Discourse of resistance: Articulations of national cultural identity in media discourse on the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China

Abstract

This study examines the discourse of resistance constructed in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake coverage by Chinese state media. It tries to explore how media discourse can be constructed to facilitate crisis control in natural disaster situations. Set in a context of nationalistic culture in contemporary China, this paper dissects how state media in China frame narratives and represent meanings to construct national cultural identity in earthquake coverage. In analysing this discursive process, this research adopts the methodology of critical discourse analysis and cluster criticism; the findings indicate that the discourse of resistance deals with the disorderly information flow in a crisis by differentiating the messages, framing media stories and engaging with the broad nationalistic culture, to construct positive representations of disaster relief. Specifically, a strong sense of belonging to a national community is constructed for people trapped in uncertainty, anxiety and trauma. This study concludes that, in doing so, discourse of resistance enhances disaster relief by controlling the meaning of the crisis.

Keywords

Chinese state media crisis control discourse analysis discourse of resistance meaning production media framing national cultural identity nationalistic culture signifying practice the Wenchuan earthquake

Introduction

‘The earth is cramping. The disaster continues. In every minute, there is a possibility of death among our country fellows. Life is in crisis; our motherland is in crisis’¹ (Southern Weekly, 22 May 2008). On 12 May 2008, a serious earthquake occurred in the south-western part of China. In the central area, Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province, the severity of the earthquake reached 8.0° on the Richter Scale. Official figures show that more than 69,197 people were confirmed dead, with 374,176 injured and 18, 222 missing (Xinhua Net, 20 July 2008). It was the deadliest natural disaster in Chinese history since the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. In this crisis situation, Chinese media invested substantial resources in relieving the uncertainties and intense anxieties caused by the disruption of normal information flow. How media discourse can be formulated to enhance disaster relief is a topic of research, investigation and debate. In existing literature on this topic, three categories can be identified, each with different perspectives, depth and shifting focuses.

The first category of research in this field focuses on the practical roles and functions of a media discourse in enhancing disaster relief. They may include forecasting, public education about disaster relief, facilitating communication in finding victims, mobilizing relief services, conducting fund raising and giving emotional support (Goltz, 1984; Jalali, 2002; Pantti et al., 2012: 4; Perez, 2004; Piotrowski and Armstrong, 1998; Rattien, 1990; Sood et al., 1987; Thomas, 2011). It is also the case that the media discourse in natural disaster contexts may be seen as problematic (Pantti et al., 2012: 2) when containing insufficient information (Quarantelli, 1996; Singer and Endreny, 1993), or biased reporting on disaster facts (Littlefield and Quenette, 2007), or limited support in enhancing fund raising (Olsen et al., 2003). Research in this category includes less analysis of the mechanisms deployed to produce information for achieving effective communication.

This question is partly addressed in the second category of research in this field, which examines how different groups of people are constructed in the larger media spectacle of the situation. In media discourse about natural disasters, information about disaster facts and how people react are the two principal components. In the media’s construction of events, a ‘civil unrest’ image is often portrayed as an overlay of the disaster situation (Tierney et al., 2006), in which the coverage is based on the myth of ‘large-scale panic, looting and criminal activity, public shelter utilization, disaster shock and general antisocial behaviour’ (Wenger and Friedman, 1986). In analysing media discourses in the coverage of a big flood in Barrio Tortugo of Puerto Rico, Perez (2001) criticizes the unbalanced construction which downplays the role of those community leaders, groups and institutions that are factually critical in disaster relief, while in the coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2006, American media discourses downplay the significance of individual victims and local communities and prioritize governmental responses (Barnes et al., 2008). Chen (2008) also critiques the commercialization of victims in natural disaster coverage. Research in this category has the potential to examine these issues in a broader socio-political context.

This task is partly engaged in the third category of the research. The association of the 2011 tsunami in Japan with the issue of global nuclear security indicates that media discourses about natural disasters intersect with social or political debates (Pantti et al., 2012). This phenomenon can be traced back to Sorenson’s (1991) analysis of ideological conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union in the past century over such natural disasters as the African famine. In analysing natural disaster reporting in the Chinese media, scholars (Dong and Cai, 2010; Pugsley, 2006; Yin and Wang, 2010) also maintain that reports about disasters intersect with broad social issues such as political propaganda. One important point, paid scant attention to in studies in this category and in the first two categories, is how media discourse can be constructed to enhance control of a crisis caused by unstable information flow in disaster situations, immersed in uncertainties, anxieties and loss of the sense of belonging. In a natural disaster situation, unstable reactions may cause uncontrollable collective actions among people affected by the event and produce possibilities of social disorder; therefore it is very necessary to use media coverage to help control the situation (Ren, 2008; Tian, 2005: 89).

