Dissertation
Techno-nationalism: constructing nationalist imaginaries through digital activism in China
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2020
DOI: 10.17077/etd.005539
Abstract
In this dissertation, I propose a new concept of “techno-nationalism” to recognize a new form of nationalist activism that appeared in China in the mid-2010s. Different from the commonly used term “cyber-nationalism,” which simply means nationalism happening in cyberspace, techno-nationalism sees networked technologies as facilitating platforms, objects of creative digital action, and signifiers of the community’s meanings. This project focuses on three prominent cases of Chinese techno-nationalism: a nationalist protest against pro-Taiwan-independence entities on Facebook named the “Diba Expedition” and “The Battle of Memes,” nationalist fan activities surrounding three Chinese films, and endeavors to reinforce traditions of festival celebrations.
Based on the three case studies, I argue that grassroots techno-nationalists took creative digital actions that operated at the mutually constitutive levels of discourse and materiality to reconfigure and imagine China’s cyberspace as a defining aspect of the nation itself. Because the internet has become an integrated platform for social life in China where individuals have carried out everyday life activities such as discussing films and posting holiday wishes, it has served as a key site for grassroots vigilant surveillance against communicative practices in violation of the participants’ nationalist imaginaries. Moreover, techno-nationalists took cyberspace as a synecdoche for the nation. They shaped the imaginaries of the nation by shaping the imaginaries of its cyberspace, which is the part that stood in for the whole.
With the concept of techno-nationalism, I argue for the entwinement of the discursive, the material, and the imaginary. Specifically, I show how the discursive and the material constitute and shape each and together construct the imaginary.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Techno-nationalism: constructing nationalist imaginaries through digital activism in China
- Creators
- Lin Sun
- Contributors
- Jenna Supp-Montgomerie (Advisor)Jiyeon Kang (Committee Member)Joy Elizabeth Hayes (Committee Member)Melissa Tully (Committee Member)Kembrew McLeod (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Communication Studies
- Date degree season
- Summer 2020
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.005539
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- vii, 146 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2020 Lin Sun
- Language
- English
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 136-146).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
This dissertation examines the rise of nationalist sentiments in China in the 2010s by investigating three prominent cases. The first case is the Diba Expedition (i.e., Battle of Memes) on Facebook against pro-independence Taiwanese, targeting specifically president-elect Tsai Ing-wen, SETN News, and Apple Daily. Participants bypassed the state-imposed Great Firewall to flood the targets’ pages with texts and memes to insist that Taiwan is a part of China and to construct positive images of both the participants and China. The second case is the nationalist fan activities surrounding three Chinese films. The nationalist fans enthusiastically celebrated and defended the films on China’s most influential review-aggregation site, Douban.com, and rated Douban one star out of Apple App Store’s five-star rating system for smartphone applications as revenge when the Douban score of their beloved film declined. The third case includes three nationalist attempts to reinforce festival traditions in China. Throughout the middle parts of the decade, nationalists called for a Christmas boycott every December as attempts to revive the traditional festivals. Specifically, regarding the traditional new year, cyber nationalists launched two different trolling attempts in 2016, respectively targeting the ethnic minority actress Rayza for not celebrating the festival and the Han Chinese supermodel Liu Wen for writing “Lunar New Year” instead of “Chinese New Year” on Instagram.
I argue that these cases exemplified a new form of nationalist activism, which I name “techno-nationalism.” Participants in techno-nationalism have taken digital actions that operate at both the discursive and the material levels to construct the imaginaries of China’s cyberspace as a way to shape imaginaries of the nation.
- Academic Unit
- Communication Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9983988197702771
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