Browsing by Author "Sa, Haoxuan"

Chinese online nationalism is an intensively discussed issue in academia, and Chinese microblogging (Weibo) has now become the third most important information resources for Chinese netizens. However, little research has been done on the performance of Chinese online nationalism, especially on the Sino-Japanese relationship. In this thesis, an empirical study has been done to analyze online nationalism on the Sina microblogging platform. A case that has been chosen for analysis is a heavy earthquake that hit Japan on March 2011, when the Chinese government sent rescue teams to Japan to take part in the rescue activities. A lot of discussion on microblogging was related to this issue. This case is used to analyze how the discussion reflected online nationalism among the users of microblogging. Using 'Japanese earthquake' and ' China sent rescue team' as key words during 12 March 2011 to 21 March 2011, a random selection method is applied to get a sample for this study, and 584 postings are selected as a sample to analyze. The findings in this study indicate that microblogging provides a flexible platform for ordinary people to express their emotions on nationalist issues, but most of the discussions are not rational. Chinese Online nationalism is not only limited in a bottom-up model, but in this case, elite class supplies the views and arguments to masses, and masses spread them. The shared national identity of China as a victim in the past and a superpower in the world today in microbloggers’ minds helps to sustain Chinese nationalism on microblogging. What is more, national pride is another important element that constitutes Chinese online nationalism. However, several microbloggers clearly distinct the Chinese government from the Chinese nation. The findings also show that Internet plays a positive role in formulating public spheres. However, online platforms like microblogging cannot be easily regarded as public spheres.