in the country’s media sphere.

The defence of journalistic legitimacy in media discourse in China: An analysis of the case of Deng Yujiao

Journalism, 2014

This article examines the response of Chinese mainstream journalists towards their citizen counterparts, through an analysis of how journalists constructed a discourse of ‘netizens’ and journalism in the case of Deng Yujiao. The analysis is mainly drawn from a discourse analysis of the newspaper coverage of this case in the Southern Metropolitan Daily (SMD) and the relevant journalists’ reflexive articles on the same topic published in the Journal of Southern Media Studies (JSMS). The discourse analysis is supplemented by interviews with 60 journalists in 2011 concerning their views of netizens in general and of the conflict between journalism and netizens in this particular case. Based on these three elements of analysis, this article offers an account of how institutionally-shaped journalistic norms and values have been used to set up and maintain the occupational boundaries of Chinese journalism, in an attempt to defend journalistic legitimacy by making a clear distinction betwee...

Discursive representations of a dissident: The case of Liu Xiaobo in China’s English press

This article is a critical analysis of media discourses in which a dissident social actor is represented in China’s state-run English-language press. Specifically, it looks at media coverage of Liu Xiaobo, author of Charter 2008, a document calling for democracy and human rights in China. He was imprisoned for 11 years by the Chinese government for disseminating Charter 2008, but subsequently (to the government’s chagrin) was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in advocating human rights. This investigation examines articles from China’s English press on Liu Xiaobo. A transitivity analysis is conducted followed by an investigation of identifying and attributive relational processes in the texts. The findings show the use of passive agent deletion, definition/re-definition, and the attribution of derogating qualities to dissidents with the purpose of introducing biased ideological representations (positive-Self/negative-Other) into the discourse.