The Construction Of National Identity By TV Ritual

Identity is necessary for human existence, because of the social nature of human beings. For individuals,one can only obtain peace of mind when he or she determined the ownership and boundaries of oneself. For nations,a nation can only survive when it is accepted both by its own people and by the international world. However,with the rapid expansion of globalization, china’s political sovereignty and cultural sovereignty are subjected to serious challenge, the nationalidentity crisis is becoming more terrible.Therefore,construction of national identity has become an important subject.In general,the government education and media propaganda are the two important ways to construct national identity. As a medium which is closest to public life,television is able to cross geographical boundaries and translate national will into people’s daily life.Especially the TV direct transmission of some important events which we called “TV Ritual”can invite all audience to participate in widely,to sympathize with others at the psychological level and share common meanings. What ways TV ritual will adopt tois the center of this essay.This study selected the victims of the Nanjing massacre national public ceremony on December 13 th,2014 and December 13 th,2015 for the sample,choose TV’s symbol system as a research tool. Mainly through semiotics analysis,content analysis and text analysis method,the researchanalyzes how TV ritual build national identity. This paper is divided into five chapters:The first chapter mainly is the introduction which introduced the background,purpose,motivation and methods of this article. Besides,it also summarized the researchstatus about “China’s National Identity”,“Media Ritutal”and“TV ritual and national identity”.The second chapter mainly reviews existing theories of “TV Ritual”and“National Identity”.Firstly,this chapter defined these two concepts which is the answer of“what is”.Secondly,based on the point of view of communication theory and Carey’s“Ritual Communication ”, this chapter answered “ why can TV ritual construct national identity”.Finally,this chapter summarized “how general mass media to construct national identity”on the basis of literature reading,and pointed out that TV uesed its own symbol systems as the specific tools.Chapter three and Chapter four mainly analyzed four ways of the construction of national identity by the“Victims of the Nanjing Massacre National Public Ceremony”through TV’s image symbol,text symbol and sound symbol.Among these two chapters,the third chapter mainly elaborated the image building of“others”and the image buildding of“self”. The fourth chapter mainly elaborated the shaping of “common memory” and the ritual live itself.The fifth chapter is the conclusion and advice of this study. Once again,the author stressed the significance of the construction of national identity by TV ritual,as well as summarized the concrete means of the construction of national identity by the“Victims of the Nanjing Massacre National Public Ceremony”.Besides,the author also made some suggestions for this study’s shortcomings.Focusing on the“TV ritual”which is a narrow area,this essay analyzed how to construct the national identity by specific TV ritual. We sincerely hope that this study can be useful to relevant researchabout “TV ritual”,also wish that this study would have practical significance in enhancing national cohesion and realizing China’s dream.