The Study On The War Propaganda Strategies Of People’s Daily During The Self-defense War Against Vietnam

This paper takes the war propaganda of People’s Daily during the Self-defense War against Vietnam as the research subjects. This paper utilizes the methods of content analysis and quantitative statistics from the perspective views of communication, politics and military. And we emphasize on the war propaganda strategies of People’s Daily in the period of February 17 th, 1979 to March 16 th.This paper will sums up the experience and lessons, and provides reference for the war propaganda in the digital age.During the Self-defense War against Vietnam, the war propaganda of People’s Daily follows the time sequence generally, and it can be divided into three stages:before the outbreak of the war, in the course of the war and at the end of the war.Before the outbreak of the war, the propaganda focuses on how to use the agenda to manipulate emotions; in the course of the war the focuses are about shaping the justice of the war, encouraging the morale of military and civilian, and demonstrating the broad supports; while, the following reports after the war primarily focuses on propaganda of withdrawing troops and strengthening the image of justice. The specific propaganda strategies are listed as following:1. Driving the war propaganda by using the agenda setting and various literary styles. Before the outbreak of the war, both the layout and length of articles are taking into consideration of page arrangement; while after the war it leads a comprehensive report through various literary styles(News, Communication,Editorial and The statement, Review, International Review and Notes) to advance the war propaganda gradually.2. Shaping the justice of the war. During the war, People’s Daily built the justice image by comparing pros and cons. The positive points focus on the justice of passive counterstrike from China; making the war; and its participation. The other side is about revealing the ugly images of the enemy, which mainly include two parts:the subjective description of the enemy’s ugly conducts and the objective disclosure by the third parties.3. Encouraging the morale of military and civilian. This is done mainly by two parts: on one hand, strengthening people’s confidence in victory by selected reports;on the other hand, weakening the imagery of hero while emphasizing the typicalstories. Both above strategies encouraged the morale of military and civilian effectively.4. Demonstrating the broad supports. This is achieved by two aspects: one is creating an atmosphere of the public supports for the war; the other is the reports on the supportive public opinion from foreigners.5. Withdrawing troops and strengthening the image of justice. The propaganda strategy of withdrawing troops still focuses on the propaganda of the image of justice, mainly about the China’s justice withdrawal and ongoing charging the enemy crimes.The above propaganda strategies reflect the features of the traditional media which are one to many and point to plane. While in the digital era the communication has the features of many to many, plane to plane and much easier accessibility to media by audience. Despite the change of media environment, this paper argues that: firstly, the mainstream media like the People’s Daily(including the network version) will keep playing the leading role in the communication. Secondly,no matter how the propagation technology changes the content of the communication is still the core of the communication. Finally, in terms of war propaganda, its purpose is to end the war, but not for the war to make war. Based on the above understanding, the propaganda strategies of People’s Daily during the Self-defense War against Vietnam still have its reference value in the current digital age.