This dissertation aims
to fill in the lacuna left by previous research of empirical and systematic
examination of atheism vis-à-vis religion in China. Moreover, I intend to
reckon with the puzzling discrepancy between high proportion of self-identified
atheists and high percentage of religious believers and practitioners among
mainland Chinese. Through quantitative content analysis of the representation
of atheism and religion in the official newspaper, the <i>People’s Daily</i>, and the commercialized newspaper, <i>Southern Weekend</i>, and comparing and
contrasting the representation of two particular religions, namely, Buddhism
and Christianity in the <i>People’s Daily</i>,
I demonstrate that as the tonal uses, interplay of secularization and
desecularization trends over time, and framing of religions effectuate the
configuration and reconfiguration of the relative meanings and locations of
atheism and religion in the symbolic realm of media representation in
reform-era China, the transfiguration reveals to the audience the discursive
instability and fluidity underlying the concepts of “atheism” and “religion.” I
argue that the Chinese party-state’s pragmatism and commercialized media’s
commitment to modern journalism are among the major enabling factors for the
discursive practices of the news media that we see. As atheism and religion are
both embraced and contested, albeit differentially, in symbolic representation
by the news media, it facilitates the Chinese’s self-identification as an
atheist and simultaneously believing/behaving as a religionist, in spite of the
apparent logical incongruity in the double-identity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/9108302 |
| Date | 14 August 2019 |
| Creators | Jun Lu (7042982) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/A_Content_Analysis_of_the_Representation_of_Atheism_and_Religion_in_Chinese_News_Media_1978-2011/9108302 |
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