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The Role of New Technologies in Shaping the Anti-Corruption Narratives in Contemporary China

China
Internet
Social Media
Corruption
Mixed Methods
Yang Wu
University of Sussex
Yang Wu
University of Sussex

Abstract

This paper focuses on anti-corruption narratives and the current anti-corruption campaign in China. It tries to figure out why and how governments and organizations tackle social issues like “corruption” by telling stories in the media and social media. Taking China as an example, it applies a narrative policy framework to analyse the official texts in Chinese anti-corruption campaign between 2012 and 2019. It argues that there are four types of narratives of anti-corruption in China: “Confucianism”, “Dying dynasty”, “Economic well-being” and “Chinese Dream”. “Confucianism” addresses “self-regulation” in preventing corruption; “Dying dynasties” looks at educating officials by historical lessons; “economic well-being” echoes with the international norm that corruption destroy economy growth; “Chinese dream” aims at the final destination of anti-corruption campaign – a rejuvenation of China led by the Party. It will focus on Xi Jinping’s speeches on anti-corruption and employ a combined content and discourse analysis approach to work on the data. It will firstly map the trend and look at the word frequency of Xi’s anti-corruption speeches; and then select typical texts to analyze and support the four anti-corruption narratives respectively. The paper will then reflect on the impact of new technologies – e.g. social media – in shaping the corruption narratives.