A Study On The Media Memory Construction Of The Epidemic By Non-fiction Writing WeChat Official Accounts

Amidst the overwhelming news coverage of the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak in2020,non-fiction writing silently circulated on We Chat official accounts.This long text,which required immersion in reading,brought a different reading experience to countless homebound netizens at a special time of clamour and anxiety,and thus constructed a special media memory.In the media memory constructed by the non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts,ordinary people become the protagonists of the story and move towards the centre of memory.The resilient and optimistic qualities of ordinary people are the best illustration of the simplest patriotism and heroism of the Chinese people,in terms of the subjects,themes and forms of media memory construction.This study chooses non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts as its object of study.Drawing on the Asmans’ theories related to cultural memory,this study uses quantitative research methods of content analysis and qualitative research methods of textual analysis and in-depth interviews to explore the ways in which non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts constructed the mediated memory of COVID-19 epidemic and how effective the final construction of memory was.In the first chapter,the research adopts a content analysis method,selecting the Truman Story,the Livings and the Guyu Lab as specific research subjects.A judgmental sample of non-fiction articles on the epidemic published by these three official accounts between 31 December 2019 and 1 January 2022 was selected,resulting in a final sample of 127 articles.By counting the research sample,constructing categories for them,coding them,and analysing what kind of characteristics the non-fiction works pushed by the non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts present in terms of content in terms of publication time,theme,main characters,story location,authorship,narrative perspective,and language style.In the second chapter,we analyse the general process of memory construction of the COVID-19 epidemic by non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts with the help of Aleida Asman’s "memory prototype-medium field-medium impression".The memory archetypes are divided into memory event archetypes and memory subject archetypes.The memory event prototype is the sudden public event of the COVID-19 epidemic,and the memory subject prototype is every ordinary Chinese person in the epidemic.The non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts are the sites of memory construction-the media field.Memory prototypes are selected to enter the media field,and after a series of processing and reorganization,they finally form memory impressions.The memory impression is not an exact copy of the memory prototype,but the result of the construction.In the third Chapter,the study uses textual analysis and in-depth interviews to explore how non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts construct memories of the COVID-19 epidemic and how effective they are in terms of the subject of memory construction,the topic of memory construction,the presentation of memory construction content and the effect of memory construction.In the forth Chapter,the study summarizes the trends of the memory of the COVID-19 epidemic constructed by non-fiction writing We Chat official accounts through statistics and in-depth interviews.As time goes by and the epidemic develops,the memory of the COVID-19 epidemic tends to weaken,and the epidemic gradually becomes the backdrop of the story,becoming the normal memory.Finally,the paper proposes a tentative proposal to shift the ’memory of interaction’ of the COVID-19 epidemic to the path of cultural memory.