Situated in this area of concern, this study investigates how media apply the means of information release and discourse formulation to contribute to the control of a crisis situation. In dissecting media discourses, this paper specifically focuses on how the crisis caused by natural disasters is contained by producing meaning about the constituent elements of the situation. It takes a detached stance in relation to other means of control, such as military control and administrative regulation, specifically addressing the question of control in terms of the discursive structuring of meaning. This research argues that in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the control of the crisis was facilitated through the meaning production of the Chinese state media. In this coverage, a discourse of resistance was distinctively formulated to strengthen Chinese national cultural identity, creating a sense of national belonging for the victims trapped in the crisis whereby the crisis control is facilitated. In this media discourse, the meaning of the crisis is constructed in a story of ‘we the Chinese nation resist the earthquake constructed as an invader’. This discourse also indicates that nationalism is not purely reactionary as normally regarded; instead, it can also be applied to integrate the disruption in a crisis event such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.

The notions of nation and nationalism are closely related to national cultural identity, which is a form of cultural identity (Hall, 1996a: 611). As a form of discourse, the cultural identity signifies clusters of meaning constructed for social identification (Eschle, 2011: 366; Hall, 1996b: 6). Cultural identities are ‘constituted through language as a series of discourses’ (Barker, 2012: 229). Through sharing and attaching to the meaning shaped in the discourse, people locate themselves within an identity (Hall, 1996b: 6). The shared meanings in a cultural identity contain cultural resources such as narratives about historic events or moments shared in the communal memory (During, 2005: 57). The formation of the cultural identity is discursively formulated ‘across a division, from the place of the Other’ (Hall, 1996b: 6). Through inter-group differences, two identities can be formed, and this division is a stimulus that makes the conception of identity salient (Thoits and Virsbup, 1997: 116). The national cultural identity articulated in the discourse of resistance in the Wenchuan earthquake produced a cluster of shared meanings, constructing a strong sense of belonging for the people trapped in uncertainty, trauma and disorientation in the crisis. The outcome of this study suggests the importance of knowledge about the use of media discourses for facilitating natural disaster relief.

The social context of the event: Chinese nationalism

Chinese nationalism came into being in the 1860s, when invasions from Western nations aroused a strong sense of nationhood among the Chinese. Its inception was germinated in inner cultural commonalities accumulated in Chinese history and brought to consciousness in a context of national crisis in the late Qing Dynasty (Wang, 1998: 10–15; Xu, 1998: 136). It exhibited enormous power in mobilizing the Xinhai Revolution in 1910 which overthrew the Qing Dynasty and served to unify Chinese people in resisting Japanese invasions in the 1930s and 1940s (Xu, 1998: 139–142). It was a discourse uniting Chinese people to assert national independence and sovereignty in contemporary China. However, after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, communist class struggle theory played a more decisive role as a political discourse for integrating and mobilizing Chinese society, which is manifestly displayed in the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976.

After the Cultural Revolution, and especially after drastic political changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, nationalism played a critical role in Chinese ideology (Xu, 2012: 96). The ‘open-door’ reform was initiated in this period, after which Chinese nationalism began to hold an important position in Chinese public discourse. From then on, China has seen global inter-state communications in politics, commerce and cultures which were related to issues of national independence, national benefits and national sovereignty as routine themes in public discourse. The nation-to-nation cooperation, negotiation and friction made people more conscious of their national identity, for the identity of a nation is formed and becomes more distinctive when it is in a relative contrast with another one (Hall, 1996b: 6; MacKinnon and Heise, 2010: 104). In global communication, different nations deal with issues as independent nation-states; Chinese nationalistic self-esteem and self-confidence were long suffocated by a humiliating history, but are being re-asserted rapidly following China’s performance in achieving socioeconomic development (Sun, 1996, cited in Xu, 2012: 98). As a robust public discourse, Chinese nationalism is fostered to maintain social cohesion, from which an economically thriving and culturally engaging Chinese society is to be constructed in the contemporary world (Xiao, 1994). In this context, nationalism becomes a vibrant episteme in Chinese culture and, however hidden its function as social glue, manifests itself at certain times, such as during significant national events.

