流動的正義建構: 案件型媒體事件的演變（2000–2016）

This study focuses on media events reported in the extensive news coverage of judicial trials in China. From a social constructionist perspective, we examine trial-based media events from 2000 to 2016 to reveal dynamic mechanisms through which the state, public, media, and courts collectively construct perceptions of social justice. Specifically, we elaborate on three steps in the justice construction process: externalization, objectivation, and internalization. We demonstrate how contemporary social conflicts and developments in media and legal institutions shape the transition of justice construction processes in trial-based media events. Over the years, while different mechanisms have existed simultaneously, the dominant construction mechanism has transformed from the tabloid justice construction process in the early 2000s, to sympathetic justice construction, to controversial justice construction, and then to collaborative justice construction in 2013. The social construction framework we propose provides not only a dynamic analytic model for the debate between “trial by media” and “media supervision” in existing studies, but also a new perspective to investigate social transition in China.