People-centred myth: Representation of the Wenchuan earthquake in China Daily

Abstract

This article primarily explains how China Daily — an exemplary representative of China’s press — modified the disaster discourse, to provide coverage of the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, through the exclusion of rational thought and in doing so created a people-centred myth. The secondary aim is to understand why the need for legitimacy was the reason behind the Government’s decision to allow media coverage of the disaster. Critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis underpin the study. The article concludes that the Government’s aim in ‘opening up’ access to the media to provide coverage was to provide a public relations exercise, nationally and globally, of the Communist Party of China’s governance capabilities.