Data and analytic framework

The corpus of texts sampled for this study includes news reports and commentaries on the Wenchuan earthquake. Texts from three mainstream media sources in China are sampled: Sichuan Daily, Southern Weekly and People Net. The corpus is supplemented by several critical news reports and editorials from People’s Daily, Guangming Daily and Xinhua Net.² These texts were widely circulated during the earthquake period. Sichuan Daily is the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Sichuan Committee. It is a form of mainstream state media at provincial level. It possessed immediate access to information about the earthquake. People Net and Southern Weekly are also state-supervised and have a nationwide audience in China. Their coverage illustrates how the mainstream media at state level covered this event. The broad media discourses constituting a news event are produced by the convergence of a substantial number of media texts coming from multiple media organizations. Comprehensively examining the provincial and national media presents a cross-section of the discursive processes constructing this event.

These media organizations, from which illustrative examples have been retrieved, all have a state background, which confers institutional legitimacy in releasing authoritative information, especially during a crisis situation. Social institutions such as state media have authority and thus are regarded as more trustworthy (Foucault, 1972). For a discourse to be broadly communicated in a society, it should have a ‘truth-claim’ (Mills, 2004: 61), which supports the discourse as a truthful one. The authenticity of a discourse is formed due to the socially legitimate status of the information provider, such as state media (Foucault, 1972).

In building up this corpus, 117 extracts of news reports and commentaries were collected. The period covered is 12 May to 12 June 2008, the month during which the earthquake was intensively reported and constructed in Chinese media. Among them, 105 extracts are from Sichuan Daily, 5 from Southern Weekly, and 7 from People Net, some of which were originally published in People’s Daily, Guangming Daily and Xinhua Net. In analysing the data, this study adopts a systematic critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010; Van Dijk, 1985), situated in a theoretical framework of discursive construction of cultural identity and supplemented by a method of cluster criticism (Burke, 1959, 1966; Littlefield and Quenette, 2007). Using cluster criticism, Kenneth Burke (1959) maintains, critics can investigate how ‘[a]n author contrives his selectivity and his plot’s development from-what-to-what, [which] may often be revealed in the associative clusters of his symbolism’ (p. 194). He suggests that ‘by charting clusters, we get our cues as to the important ingredients subsumed in “symbolic mergers”’ (Burke, 1959: 233). The ‘cluster’ in Burke’s thesis means the set of textual units, such as words, phrases and sentences, selected for constructing components of the narrative such as characters and actions in a story (Burke, 1959, 1966; Littlefield and Quenette, 2007).

Framing ‘invader’ and Chinese nation

In the media accounts formulated about this event, the earthquake with its destructive impact is differentiated and constructed as an imagined ‘invader’. The damaging consequences of the earthquake cause an intense sense of crisis, filled with uncertainty, anxiety and trauma. The xenophobic tenor caused by constructing the invader has the potential to crystallize the sense of crisis which was dispersed previously and caused intense uncertainty. Through blaming the earthquake as a personified invader, public attention begins to focus not only on catastrophic results, but also on this ‘cruel invader’. This character in the narration of the event is framed through textual clusters such as the following extracts:

[…] 汶川大地震 […] 与死神搏斗 […] 狰狞恐怖的自然断裂 […] 是对脆弱生命的无情摧残 […]。

Translation:

[…] Wenchuan earthquake […] the deity of demise […] wicked destructor […] is an emotionless scourge on fragile lives […].

(People’s Daily, 20 May 2008; see also Xinhua Net, 16 May 2008)

[…] 地震给我带来的恐怖和悲伤超出了我所有的想象。就这一点来说，这个恶魔成功了。

Translation:

The terror and sorrow brought about to me by the earthquake exceed all my imaginations.

In this sense, this evil deity succeeded.

抢险堰塞湖的官兵最后撤离，在狂暴的自然面前，他们拼尽了全力。他们问心无愧。

Translation:

The troops rushing to deal with the emergencies at the dammed lake finally evacuated. In the face of the raging nature, they have tried their best. They feel no regret for the evacuation.

