| With the rapid development of Internet technology,traditional public diplomacy has gradually merged with digital technology.Cyber diplomacy has become a major trend of global political communication.On the one hand,the Trump administration’s "Twitter diplomacy" demonstrates the importance of social media in cyber diplomacy.On the other hand,the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has made social media the major platform for the practice of cyber diplomacy.During this period,the war of international public opinion is a major test for Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesmen to use overseas social media to carry out cyber diplomacy,and a concrete practice of constructing cyber diplomacy discourse and telling Chinese stories well.This paper adopts Fairclough’s THREE-DIMENSIONAL discourse analysis method to analyze the construction of cyber diplomatic discourse on the Twitter accounts of Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson during the COVID-19 in 2020.The study finds that in the face of stigmatization under western cultural hegemony,Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson actively participate in the international public opinion war through overseas social media,which has achieved certain results but also faces some difficulties.In the aspect of text,Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson presents the relationship between China and the world through high-frequency words,constructs a metaphorical structure to establish an equal and just international system,and uses rhetorical questions to find specific expressions criticizing hegemony,so as to provide the premise of "legitimacy" for the construction of cyber diplomacy discourse.In the aspect of discourse practice,the production link of discourse reflects the ideology of producers,the distribution link reflects the invisible power relations,and the consumption link shows the interpretation by different receivers,thus forming the "production-distribution-consumption" relationship of cyber diplomatic discourse construction process.In the aspect of social practice,Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson constructs social identity that is an important contributor to global development and a firm defender of the international order by constructing the social facts of actively participating in global disease resistance,being stigmatized and taking the responsibility of a great nation,so as to realize the discourse game of ideology,and finally forms the reality of discourse construction of cyber diplomacy.Through the analysis,it can be concluded that the official and personal Twitter accounts of Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson present a synergy at the level of strategic communication in the construction of discourse.On the one hand,the discourse construction of official and individual Twitter accounts is characterized by co-ordination and flexibility.The two exert the subjectivity under the highly unified ideology,showing the innovation and diversity of discourse construction in China’s cyber diplomacy against COVID-19.On the other hand,official and individual Twitter accounts complement each other in the international communication work.By forming a communication force to achieve the communication effect of shaping national image and changing international attitudes,it shows the strategic and ideological nature of discourse construction of epidemic situation in China’s cyber diplomacy. |
