The Anti-CNN Movement: Nationalism, New Media and Chinese Generation Y

In 2008, a group of young Chinese students launched the Anti-CNN (AC) movement – one of the most extreme anti-American nationalistic movements of the past decade among Chinese Generation Y –triggered by foreign media coverage of the Lhasa Riot. The movement soon transformed from online protests into worldwide offline demonstrations. Now the world, already concerned about the “China Threat”, is watching and wondering whether a new wave of radical Chinese nationalism is on its way. This study aims to explore the nature of the new wave of Chinese nationalism and its impacts on the AC movement. The study will 1) investigate how Chinese government’s patriotic education and China’s state-media relations have shaped the Chinese nationalism in the first decade after the millennium; 2) examine how nationalistic discourses affect media and movement-framing during the process of movement mobilization; and 3) analyze the variation of individual perceptions of nationalism among Chinese Generation Y.