(Li Gang, Xinhua Net military journalist, 3 June 2008)

In this extract, the earthquake is framed as an evil actor in the media story. The cluster of expressions used to describe it characterizes it, and associates this character with the stereotype of otherness. Entman argues that it is necessary to incorporate existing cultural frames into texts and thus combine media frames with the ‘audience schemata’ (Entman, 1993: 56) or associate them with ‘public consciousness’ (Entman, 2003: 417). The signs used for Othering the earthquake such as ‘the deity of demise’ and ‘wicked destructor’ are conventional symbols of the evil in cultural imagination (Alexander and Jacobs, 1998: 30). They are culturally ‘noticeable, understandable, and emotionally charged’ narrations used to construct the image of the earthquake in media spectacle (Entman, 1993: 56). Constructing the earthquake as an imagined Other with evil attributes is a mediated practice for signifying a cluster of meanings to the earthquake. There is no meaning inherent in the material object; the conceptualization of the object constructs meaning (Hall, 1997). As seen in the extracts above, expressions such as ‘this evil deity’ and ‘the raging nature’ are applied by the media as signs to represent the meaning around the otherness of the earthquake. As Hall (1997) maintains, the meaning of a mat-erial object is constructed in a concept articulated in linguistic forms (p. 17). In the media texts in the Wenchuan case, constructing the earthquake as an actor in the media story is even further strengthened when the meaning of it is framed in an in-depth historic narrative:

在中华民族历史上，国家危亡之时，正是民族精神高涨之际。抗日战争时期，日本帝国主义的入侵给中华民族带来了空前的危机 […]。在改革开放的新时期，自然灾难发生之时，也正是民族精神激昂之际。1998年的抗洪救灾、2003年的抗击非典以及今年年初抗击冰雪灾害 […]，这次地震灾害，给中华民族的生存和发展带来了危难。

Translation:

In the history of the Chinese nation, when the nation was facing a life-or-death crisis, the national spirit rose to a high degree of consciousness. Over the period of the war against Japanese imperialists, the enemies invaded the Chinese nation and brought the Chinese nation to an historically unexpected peril […]. In the new era of open-door reform, when a natural disaster happened, a nationalistic spirit sprang up. The big flood in 1998, the SARS in 2003, the blizzard in this year […], and the big earthquake caused a huge crisis in the destiny and development of the Chinese nation.

(Guangming Daily, 3 June 2008)

In this extract, the earthquake is juxtaposed with enemies who invaded China in the genealogies of Chinese history; the catastrophic earthquake is seen as causing a similar crisis for the nation. Replaying the past stories in the coverage of the earthquake event is to apply the historic narrative to formulate a structure of meaning over the ongoing crisis, and at this stage is particularly focusing on delineating the earthquake from the Chinese nation in the event. The comparisons shown in this extract are ‘the devices of characterisation’ by which the earthquake is characterized in the story (Tomashevsky, 1965: 80). Constructing characters in the text enables the author to unravel confused information, to classify and to construct a delineated theme out of the disorderly information (Tomashevsky, 1965: 88). That is, viewed from the perspective of meaning production, the discursive construction of the earthquake as an invader in the Chinese historic narrative is orientated towards containing the flow of negative information in such a crisis. Compared with the image of the ‘deity of demise’ (People’s Daily, 20 May 2008), the original schemata of which is rooted in the general social discourse, the image of the invader is adopted from the profound historic memory of the Chinese nation. This intricate textual act has the potential to generate in-depth resonance, particularly for the Chinese audience. In so doing, the mental representation of the earthquake goes beyond the crisis in itself.

More specifically, a nuanced transformation of meaning about the crisis is seen when the imagined invader is constructed in the media spectacle. First, a fixed identity of the Other synthesizes ‘heterogeneous possibilities of meanings’ outside the central identity (Rutherford, 1990: 21). One of the key reasons underlying the sense of crisis in the earthquake situation is uncertainty and confusion caused by the fact that the information about the event is out of order and not differentiated from the vagueness. In this crisis situation, the fixed actor of ‘invader’ in the media story absorbs the negative messages when the anxiety and trauma are attributed to it. It is a causal explanation of the earthquake event (Entman, 1993: 52). Second, the earthquake constructed as an imagined invader is a place to transfer any meaning that is disruptive in establishing a central identity of the Chinese nation in the Wenchuan case (Rutherford, 1990: 22). This dichotomy is intrinsically a contrastive relation set between two sides which entail contrary memes.Correspondingly, the people suffering anxiety and trauma in the earthquake crisis are constructed in the cultural identity of ‘brothers and sisters’ of the Chinese nation (People’s Daily, 20 May 2008):

