The Discursive Politics Of Anti-Petrochemical Movement

In this paper, the discursive practice from the anti-petrochemical movement launched by the Chinese publics during the social transformation was analyzed based on the communication theories. The author focused on the construction strategies, the frame types and the recurrence mechanisms taken in the anti-PX events by the mass media. And it disclosed the ideology confliction and discursive struggle enclosed in the media discourse.During 2007 to 2009, many events, called for anti-PX events, that public opposed the construction of the large-scale petrochemical project happened in Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Chengdu and Guangzhou, which had formed a social movement on the subject of environmental risk. The social subject including mass media, government and public, developed the communication practice with abundant and tortuous basing on this anti-petrochemical movement. This paper, regarding the dissemination text in the anti-petrochemical movement as the research subject, combining the specific context from the text and social process, adopting the critical discursive analytical method and experiential research method such as depth interview and fieldwork, discovered the discursive politics included in the anti-petrochemical movement.It was discovered in this study that the discursive construction of the Chinese mass media on the anti-petrochemical movement was restricted, changeful and conflicting. The reason was that the media discursive construction just like the public expressing had faced the trouble of power control and lacked the legal resource and value consensus necessary for the discursive practice. It was manifested in the following ways:Firstly, the mass media would face many controls from rigid power, propaganda policy, market and media if they wanted to take the anti-petrochemical issue as the media agenda. It is necessary to take the series of strategical ritual to dispel, evade and resist such controls. And among these strategical ritual, the main media discursive strategies included hurting for outer political opportunities and power crack, breaking out from foreign land media, reducing the political sensitivity by flexibly applying the environmental risk frame, and taking the experts and intellects as the power fulcrum. Secondly, the struggle between the control and anti-control of discursive power ran through the discursive construction process in the anti-petrochemical movement, which made the mass media frame the characteristics with diversification, differentiation and transformation. With the development of social conflicts and transformation of such events, many kinds of news frames such as risk frame, social order frame, economic interests frame, civil rights frame and political government frame were applied by the mass media. The media discourse from the anti-petrochemical movement appeared the fragment mosaic pattern. And the official discourse, civil discourse and science discourse aggregated in the news fields. Behind the back of discourse frames hided the multiple and conflicting ideology including Civil Society, Authoritarianism, Developmentalism and Environmental Justice.Thirdly, in the anti-petrochemical movement, standpoint and discourse appeared differentiation inside the mass media. It formed the confrontation and clash of interests, discourse and ideology between the native media and foreign land media, between the propagandistic media and marketing professional media, between the mass media and trade media, between the traditional media and web media. The process and mechanism were fully expressed in the media remarks of "Walking" and "Hot moment". In the anti-petrochemical movement, the mass media opposed to the negative political discourse of official government using the native imagination of news professionalism and free ideology. It rebuilt the public appearance and the meaning of "walking", and formed the challenge of the controlling ideology. However, such challenging discourse went through the conciliation strategy of power and lurked unperceptible nationalism and elite awareness.The difference and indeterminacy of discourse of constructing social movement from the mass medium has close relationship with the unbalance of social structure in the transformation and the indeterminacy of social governing mode. It was difficult to obtain the "recognized rights" in the discourse and the ideology because of the absent systematic guarantee of the public expression and behavior from the power structure of strong nation-weak society, the leading of the developmentalism and GDP will, the absence of public discursive right, the block of interest expression mechanism, the deviation of the governmental expression and the practice. So the discursive politics from anti-petrochemical movement was absent of legal resource and mutual value basis. And just the reason, the report of the anti-petrochemical movement from the mass media was entangled with the ideological struggle. And the risk theme and the environmental governance were not discussed and boosted enough. Hence, the environmental confliction happened again. The absence of public discursive right and the power dilemma of group interest expression is a systemic issue, it must be resolvd by promoting institutionalization of democratic politics.