A Discourse Study On Crisis Communication Of Terrorism Of Xinjiang

China's security is facing severe challenge from the non-traditional security fields,and top of all is the terrorism.As the frontier and the battle field of anti-terrorist war in China,Xinjiang has become the focus of Chinese government,media,public and even the international societies.Terrorism is not restricted to the fields of security,politics or law.It is a series of discursive events and a kind of crisis communication.Media formulates public's conception and their judgment on social crisis through the discourse it conveys,which may further influences public behavior and manner to participate in the reconstruction of social reality.So far,the studies on the communication of terrorist discourse involve the discip lines of Discourse Analysis and Communication.Scholars in the field of Discourse Analysis usually adopt the Critical Dicourse Analysis to study the media discourse concerning a single terrorist event or a series of events mostly in western media.While the research in Communication concentrates more on the discourse of a single or a chain of events through the scopes of agenda setting,framework theory or content analysis.Shi-xu defines discourse as the communicative events in the particular contexts of history and culture.However,the previous studies neglect such historical-and-cultural perspective to explore media discourse on terrorism of Xinjiang.This study formulates a framework to comprehend the role that discursive communication of terrorism plays in constructing social security,and to analyze the terrorist discourses systematically to explore the discursive features and the problems in such a discursive practice.This study concerns about the concepts of discourse,communication and crisis.Thus the analytical framework of the current study integrates the theories of Chinese Discourse Studies,Crisis Communication Management and Crisis Response Strategy into one.This study attempts to eplore 3 questions:(1)What are the discursive features of terrorist discourses about Xinjiang communicated in mainstream media and social media?What are similarities,differences and the problems concerning the terrorist discourses from thses two media sources?(2)What are the features of terrorist discourses from the perspective of Crisis Communication Management?Are the features different between mainstream media and social media?And what are the problems exist?(3)What are the characteristic of the discursive configuration and stratege application between China and America when talking the terrorist issues about Xinjiang?What kind of power relationships and cultural traits are revealed?In order to answer these questions,research data is collected from 3 sources.Firstly,mainstream media data is constituted of 255 pieces of reports concerning the terrorist situation of Xinjiang in People's Daily from 1949 to 2014.Secondly,social media data is composed of 154 pieces of articles collected from the We-Chat platform of the researcher in the year of 2014.Thirdly,the Sino-US discourses are made up of argumentations of the two sides on 4 issues,namely the security condition of Xinjiang in annual Country Reports on Terrorism by the US Congress,the international acknowledgementof Eastern Turkish terrorist organizations,the repatriation of Eastern Turkish terrorist suspects in Guantanamo,and the case of the detainment and imprisonment of Ilham.The results show that:(1)Concerning the historical features of the terrorist discourses of Xinjiang in the mainstream media,there exist 4 kinds of changes.Firstly,the nature of the media discourses changed from class struggle discourse to legal discourse then to political discourse.Secondly,the subjects of the discourse showed a democratic transformation from officials-orientedness to official-and-public-orientedness.Thirdly,the medium of the discursive communication became diversified.Finally,the focus of the discursive content switched from encouraging homornious ethnic relationship to truth telling then to an integration model of both truth telling and value building in terrorist communication(2)Considering the cultural features of the terrorist discourses of Xinjiang,data from the mainstream media demonstrated a dialectical thinking in Chinese traditional phylosophy.Such a dialecticalness shown itself in the picture portrayed by the media discourses that though terrorism caused trouble in the region to certain extent,Xinjiang was developing towards a favorable direction in general What's more,the Chinese traditional ethical principles of homorny and humanity in discourse composition were found in the media discourses presented,especially in the Sino-US argumentations on Xinjiang's security issues,such as the ideas of "moderateness" and "not to impose on others what you yourself do not desire".While the discourses from the US side represented "hegemonic" and "individualistic" characteristics of American cultural.(3)Talking about crisis communication,comparatively speaking,the discourse communicated by mainstream media was more like an "information flow" before 7 · 5 event in 2009,while the communication of terrorist discourses by both mainstream media and social media were more of the nature of "influential flow" after 7 · 5event.Another tipcal feature of the discursive communication in this respect is that the platform of social media played an active role in spreading the ideology of the mainstream media to influence the congnition and judgement of the public.Comparing the proportion of discursive communication between fact dimention and value dimention,the function of value restoration was not fully played in both mainstream media and social media.(4)As to the strategies applied,China and the US adopted opposite propositions.The interests of the two parties never intersected.China presented its consistent position and concern on "Community of Common Destiny" throughout its discourses,while America was saying one thing and doing another.The discursive argumentations revealed the hypocritical nature of America that it sacrificed the international security for the sake of its national interest under the cover of protecting and maintaining the international security.Throughout the practice of communication,China's voice of right and justice was never cared and listened to.(5)In the perspective of constructing the social security,the role played by media among public in formulating their cognition on social security was rather negative.But the function of media discourse on promoting the society towards a favorable direction was rather positive.Though meeting with great difficulties,the Chinese government was making every effort to improve the livelihood of Xinjiang to guarantee a better social security environment.(6)The intense terrorist communication by both mainstream media and social media arose great terror among the public towards the social security,towards Xinjiang,and towards Uygurs as a whole.Such a panic-stricken mentality was caused by the imbalanced discursive communication between fact dimention and value dimention.What's more,the overloading of negative information and the spreading of noises on the platform of social media,the lacking of diversity of discursive subjects and the indepth guidance by experts in the mainstream media resulted in the ineffective role of the media in formulating the public's cognition towards terrorist situation and in leading the public opinion.While in the Sino-US argumentations,the lacking of the voice from the president and other powerful authorities on the Chinese side led to futile effort in inducing the US side to set agenda on the terrorist issues as we wished.Chinese side got caught up in the passive situation throughout the process of discursive practice with the US.In the end,this study provides constructive suggestions on how to communicate the terrorist discourse more wisely and efficiently via the mainstream media and social media on China side.Suggestions are offered from the perspectives of discursive communication,crisis communication management and crisis response strategy respectively.The suggestions are to ensure China an active participation in composing favorable discourses both domestically and internationally and to construct a better social security environmentThe major innovations of this study lie in two aspects:firstly,it justified the feasibility of the research framework proposed by the researcher.This framework made up for the lack of model in integrating different disciplines organically,and for the limitation of studies on just a single terrorist event or a few events.Secondly,methodologically speaking,this study combined diachronic and synchronic methods as a whole,and integrated the theories of Chinese Discourse Sdtudies,Crisis Communication Management and Crisis Response Strategy in one.As mentioned earlier,discourse is the communicative event(s)under the particular historical and cultural contexts.The diachronic exploration on Chinese media communication and the comparative study on Sino-US argumentations on the issues of terrorism of Xinjiang were to examine the historical and cultural features of discourse systematically.