{"title":"When a Party Paper Meets COVID-19: Crisis and Legitimacy in Renmin Ribao’s Commentary Articles","authors":"E. Lupano","doi":"10.54103/2035-7680/19122","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Similar to many other countries, journalistic production in China during the first half of 2020 was dominated on a thematic level by the COVID-19 pandemic. The trend included the mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Renmin Ribao. Its news and commentary articles, which are widely republished by other media, influence the country’s political life, and contribute to the process of meaning generation in the news discourse and to the CCP’s effort to align Chinese citizens to official narratives. Renmin Ribao can therefore provide a relevant source to investigate the relationship between political power and the COVID-19 pandemic, starting from the hypothesis that the paper’s narrative would aim at discursively turning the international health crisis into a piece of positive propaganda. This study aims to verify whether and how the paper did so, and to question the assumption that the outlet’s media discourse can be equated to the CCP official discourse. \nThe research is developed as a case study and blends quantitative and qualitative tools grounded on Applied Linguistics, Discourse-Historical Approach, and Frame Analysis, in order to analyse a corpus of commentaries that have appeared in the outlet’s online edition in 2020. By applying a Genre Analysis approach, the study also offers insights into the possibility to identify distinguishing characteristics and communicative goals in the different sub-genres of Renmin Ribao commentaries.","PeriodicalId":42544,"journal":{"name":"Altre Modernita-Rivista di Studi Letterari e Culturali","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Altre Modernita-Rivista di Studi Letterari e Culturali","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.54103/2035-7680/19122","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Similar to many other countries, journalistic production in China during the first half of 2020 was dominated on a thematic level by the COVID-19 pandemic. The trend included the mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Renmin Ribao. Its news and commentary articles, which are widely republished by other media, influence the country’s political life, and contribute to the process of meaning generation in the news discourse and to the CCP’s effort to align Chinese citizens to official narratives. Renmin Ribao can therefore provide a relevant source to investigate the relationship between political power and the COVID-19 pandemic, starting from the hypothesis that the paper’s narrative would aim at discursively turning the international health crisis into a piece of positive propaganda. This study aims to verify whether and how the paper did so, and to question the assumption that the outlet’s media discourse can be equated to the CCP official discourse.
The research is developed as a case study and blends quantitative and qualitative tools grounded on Applied Linguistics, Discourse-Historical Approach, and Frame Analysis, in order to analyse a corpus of commentaries that have appeared in the outlet’s online edition in 2020. By applying a Genre Analysis approach, the study also offers insights into the possibility to identify distinguishing characteristics and communicative goals in the different sub-genres of Renmin Ribao commentaries.
期刊介绍:
Altre Modernità (AM), a six-monthly journal, ISSN 2035-7680, features articles, discussions, interviews, translations, creative works, reviews, and bibliographical information on the cultural production of Modernity. The themes and topics tackled in each issue will take Altre Modernità to areas of the world traditionally perceived as geographically and culturally disparate, aiming at capturing the newness of the cultural paradigms that are taking shape in several places today in order to isolate, subvert, weaken or transcend the monologic discourse of mainstream culture. AM is dedicated to the study of the peripheries of the world and the peripheries of societies that act as vibrant centres of cultural production, with special attention paid to those aspects of his cultural production that offer alternative models, suggestions and tools for overcoming it. The literary discourse still represents - for Altre Modernità - the point of departure and the unavoidable hub collating explorations in contiguous cultural and artistic fields. Altre Modernità is an Open Access journal devoted to the promotion of competent and definitive contributions to literary and cultural studies knowledge. The journal welcomes also works that fall into various disciplines: cultural studies, religion, history, literature, liberal arts, law, political science, computer science and economics that deal with contemporary issues, as listed in AM CfPs. Altre Modernità uses a policy of double-blind blind review (in which both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process) by at least two consultants to evaluate articles accepted for consideration. Altre Modernità promotes special issues on particular topics of special relevance in the cultural debates. Altre Modernità occasionally has opportunities for Guest Editors for special issues of the journal. Altre Modernità publishes at least 2 original issues in a calendar year.