Research On The Discourse Practice And Emotional Structure Of Internet Nationalis

“Cyber nationalism” refers to “Internet-media nationalists' ideologies”.The phenomena of Chinese cyber nationalism has a long history.From the discussion of protests against Sinophobia on BBS in the late 1990 s to the mobilization of new media of internet nationalism represented by “Diba's Expedition” since 2016.The phenomenon of Chinese cyber nationalism today can be said to have become an important digital cultural form of "cultural politics" in today's Internet sphere.To a certain extent,the phenomenon of Chinese cyber nationalism reflects China's mainstream national identity of the general public and the social mentality under the background of a specific era.At the beginning of 2020,the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has provided a new social context for the re-emergence of Chinese Internet nationalism.What are the new developments and characteristics of online nationalism in China's social media platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic? From the perspective of “Discourse practice” and “Emotional structure”,through the comprehensive use of network ethnography,grounded theory,case analysis,“Process-event analysis” and other qualitative research methods,this paper has mainly investigated the phenomena of Chinese cyber nationalism on Weibo during the spreading process of the Covid-19 pandemic.The findings are as follows: First of all,the trend of cyber nationalism was a gradual warming process,which arose from the uncertain atmosphere of public opinion at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.And then,it shows two characteristics: “the emotional resonance of patriotism under the pandemic situation” and “the discourse struggle against the Western's stigmatization and politicalization of the pandemic”.Secondly,from the perspective of“Discourse practice”,the emergence of Chinese cyber nationalism during the Covid-19 pandemic can be understood as a social construction of multiple discourse subjects.On the one hand,the “Official discourse” represented by the mainstream media and the official microblogs of relevant government departments,mainly plays the role of the patriotic opinion guide and the propaganda mobilization under the pandemic situation.On the other hand,some “bottomup” internet opinion leaders,self-media marketing numbers and ordinary netizens are actively responding to the pandemic,which expresses two emotions: “The individual's love,pride and sense of belonging to his own country” and “The individual's sense of nationality superiority to his own country and domination to other countries”.Thirdly,anger,sympathy,anxiety and fear,and the banter are the main emotional types in the past new media events of Chinese cyber nationalism.But each event only had one single emotion type.Based on the investigation of grounded theory,research found that the trend of pandemic cyber nationalism has a more complicated “structures of feeling”.It contains the multi-subjects in a specific event for a specific object produced by the multi-emotions.This shows,to some extent,that the cyber nationalism during the pandemic is a Collective cooperation narrated by various social groups and individuals.this “Collective cooperation” is a profound record of the Covid-19 pandemic,active in the cyber space for all aspect of their country's interests and emotional attitude.