Exemplary clusters of statements representing Chinese national cultural identity
他们是父亲、母亲、儿女、兄妹，是我们血肉相连的骨肉同胞，是共和国无法割舍的挚
爱。这份痛楚, 将由13亿中国人共同承受；这份哀伤，将由中华民族一起分担。
Translation:
They are fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. They arecompatriots connected to us with blood and flesh, the inalienable beloved of the Republic. This misery will be shouldered together by 1.3 billion Chinese. This sorrow will be shared by the whole Chinese nation. (People’s Daily, 20 May 2008)
国家危亡之时，正是民族精神高涨之际。
Translation:
Whenever the nation is in a crisis, the national spirit rises up. (Guangming Daily, 3 June 2008)
中华民族在五千年长河中也曾经历太多苦难，但文明血脉一直未绝，民族历史一直绵延，正是在与每一次灾难的碰撞中，我们的民族不断激发出新的精神资源。
Translation:
The nation of Chinese people has experienced overwhelming tribulations, but its lineage of civilization has never ceased and its national history persists. It is in the clashes with disasters that continuous spiritual assets spring out within our nation. (People’s Daily, 4 July 2008)
《多难何以兴邦》
Translation:
Why disasters can revive a nation (Southern Weekly, 5 June 2008)
惨烈的天灾 […] 震醒了中国人思想深处的高尚情怀和共同信念—过去很长一段时间里，人们一度认为它被现代化的激烈竞争、市场化的锱铢必较遮盖掩埋。
Translation:
Horrifying natural disaster […] awakens the honorable sentiments and the shared belief hidden in the depth of Chinese minds – in the long period past, people have been deeming that this sentiment and belief is buried by ‘the competition in the process of modernisation and parsimony in the market system’. (People’s Daily, 4 July 2008)

In these extracts, the Chinese nation as a narrative character is framed in the media story. The signs such as ‘brothers and sisters’, ‘compatriots’ and ‘heroic Chinese’ signify the meaning of a nation that is connected with ‘blood and flesh’. These clusters of lexicons and sentences in the text exhibit the author’s intentionality to achieve a ‘character-effect’ (Bal, 1997: 118) concerning Chinese cultural identity. They serve to fulfil the narrative function: the formulation of a media story producing a structure of meaning in this highly uncertain situation. As Eichenbaum (1965) contends, the signs clustering around a narrative character are oriented towards representing the dominant idea of the author (p. 138). The nationalistic articulations in these clusters represent a centralized meaning. This meaning is summarized in the text as the Chinese national spirit, which generates ‘straightforward identification’ of community belonging for the people facing the crisis (During, 2005: 57; Hall, 1996b: 6). In sharing this crystallized meaning, the people involved in the crisis identify with the role as members of the Chinese nation.

The reason why the signs about the Chinese nation have the potential to produce shared nationalist meanings and therefore construct the Chinese national cultural identity in this event is that the link between the signs and conceptual paradigms concerned with Chinese nationalism is ‘fixed socially’ and ‘fixed in culture’ (Hall, 1997: 22). In the Wenchuan case, Chinese nationalism is the cultural resource existing in the social discourse of contemporary Chinese society, which lays a foundation for such a signifying practice. These cultural resources include shared stories, narratives and myth in the collective memory (During, 2005: 57), such as ‘its lineage of civilization’, which constitute ‘the continuous spiritual assets’ (People’s Daily, 4 July 2008). The cluster of nationalist expressions as seen in the previous extracts are ‘noticeable, understandable, and emotionally charged’ and therefore have the potential to create a map of meaning ‘congruent with the most common audience schemata’ (Entman, 1993: 56). The production of meaning to construct both the invader and the Chinese nation in the media storytelling is shaped through a discursive process which is driven by the power of the state media.

Hall (1996b) contends that the dichotomy of the Other and the central identity in cultural identification is caused by how discursive power proceeds (p. 4). Viewed from this perspective, the essence of the Chinese cultural identity as constructed in the Wenchuan case is the group of meanings such as national lineage, national belief and national spirits, as indicated in the extracts earlier, which are shared by the Chinese people. In sharing these communal meanings, individuals who are disorientated by the disorderly information flow in the crisis are united mentally and get a sense of belonging to the nation, which confers individuals the cultural identity as members of the Chinese nation, according to Hall’s (1996b) arguments on the formation of cultural identities (p. 6). However, the meaning is communicated in discourse which is closely influenced by power that is practised through inclusion and exclusion (Foucault, 1972, 1976, 1981). In discursively shaping cultural identification, in order to produce a cluster of meanings about a central identity, in this case the Chinese nation, correspondingly the other group of meanings will be set as a contrast and excluded whereby the former one becomes salient and legitimate (Hall, 1996b: 4; see also Rutherford, 1990: 24; Thoits and Virsbup, 1997: 116). In the media texts constructing the Wenchuan earthquake, constructing the invader and Othering it embodies the pursuit of the state media to facilitate disaster relief through controlling meaning production. In the media space constructed over this event, this power-driven discursive practice is specifically structured through narrating a media story of ‘we the Chinese nation resist the invader for a final victory’.

