Mapping contentious discourse in China: activists’ discursive strategies and their coordination with media

ABSTRACT

Discursive strategy in social movements in China has received limited scholarly attention. This paper systemically examines the way in which contentious discourse in China is informed by its cultural repertoire and illustrates how activists strategically frame their culturally informed discourse in coordination with the usage of media platforms. We analyzed 143 slogans and banners from 22 environmental and land requisition protests, and found that activists in China draw heavily on Chinese cultural repertoire. They embed family values in a rank system that is mapped onto two axes – space vs. time and us vs. them – with family/self at the center, to frame diagnostic, motivational, and prognostic collective action frames. In order to unpack the dynamic process of strategic framing, we paid special attention to activists’ coordination mechanisms with media in our analyses drawn from extensive participatory observation and interviews in two protest cases. We found strategic framing (such as frame bridging, amplification, extension, transformation and borrowing) was used in coordination with both traditional and new media in an effort to adjust their contentious discourse to achieve consensus mobilization, action mobilization, and social mobilization at various stages of protest. This study brings cultural repertoire back into the study of contentious discourse in China and highlights the dynamic nature of strategic framing that is often practiced in coordination with media.

KEYWORDS:

• Discursive strategy
• social contention
• land requisition
• environment
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yuqiong Zhou is a professor in the School of Media and Communication at Shenzhen University, and an adjunct research fellow in the Center for Information and Communication Studies at Fudan University. She obtained her Ph.D. from City University of Hong Kong in 2005. Her research interests focus on the influences of new media upon Chinese society. Her previous research has been published on Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, and several Chinese academic journals.

Yunkang Yang is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. His research areas are political communication, information and communication technology, and journalism. His dissertation is about disinformation and right wing media in the US. His previous research has been published on the International Journal of Communication and Communication & Society.

Notes

1. For an extended discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of newspaper event analysis in social movement studies, see Earl, Martin, McCarthy, and Soule (2004).

2. Panyu protest is nominated by the People's Daily, Southern Weekend, and Beijing Youth Daily as one of the 2009 annual events.

3. Wukan protest is nominated by the People's Daily, Lianhe Zaobao of Singapore, Wenhui Daily of Hong Kong, and New Century Weekly as one of the 2011 annual events.