Analysis On The Construction Of Discourse Of "Comfort Women"

The rapid development of media provides an environment for online nationalism to thrive and as well a new channel for the general public to deliver nationalist emotions.The construction of nationalism and national identity in China is closely related to the history of the anti-Japanese war,and "comfort women" plays a part of the cultural memory of the war.The media discourse of "comfort women" is deeply influenced by online nationalism.Because of the different groups of editors,the "comfort women" entries of Baidu Encyclopedia and Wikipedia are two different media discourse fields with different discourse construction processes.In order to highlight the characteristics of this media discourse,this study is conducted through the comparison between the "comfort women" entry of Baidu Encyclopedia and Wikipedia.This research intends to outline the trajectory of the online nationalist narrative strategy and present the longitudinal change course of network nationalist discourse to construct social and cultural memory.In Baidu Encyclopedia,"comfort women" are constructed as the background and silent witness of the national trauma and disgrace.The media discourse of“comfort women" establishes a set of national shame narrative strategies by underlining the trauma of "comfort women",thus transforming the tragedy of a specific group into a cultural symbol of which contributes to the reproduction of national identity.What is more,this discourse strategy adjusts with the demand of macroscopic ideology and geopolitics,which has driven the narrative strategy to change from subjectivity and emotionality into objectification and rationalization.Nationalism acts as the basic framework for constructing the cognition of"comfort women",and serves as an important factor in the evolution of media discourse of "comfort women".On the contrary,in a global discourse space such as Wikipedia,the entry contains content of "comfort women" from more countries,instead of focusing on the case of China.At the same time,the media discourse of Wikipedia’s "comfort women"entry follows the principle of objectivity,and this de-nationalist inclination is due to the collision and compromise of diverse cognitive framework,maintained by editors from different countries.This process drives to a dynamic balance through sustained controversies.In a nutshell,a conclusion can be safely drawn that in a relatively single discourse community such as Baidu Encyclopedia,media discourse intend to be influenced by a single cognitive framework depending on the cultural situations of discourse contributors,and Chinese discourse writers can embed the key of online nationalism into the media discourse,which acts as the "keying" process.This process contains two layers:the first layer is the media discourse of "comfort women" online is shaped by the nationalist narrative,and the second layer is that the realistic demand of nationalism stimulates the media discourse of "comfort women" to evolve.In the a global discourse space like Wikipedia with diverse and complex groups of users,the collision of different cognitive frames makes the media discourse objective and de-nationalist in the struggle,and thus returns to the primary frame,which focuses on presenting related basic facts.