'Terrorist' Attacks
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Struve, Bastian (2019) The Chinese print media’s reporting of domestic ‘terrorist’ attacks: ideographs, social values and counter -terrorism frames. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/81331/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Chinese Print Media’s Reporting of Domestic ‘Terrorist’ Attacks : Ideographs, Social Values and Counter-Terrorism Frames Bastian Struve MRes Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Social and Political Sciences College of Social Sciences September 2019 2 Abstract Following the attacks of September 11 2001 in the United States, China proclaimed its own ‘war on terror’ with the Uyghur of Xinjiang as a frontline. At the same time as ongoing US anti-terrorism efforts around the world, the Chinese government deployed repressive campaigns in one of its own troubled regions, campaigns which intensified with the riots in Urumqi in 2009. A series of high-casualty attacks since 2014 demonstrates further exacerbation of the conflict and entailed a strengthening of the counter-terrorism apparatus in the following years. Yet several scholars have questioned the nature of the purported terrorist threat to China, suggesting that the new narrative around the Uyghur issue was an attempt by the regime to preserve its authority and escape international condemnation for the severity of its actions. However, although these scholars highlight the party-state’s use of the terrorism label for the Xinjiang conflict, there is still a comprehensive analysis missing on how the party-state portrays the terrorist threat to its people. Responding to this research problem, this dissertation presents the first systematic analysis Chine se media coverage of domestic ‘terrorist’ attacks. Drawing upon eight cases from 2009 to 2015, and twelve Chinese newspapers, this analysis focuses on the determinants of terrorism coverage and framing patterns through a combination of qualitative content analysis and quantitative text analysis. I argue that the Chinese party-state engages through various methods of news censorship and coordination to construct a terrorist threat that is surprisingly abstract- invoking extremism as the threat, but without referring much to particular agents, organisation or religions. Also, I argue that the party-state uses the abstract terrorism portrayal to campaign against all ‘three evil forces’ (terrorism, extremism, separatism), while also promoting social values that align with the regime’s resilience. The dissertation reveals the various frames that make up the party-state’s terrorist threat construction. It demonstrates that the party-state uses the Xinjiang conflict to rally the Chinese people under the flag of the Chinese Communist Party while also creating the image of an archetypical enemy that can be applied to a large range of party-state perceived threats. These features of the Chinese news coverage of ‘terrorist’ attacks shed light on the mediated reality of the conflict and provide an alternative perspective to US-centred media scholarship on terrorism. 3 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 10 Research contributions on terrorism news framing, authoritarian resilience and the Xinjiang conflict .................................................................................................................................... 12 Xinjiang’s strategic importance to China .................................................................................. 14 China’s evolving terrorism problem ......................................................................................... 15 The merit of appropriating the ‘war on terror’ lexicon ............................................................. 17 Research questions and methodology ..................................................................................... 21 Thesis structure....................................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 2: Literature Review ....................................................................................................... 25 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 25 Connecting framing theory to the authoritarian resilience scholarship .................................... 27 Resilient authoritarian regimes strive for legitimacy ............................................................ 27 Framing theory explains persuasion as legitimisation strategy of authoritarian leaders ....... 30 News censorship and coordination in China’s censored media environment ....................... 33 The empirical gap ................................................................................................................ 38 Terrorism news framing in China and beyond .......................................................................... 39 Chinese media portrayals of terrorism ................................................................................. 39 Implications from terrorism news framing studies beyond China ......................................... 41 The need to ‘de -Westernise’ the scholarship on terrorism news framing ............................. 44 The analytical gap in the terrorism media scholarship ......................................................... 46 The literature on the Xinjiang conflict and the party state’s counter -operations ...................... 47 Studies of China’s designation of the Xinjiang conflict.......................................................... 47 The literature on the China’s Xinjiang operations ................................................................ 48 The media gap ..................................................................................................................... 52 Situating the PhD research focus in the scholarship on China’s ‘terrorism’ problem ................ 53 Filling the gaps in the academic literature on China’s ‘terrorism’ threat ............................... 53 The implications from the literature and the linkage to the research questions ................... 53 Chapter 3: Methodology ............................................................................................................. 56 Research aim, purposes, and approach ................................................................................... 57 The data collection process ..................................................................................................... 58 Case selection ..................................................................................................................... 58 Newspaper articles as unit of analysis, the data sources and the time frame ....................... 60 Newspaper selection ........................................................................................................... 61 The search string for data collection .................................................................................... 64 Research validity ..................................................................................................................... 66 The framing analysis process ................................................................................................... 67 Research strategies by chapter ................................................................................................ 71 4 Chapter 4: The Determinants of Chinese Terrorism Coverage...................................................... 73 The research context: The news coverage data and prevalent trends ...................................... 73 Research design ...................................................................................................................... 77 The response variable: The count of newspaper articles ...................................................... 79 The predictor variables: The ‘traditional’ determinants of terrorism news coverage ............ 81 Regression findings for all cases from 2009 to 2015................................................................. 89 Similarities and differences with the determinants of the 8 cases ............................................ 95 Leaked censorship instructions confirm party-state interference with the media coverage of terrorism ................................................................................................................................. 98 Discussion and conclusion ..................................................................................................... 102 Chap ter 5: The Chinese Print Media’s Framing .......................................................................... 104 of Domestic Terrorism .............................................................................................................