The Research Of The Effect Of Media’s Guidance On Pubiic Opinion In Nationalism Perspective

Stressing the supremacy of national interests, nationalism, as a kind of ideology, often becomes an important force to resist external pressures in international conflicts. Chinese contemporary nationalism revived in1990s, it shows the differentiation even contradiction between official nationalism and popular nationalism while resisting external pressures. In this context, this paper attempts to explore the following question:In international conflicts, is the government able to guide the popular nationalism, through the media, effectively?To answer this question, this research choose the2012Diaoyu Island dispute as an example and select the media reports and the comments below on one of the most famous portal as the data. By examining the relevance between media reports and netizens comments in three levels--ttention, attitude and nationalism, this paper aim to explore the effect of the media’s guidance to public opinion.This research find that: in the2012Diaoyu Island dispute, media coverage shows the effect of validity and limitations on netizens’comments. Effectiveness is mainly reflected in the level of attention. Whether it is on the whole or between different issues or stages, it shows significant correlations between the amount of media coverage and public comments. Besides, in the nationalism level, the official and popular nationalism ends in the same trend at the last stage, and the mild official nationalism received most positive response.Except these, the effect of the media is showing more limitations. In attitude, netizen comments tend to be more strongly opposed to Japan, and show significant differences between different issues and develop into opposite direction as the stage goes on. In nationalism, the changes of the degree of nationalism in reports don’t cause corresponding changes in comments. Besides, the mainstream assertive official nationalism type leads to a large number of critical nationalism from the public.In public comments, the external opposition (includes assertive&aggressive nationalism), internal criticism nationalism and mild nationalism become three leading voice. The effect of media to guide public comments in2012Diaoyu Island dispute not only reflects the general public’s strong opposite attitude towards external pressures, but also reveals the internal contradictions between the Chinese government and people. At the same time, this research fully embodies the destructive and constructive features of Chinese popular nationalism.