The Construction Of Australia’s National Identity By The Sydney Morning Herald Editorials In The Post-Cold War Era

After the end of the Cold War,Australia is faced with the task of redefining its national identity.At the international level,the in-depth development of globalization continues to accelerate the global dissemination of information,the international exchange of ideas and the cross-border flow of people,posing challenges to Australia’s geographic and cultural borders.At the regional level,as the geopolitical landscape reshuffles in Asia-Pacific,Australia,historically belonging to the West,has to consider its "relocation" in Asia.Domestically,the debate about Australia changing from a constitutional monarchy to a republic has not disappeared.Identity politics has been raging on with rising racism and populism against minority ethnic groups.The construction of Australia’s national identity becomes an imperative.Seeing the construction of national identity as a discursive process in which media discourse,official discourse and public discourse constantly negotiate and compete with each other,this study takes the perspective of social constructivism to examine the national identity discursively constructed by the Sydney Morning Herald editorials.This study defines and distinguishes three dimensions of national identity:essential attributes of nation states,social and cultural attributes,and political attributes.Aboriginals,immigrants with minority background,boat people,the United Kingdom and Asia（China）are identified as the internal and external "significant others" in constructing Australia’s national identity.In analyzing each "significant other",the study first sorts out Australian policy changes in each topic area on the basis of fully possessing historical records and data.Qualitative textual analysis of Herald editorial articles on each specific topic（1,458 in total）after the Cold War is then applied to deconstruct the newspaper’s construction of national identity.This study finds that the core features of Australia’s national identity constructed by the Herald are as follows.First,Australia should be an independent and sovereign state.In terms of political system,the Herald recognizes the importance of the monarchy as inherited from the UK to Australia’s national building in the initial stage of the Commonwealth.But it demonstrates through an "inappropriate other" frame the significance of abolishing the monarchy as immigrants take up a growing proportion of the population.As for the essential attributes dimension,in order to protect the territorial border of the state as the "imagined community",the Herald uses referential and predicational strategies to construct boat people as the threatening "other",creating resonance with the nationalist discourse of the government and public.This newspaper has also been increasingly emphasizing Australia’s independence in foreign policy decision-making from its US ally.Second,a multicultural Australia characterized by egalitarianism is constructed by the Herald as the core of cultural and ethnic national identity.To achieve this goal,the Herald uses the "productive diversity" frame to eliminate the economic otherness of immigrants,and through a shift from "deracializing" to "anti-racism" frame to highlight the importance of recognizing Australia’s racial history and correcting historical injustice,and to reconstruct the image of boat people with humanitarian discourse.However,due to the inherent contradiction between multiculturalism and national identity,the Herald’s construction of the cultural dimension of a multicultural Australia is in fact purposefully missing.In its place is a weak national identity based on citizenship and "boutique multiculturalism",the latter influenced by unconscious white supremacy.Third,being a Western liberal democracy is the most important identity attribute foregrounded by the Herald when depicting Asia as the "other" The dual goals of defending human rights,freedom,rule of law,anticommunism and the market economy on the one hand,and of safeguarding national interests on the other,wax and wane,together shaping how Asia and China in particular were constructed as the "political other".In its construction of Australia’s national identity,the Herald has applied strategies of othering,de-othering and re-othering the "significant others" for the purpose of asserting itself as a professional newspaper and balancing various public interests.It has established its position as a defender of public interests,a policy watchdog and a leader of public opinion through discourse strategies such as personal pronouns and modality.The newspaper can objectively display the opinions of all stakeholders in its editorials to build a public sphere for the exchange of discourses.The use of intertextuality strategies effectively creates a space of interdiscursive hybridity,thus realizing the spatial and temporal resonance of national identity construction under different themes.Judging from its political stance,this newspaper sometimes preaches Western values more aggressively than the Federal Government,but sometimes calls for cool-headedness in dealing with the tension between China and the U.S.out of consideration of national interests.On the one hand,it promotes the transformation of Australia’s national identity after the end of Cold War in dimensions such as race,culture and political systems.But on the other hand,the goal of social stability and harmony has always been prioritized.This paper also examines the interaction among the media discourse,official discourse and public discourse.It finds that the Herald can be both a follower of official agenda and an active agenda setter;it can both convey public opinion to policy-makers or "produce" public opinion;it can either be at odds with public opinion or cater to public opinion.The three have both consensus and collaboration as well as disagreements and competition in the process of agenda setting and discourse producing.This study is a useful exploration of a new perspective and paradigm of national identity research.Through the integration of theories and frameworks from communication studies,political science,and discourse analysis,this study explores a model for analyzing the discursive construction of national identity both at the micro and macro level.This study not only examines the construction of national identity by media discourse,but also tries to understand the discursive role of the media in its interaction with official and public discourse.Contributions can thus also be made to Australian media study,country-specific research and political communication.