Abstract
Human society cannot avoid the struggle against disasters. Natural disaster, as one of the most common and basic forms of disaster, has profoundly affected people’s lives and wellbeing throughout history. In our media-saturated society, researchers in this academic field pay particular attention to the “secondary disaster” caused by the disaster news, that is, the threat to public psyche and social stability incurred by the unexamined release of information. This challenge is where the book cuts into in studying natural disaster communication.
In a critical review of the research background, the author summarizes previous studies on natural disaster communications into three categories based on the central question which is addressed. The first category focuses on a generalized summary of the functions of the media in disaster relief while nuanced analysis of the mechanisms used by the media in information release were to be closely examined. The question of attaining feasible communication was studied in the second category in which how various groups of people were constructed became a key question of the investigation. The third category extended the scope through social analysis of the broader political, social, and cultural implications of natural disaster coverage.
This book situated its study within a gap of knowledge where scant attention has been paid: how media can be used to control the crisis by formulating special meanings during natural disaster occurrences. During a crisis how meanings can be adjusted substantially affects the reasonable control of the disorder that causes social panic and disruption. Situated in this point of concern, this book specifically delves into how China’s state media has framed contingent meaning production in spurring the control of the disaster situation. The concept of control in this book indicates managing media representation and shaping discourse rather than alluding to the control in terms of military or administrative regulating acts though they normally came into play in dealing with crisis. The book proposes a model termed “the discourse of resistance” grounded on case studies and theoretic argumentation that contributed to the scholarship of natural disaster coverage and management.
This argument is articulated and expounded in eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the background of the study and defines the terms “natural disaster” and “natural disaster communication.” In Chapter 2, the author structures a theoretic framework comprising theories of representation, discourse and power, cultural identity and national cultural identity, and theories of media framing and narrative. The author then adopts an analytic approach applied to textual analysis, which synthesizes the methods of cluster criticism, narrative analysis, discourse analysis, and sociocultural analysis. Chapter 3 examines the patterns which have emerged in the way natural disasters have been represented across historical phases in Chinese history, demonstrating that media discourse about natural disasters is shaped by contemporaneous cultural frameworks. The author showcases several cases in this respect, such as the blocking of disaster information caused by Tiandao epistemology (the idea of God’s will) in ancient China, the struggling genre in natural disaster discourse in Mao’s era constructed by the thought of Rendingshengtian (man will conquer nature) as well as a more objective coverage saturated with rising nationalistic themes in contemporary China.
Chapter 4 illustrates how a war narrative was formed in the representation of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake by China’s state media. This chapter demonstrates how a constructed war of defending the victims and resisting the catastrophe was completed by means of narrating stories to serve the intentionality of state control over the disorderly information flow. It displayed the process in which war narratives incorporated information into a mediated storytelling, protruding virtual interactions between the characters of “we the nation” and the threat as the “other.” Through formulation of this narrative, the author argues that disruptive messages breaking out at the initial phase of the cataclysm were attributed to an imagined “invader.” In so doing, a demarcation boundary could be set between the community and the earthquake.
Chapter 5 examines how Chinese nationalism was espoused in the war narrative and a broad discourse of resistance appeared in mapping out an event of national resistance in the representation of the Chinese state media. The author presents the process of textually presenting nationalism and explains that the resistant discourse incarnated the rule of identity formation based on the theories concerning identification exclaiming that a dichotomy constituted by the community and the opposite side was formative in evoking the sense of community and belonging, and the discourse of resistance served as a cultural code in national memories as well as a frame for producing nationalistic news and meanings, which enacted a spiritually forging undergoing where victims mentally experienced the solidarity, invincibility as well as glory of Chineseness. The reporting thus enhanced the morale and strengthened the faith of winning and social panic dissipated sooner. At the same time, the nationalistic meaning contained and condensed in this discourse laid an epistemological stand as well as a positive subjectivity for mobilizing all sectors of society to resist disruptive memes. In this sense, the event was culturally contained.
Chapter 6 explores the philosophical depth to explain why this discourse effectively functioned to ensure Chinese identity was negotiated in the representation. The author maintains that the discourse embodied a differential and classificatory attribute of the cultural system in which each concept such as national identity was defined and also the classification of objects and meanings were activated through differentiation. The nation-building with resistant discourse functioned by resorting to the rule of differentiation and classification harbored in the human cultural cognition.
In Chapter 7, a case study on the media presentation of the Tasmanian bushfire in Australia in 2013 is undertaken. The result indicates that the discourse of resistance has explanatory potential in the context of natural disaster representation outside China. The author believes that this discursive mode arose from the bridging of human emotion and the regularity of meaning identification which existed across cultural borders. The final chapter contains the author’s reflections on this study.
Natural disasters are unavoidable, but the presentation by news media about natural disasters can be improved. I believe that this work will be of great contribution to the study of natural disaster coverage and cultural communication more broadly.