Discourse of resistance

The discourse of resistance is constructed in a media story in which the nation actively resists the constructed invader. In the media narratives framing this story, the Chinese nation as a narrative character resists the invasion of the ‘deity of demise’ (People’s Daily, 20 May 2008; see also Xinhua Net, 16 May 2008). The resistance is constructed not only based on the actual scenes of confrontation in rescue actions at disaster sites, but also by drawing on memories about national resistance against enemies. National resistance as a theme embedded in national memories signifies and therefore introduces into texts the Chinese nationalistic heritage, enabling the texts to engage with the audience in a more culturally resonant way. The historic memories of a nation form a collective memory (Halbwachs, 1992), which is retained in national culture and is essential to the perpetuation and continuation of shared meanings about the national cultural identity (Hall, 1996a; Anderson, 2006). At the beginning of the story, the ‘invader’ is in an active role which produces crisis and plunges people into a passive and anxious situation. By formulating resistance, the character ‘nation’ is placed in an active position in dealing with the ‘invasion’. In so doing, the discursive process constructing the crisis is regulated (Foucault, 1972, 1976, 1981; Mills, 2004). In the discourse of resistance, the character of the nation actively interacts with the ‘invader’ whereby the disruptive meaning is excluded and transferred to the ‘invader’ as an imagined ‘Other’ (Rutherford, 1990: 22). This discourse is constructed by using a cluster of words, phrases and sentences as shown in the following examples:

Exemplary clusters of statements constructing the discourse of resistance
知名理论家、中央党校副校长李君如：‘在汶川大地震发生以来一个月的日日夜夜，无情的天
灾瞬间吞噬了几万条生命，英雄的中国人民立即展开了史无前例的抗震救灾斗争。’
Li Junru, a famous theorist, vice president of the Party School of the CCP says, ‘in the days and nights after the earthquake, the ruthless calamity devoured tens of thousands of lives in a short moment. The heroic Chinese people immediately started an unprecedented struggle of resisting the earthquake and carrying out rescue’. (People Net, 15 June 2008)
这是新的抗战，就是全民族抗战; 面对大自然强加的这场战争
This is a new resisting war, a nationalistic war; in the face of the war imposed by nature (Southern Weekly, 22 May 2008)
灾情就是命令，灾区就是战场.
The Disaster situation is an imperative, and the disaster area is a battlefield. (Sichuan Daily, 24 May 2008)
调动 mobilize (Southern Weekly, 22 May 2008)
立体突击 multi-dimensional assault (Sichuan Daily, 17 May 2008)
突破 breakthrough (Sichuan Daily, 17 May 2008)
挺近 march (Sichuan Daily, 24 May 2008)
生死竞速 life-or-death competition (Sichuan Daily, 17 May 2008)

In these clusters of statements, the resistance is framed in an imagined war against the earthquake. The theme of resistance as seen in the extracts is constructed by naming the crisis situation as a war and deploying militaristic words to construct the resistance. The statements such as ‘unprecedented struggle’, ‘nationalistic war’ and ‘battlefield’ redefine the natural disaster in a frame more recognizable to the public schemata. In media framing, linguistic lexicons are deployed to define, interpret, evaluate and deliver formulations to a problem in question (Entman, 1993: 52). In this framed media story, a series of resistant actions is depicted by verbs such as ‘assault’, ‘breakthrough’ and ‘march’. They construct a division and the way of interaction between the two major characters in the media story. The situational stimulus and the division make the identities distinctive (Thoits and Virsbup, 1997: 116). As Hall (1996b) contends, identity is formed ‘across a division, from the place of the Other’ (p. 6). The discourse of resistance constructed by these clusters of statements is not limited to only drawing a differential line between the two characters, but also serves to clarify how the nation should act to assert its sovereign identity.

