Dr. WANG Dan, AngelaAngelaDr. WANG Dan2026-09-112026-09-112026Wang, D. (2026 Jul 1). Pride and patriotism: De-otherness in US and Chinese media discourse on techno-nationalism. 2026 Annual International Association of Communication and Media Research (IAMCR), University of Galway, Ireland.http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11861/29457As the Sino-US relations stumble to the lowest point since the end of the Cold War, overt and covert confrontations between the two nations are increasingly narrowed to areas of emerging technologies (2024 Annual Report to Congress; Karatzogianni, 2021). Such a shared egoistic animosity is leading toward growingly divided and de-globalized national and social identities (Jasanoff & Kim; 2015; Nguyem & Hekman, 2022; Schindler et al., 2024). With both sides bent on outshining the other in the rivalry, flaunting one’s own prowess and weakening the competitor has invariably become a dominant and recurring theme in the media discourse (Capri, 2020; Luo, 2021). The main task of this study is to unravel the manifest and latent meanings steadily ascending in media’s discursive expressions on how the technological competition ought to be interpreted politically and culturally.<br> Apart from their inherent surprise value, new technologies also attract attention from media and media scholars because they hold the potential for expanded knowledge of the mind-machine relationship, especially in terms of media coverage of it (Cui & Wu, 2021; Ittefaq et al., 2024). Existing studies on media frames of Sino-US technological competitions have scratched the surface of the issue as their scope of concern tend to stay within trends and patterns detected from media content (Chuan et al. 2019; Nguyen & Hekman, 2022). However, depth understanding is in want of more detailed and nuanced analyses to reveal: 1) what specific rhetoric devices and frames are adopted; 2) how the narratives are constructed; 3) how a parallelism between media coverage and its underpinning ideological force is established; and 4) what are the main agents of change that demand adjustment of line-to-take in media coverage. To address these issues, the current research proceeds from and centers on technological contestations as reflected in US and Chinese media in the hope of broadening the field of vision in the study area.<br> Theoretically, we merge three lines of conceptualization into a more generalized concept of de-otherness that incorporates national pride from social psychology; techno-nationalism from international relations; and news framing from media studies. De-otherness not only amply captures the current US and China disagreement, but also constitutes the core of media discourse from both countries (see: Ooi & D’Arcangelis, 2017). Note that the resulting framework is predicated on the assumption that techno-nationalism has become one of the most frequently used concepts describing the increasingly polarized technological competition between the US and China (Luo, 2021; 2024 Annual Report to Congress). In an important way, the competition, still unfolding, can be viewed as a psychological consequence of the technology-society wrestling, a process mediated by the media It can also be seen as the geopolitical battling between nations for supremacy in international affairs. While media frames inform us of how Sino-US technological rivalry is linguistically packaged, the nationalism discourses answer the question of why. Pride, in its own right, offers a new angle to complement explanations based on rational reasoning in public discourse. Introducing pride into the model highlights the role of emotion in the move toward extremity in media construction of otherness on both sides. This affective dimension fits neatly with the grander notion of socio-technological imaginary, which not only foregrounds state power, but also recognizes the multiplicities of its manifestations (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). Media discourses or discursive cultures are the playgrounds of techno-nationalism imaginaries (see: Nguyen & Hekman, 2022; Bareis & Katzenbach, 2022).<br> The source of evidence for our theoretical claims comes from two mainstream news outlets: The New York Times (NYT) in US and China Daily in China. We chose 2023 to be the comparison point partly because of the intensified US export control on semiconductor to China and the vies versa, and partly due to the rather sudden emergence and penetration of generative artificial intelligence (A.I.) in that year. Together, the two factors have complicated and deepened the escalating techno-geopolitical feuding between US and China (see: van Dick, 2019; xx).<br> We term this style of discursive practice “de-othering”. Whereas “othering” is close to exclusion and xenophobia, “de-othering” pits own superiority against competitor’s inferiority. In this study, we integrate pride from social psychology, techno-nationalism from international studies and framing from communication research into a full model centered on the emotionally-charged de-otherness.<br>enPatriotismDe-OthernessUS and Chinese Media Discourse on Techno-NationalismConference Paper