Television And National Identity Construction

Xinjiang is located in the border area of China and has many different ethnic groups."Violent segregation and dissociation", dominated by the three evil forces, namely terrorism, extremism and separatism, are threatening the regional security of Xinjiang and even national stability of China. The Urumqi riot on July5th of2009reflects not only the contradictions between different ethnic groups, but also the low-income earners’grudges against inequality of social distribution and the people’s decreasing support for their government in the place of the riot. Therefore, to study the national identity of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang has become crucial in solving the above-mentioned problem in the region.National identity includes both political identity and national cultural identity. The research of this dissertation is based on the concept of Minzu, which has several different meanings in Mandarin:as in minority Minzu, it refers to ethnic group; whereas in the Chinese Minzu, it means nation. The Chinese nation is made up of56ethnic groups. Minzu cultural identity here refers to self-identity for the Chinese national culture.This dissertation made an investigation into the Xinjiang Uygurs’, Kazaks’and Mongols’self-identity respectively for their own ethnic groups, Chinese national culture and China. The result shows that these Xinjiang ethnic minorities all have a strong sense of ethnic identity, but less understanding of and lower self-identity for the Chinese nation, and that they put self identity for their ethnicity above that for the Chinese nation and China as a whole. Market economy has caused marginalization and impoverishment for ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, which is revealed in the form of intra-ethnic conflicts, and their ethnic identity surges ahead together with appeals of the interests of their groups and exceeds their national identity. This leads to segregation and dissociation, which threatens the national security of China. Therefore, it is imminent to construct national identity in Xinjiang.There are many ways to build up national identity. Construction through media is one of the most effective. Empirical investigation into the influence of TV media on different ethnic groups of Xinjiang has shown that television, as the media with the widest coverage and accessibility in the region, has had a major impact on the audience of different ethnic groups and become the most effective way to build national identity. For this reason, this dissertation focuses on the studies of how to construct national identity through TV media.The nature of TV media as a kind of ideology communicator has made it a necessity for ruling classes to make use of it to construct national identity. The supporting theoretical foundation is that TV has built "an imagined community" and provided possibility and methods of identification and identity construction in the realistic sense for combining nation-sate and its "imagination" by means of social organization and reconstruction of "time order and geographical space". Furthermore, the media rite of TV re-involves individuals of different cultural backgrounds into a collective world and enables them to find their emotional, moral and spiritual homeland, thus their self-identity (for ethnicity, nation-state, etc.) gets confirmed.Xinjiang is a multi-cultural region under great influence of religions. Different ethnic cultures have fermented feelings of cultural estrangement. To rebuild the Chinese national culture is the basis for constructing national cultural identity. Consequently, to build a modern culture based on modernized systems has become a main way to combine various ethnic cultures. This dissertation hence proposes to realize integration of ethnic cultures, Chinese traditional culture and the modern culture through TV programs. The adoptable forms may include:A. music, songs and dances programs that integrate traditional Chinese cultural elements into ethnic cultures and take artistic integration as the means of reconstructing ethnic cultures; B. TV news programs that provide paradigm of modern cultural identity and guide the reconstruction of cultural identity with cultural changes; C. TV drama that recount on the history of the Chinese nation and build up the national cultural identity. All these ways could be used in constructing national cultural identity.Political identity refers to that for the national political system, political power and the ruling party. This dissertation employs content analysis in analyzing XJTV Network News, and concludes that through coverage on the making and practice of political systems, especially social security systems, the program has affirmed national achievement in system construction, completed demonstration of legalization of the political power and formed a systematical cohesive force for constructing national identity. On the other hand, by virtue of designing certain topics and discourse transformation, the program also filled up social gaps, resolved the conflicts and rebuilds ideology of the whole society, thus realizing the aim of constructing national identity.