Using the militaristic verbs to depict the rescue actions in this discourse presents a positive representation of the nation and its interaction with the invader. It is supportive of disaster relief to construct the national belonging creating faith and hope in such an emergent situation. The cluster of statements constructing the nation’s active and brave resistance to the imagined Other has the potential to mobilize society to engage with the disaster relief, which is more culturally resonant than depicting the rescue actions only by using expressions such as ‘clearing the debris’, ‘searching for victims’, ‘evacuate from buildings’ and ‘provides psychological help’. Rutherford (1990) maintains that the opposition between the Other and the central identity also measures ‘what the centre lacks’ and ‘what it needs in order to define fully and confirm its identity’ (p. 22). The aftermath of the earthquake had caused tremendous tragedies for the people in the disaster area, and the victims are therefore plunged into trauma, despair and anxiety. In this circumstance, the Chinese state media intends to create a communal cultural identity of the Chinese nation to deal with this problem.

Evidently, situating in the background of the constructed invader the task of, building national community cannot be completed without positive meanings to support the unison. In the face of this challenge, the insertion of the discourse of resistance serves as an intermediate approach to transfer the disruptive messages to the Other and therefore creates faith in the community to be identified by the people involved. This discourse is an expedient choice to alleviate the negativity and passivity in the community. Through the interaction between the central entity and the Other, the meaning is negotiated, produced and clearly articulated (Hall, 1997: 235). Saussure maintains that by making a difference two categories of meanings are established, and this binary opposition is not static but rather a dialogic interaction (Hall, 1997: 235). It constructs a running process by which the homogeneous meaning about the central entity is formed. The discourse of resistance embodies this dialogic process. In ‘resisting the invader’ in ongoing media coverage, the shared meanings of the Chinese nation are gradually purified, and therefore it enhances the unifying power of the national identity.

Through carrying out national resistance in this imagined war of resistance, the national cultural identity is cogently asserted to unite the fragile individuals, and a traumatic catharsis is attained. It can be argued that resistance is a textual technique which produces resilience and cohesion of the community by ‘promoting unification, identification and solidarity’ of the nation (Wodak et al., 2009: 33). In doing so, this discourse facilitates control of the crisis by formulating a structure of meaning that relieves the confusion and disorientation caused by earthquake disruption and creates a sense of belonging for the people involved in an ongoing resisting process.

Discursive power and crisis control

The discourse of resistance formulated in media accounts of the Wenchuan earthquake is a signifying practice in which national resistance functions as a sign to represent the meaning of national cohesion in the face of the crisis. Within this discourse, the character of the nation and the ‘invader’ are linguistic forms representing meanings essential for identity formation. Hall (1997) maintains that there is no meaning inherent in material objects; the meaning of material objects is constructed through articulation with linguistic forms (p. 17). In this case study, the discourse of resistance articulated through mediation nationalizes the meaning of the crisis. The signification of meaning is a ‘discursive process’ (Barker, 2012: 91), which, in Foucauldian perspective, is controlled by discursive power (Foucault, 1972, 1976, 1981).

The discursive power underlying the formulation of this discourse is shown in two aspects. First, the prevalence and dominance of nationalism in contemporary Chinese culture lays the foundation for representing the meaning of nationalism, which is constructed and consistently retained by institutions such as media supervised by state power. The conventional way of the signifying practice is based on ‘regulated maps of meaning’ (Barker, 2012: 91). In this nationalized map of meaning, the themes of national war and national resistance constitute a significant area. In contemporary Chinese culture, nationalism is an episteme: ‘the sets of discursive structures as a whole within which a culture thinks’ (Mills, 2004: 56). The linguistic forms depicting national war and national resistance signify the nationalistic meaning. In this episteme culturally uniting or integrating the state, the nationalist ‘beliefs or opinions’ are internalized in members of the nation in the process of enculturation and socialization (Wodak et al., 2009: 28).

