Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The topic of my master's thesis is online hate against Chinese people during the corona-pandemic.I am studying what kind of discourses can be found from the conversations and what functions do these discourses serve.The theoretical frame in my thesis emphasizes the existence of a social reality separate from the natural reality.Through social reality people form understanding of themselves, others, and the surrounding world.Language is one way to form this understanding.I am using critical discourse analysis as I analyse the hate comments on the online forums.The material has been collected from three different sites, two of which are Finnish and one American.All in all, there are 340 comments, from which 130 were chosen for the final analysis.I formed six different discourses from the analysed material.In the conversations about the coronavirus, Chinese people are seen as the ones responsible for spreading the pandemic and the conversations have a hostile atmosphere.Chinese are seen as the enemies and as immoral, subhuman creatures.The leaders of China and other countries are also criticized for allegedly covering things and failing to protect people from the spreading of the virus.Conspiracy theories are present in all of the conversations.These theories are about, for example, whether the spreading of the virus was an intentional attack towards the West.The functions that can be recognized from the discourses are the attempts to suspect, judge and demand punishment for Chinese people.There is also moralizing, joking, transferring responsibility, and mobilizing to violence present, among other functions.
Author: Laura Castrén
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3161831136