Second, discursive power is also displayed in the intentionality of media with a state background to apply discursive mechanisms such as narratives and framing, engaging with broad social and cultural representations to discursively control the crisis. The sign of national resistance is articulated to represent nationalistic meaning, and therefore formulate an interpretive framework to facilitate controlling the crisis through modulating the meaning of the event. In the case of the Wenchuan earthquake, constructing national cohesion and national cultural identity is manifestly demanded by high-ranking government officials. A passage in Sichuan Daily titled ‘Provides Powerful Spiritual Driving Force, Ideological Guarantee and Opinion Support to Seize Victory in the Struggle against the Earthquake’ is an example of this:

李长春强调，当前，抗震救灾工作已经进入关键阶段，任务十分艰巨。宣传思想战线要 […] 深入挖掘和充分展示中华民族万众一心、共克时艰的伟大精神力量，唱响举国上下团结一致、不畏艰险、顽强斗争、敢于胜利的主旋律。

Translation:

Li Changchun³ emphasized that so far the task of attacking the earthquake and rescue work has come to a critical phase, and the work is very challenging. The frontline of propaganda and thoughts should […] deeply dig up the great spiritual strength of the Chinese nation in its highly cohesive collective struggles against the disaster, extolling the keynote of national cohesion, victory, resilience across the country.

(Sichuan Daily, 18 May 2008)

This guideline is also stressed by Liu Yunshan, the minister of CCP Propaganda Ministry when the earthquake happened (Sichuan Daily, 15 May 2008). Practically, this discursive process succeeded in creating a feeling of national belonging and asserted Chinese national cultural identity in this situation. A survey covering 26 provinces and including 523 respondents conducted by the Lab of Media Investigation in Tsinghua University (2008) in China indicated that 98.72% of the respondents thought Chinese media effectively formed a strong sense of belonging to the Chinese nation in the Wenchuan earthquake coverage, and 98.1% recognized that the coverage generated hope in the crisis (Sichuan Daily, 1 June 2008). This survey indicates that themes such as ‘self-confidence of Chinese nation’, ‘social cohesion’, ‘soft power’ and ‘national strength’ resonate profoundly with respondents (Sichuan Daily, 1 June 2008). The way state media in China discursively constructed this event was ‘heavily supported by the text’ and closely associated with the ‘audience schemata’ concerned with national cultural identity embedded in the Chinese nationalism (Entman, 1993: 56). In this case, the clusters of nationalistic statements in the discourse of resistance effectively activate the consciousness of national cultural identity, which has been internalized in the public.

Conclusion

In the context of contemporary Chinese national culture and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, this study investigates how the media discourse was constructed by the Chinese state media to facilitate crisis control. In addressing these questions, this study dissects media discourse as narrative and storytelling, as a frame for defining social realities, and as signifying practices representing the meanings of material realities. These discursive mechanisms are associated with, engaged with and influenced by broader cultural frameworks. Utilizing a series of discursive measures, the discourse of resistance contributes to achieving the aims of the Chinese state media to control the crisis. This discourse serves to differentiate confusing information by framing media narratives and strengthen communal cohesion by representing the meaning of national cultural identity. In the case of the Wenchuan earthquake, the discourse of resistance signifies the Chinese nationalism and evokes the public’s identification with the Chinese nation, which enhances a sense of belonging to the national community in a time of crisis. In representing the Chinese national cultural identity, the cluster of statements constructing the resistance creates an ongoing discursive process in sync with the continuous media coverage of the event. It shapes the Chinese nation in a progressive media discourse. In so doing, the meaning of the nation is negotiated and dissolved into the specific storytelling process rather than in a static inculcating manner. The dichotomized structure of cultural identification constituted by the Other and the central identity is shown in the construction of the invader and the Chinese nation in the Wenchuan case. The formulation of the resistance between them is also determined by the rationale of cultural identification by which the shared meaning of the central identity can be purified. The potentiality of the sign of invader, the Chinese nation and the resistance to represent culturally resonant meanings is due to the fact that they are the signs of Chinese nationalistic narratives in contemporary Chinese culture. The findings in this study indicate an alternative view on the role of media discourse in crisis situations. It is maintained in this study that crisis control can be facilitated by discursively creating cultural identification engaging with the broader social context. However, this study focuses on discourse analysis of the texts rather than concentrating attention on how audiences specifically engage with this discourse, which might be done in further studies.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Dr Peter Pugsley, Dr Xianlin Song, Dr Kate Cadman and Dr Baohui Xie for their precious support and suggestions in writing this article. Special thanks also go to Dr John E Richardson for his insightful comments on the earlier version of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding

This study was funded by China Scholarship Council University of Adelaide Joint Postgraduate Fellowship.

Notes

Author biography

Weimin Zhang is a PhD candidate in the Discipline of Media, the University of Adelaide, Australia, and an assistant lecturer in Lanzhou University in China. Recently he completed his PhD thesis on natural disaster communication. Several of his articles on journalism theories were published in Journalism Field and Journalism World in China.

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